THE STORY OF JACKO II. 131 



evening and was now quite wide awake. The result was 

 that, at the end of twenty minutes, Tony bounded out of 

 bed once more ; but this time it was neither halberd nor 

 pistol which he took in hand, but a whip. 



Jacko saw him coming, and tried to hide in a corner, 

 but it was too late, and Tony administered a well-deserved 

 castigation. This effectually quieted the culprit for the 

 rest of the night ; but now Tony found it impossible to go 

 to sleep again, so he got up, lit his lamp, and as he could 

 not paint by its light, sat down to work at one of the 

 wood engravings which made him the king of illustrators 

 of his day. 



He felt much puzzled all the morning as to the best 

 way of combining peace at night with economy in fuel, 

 and he was still turning the matter over in his mind when 

 a pretty cat called ' Michette ' walked into the studio. 



Jacko was very fond of Michette because she did what- 

 ever he wished, and Michette on her side was devoted to 

 Jacko. Tony, remembering their mutual attachment, 

 determined to make the most of it. This cat, with her 

 thick winter coat of fur, would be as good as any stove. 



So he picked her up, and putting her into Jacko's 

 hutch, pushed him in after her, shut down the grating, and 

 went back to the studio to watch through a little hole how 

 things went on. 



At first the prisoners tried hard, each after its own 

 fashion, to get out. Jacko leapt against each of the three 

 walls, and then fell to shaking the bars of the grating, 

 regardless of the fact that his efforts were quite in 

 vain. 



As for Michette, she lay where she had been placed, 

 and looked all round without moving more than her head ; 

 then going to the bars she rubbed first one side and then 

 the other against them, rounding her back and arching 

 her tail, and mewing loudly. Then she tried to push her 

 head between the bars, but, finding all of no avail, she 

 made herself a nest in one corner of the hutch, and curled 



k2 



