66 THE FIRESIDE SPHINX 



trembling through the village streets, the children 

 pelted it with stones and clots of mud. "There 

 never was a cat so ill-treated as that poor Church 

 of England animal," says Borrow indignantly ; " and 

 altogether on account of the opinions which it was 

 supposed to have imbibed in the house of its late 

 master ; for I never could learn that the dissenters 

 of Llangollen were in the habit of persecuting other 

 cats. The cat was a Church of England cat, and 

 that was enough." Finally he was obliged to carry 

 away this unconscious and reluctant martyr, and 

 to seek for it an asylum in another village, where 

 it was charitably received by a young woman, who, 

 being herself an Anglican, was all the more ready 

 to aid an oppressed scion of the Establishment. 



It is a touch of comedy with which to ring down 

 the curtain on Pussy's tragic past. 



QK 



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