A CONVENTION BROKEN UP IN A KOW. 121 



if ashamed of their twinkle in the splendor of her superior 

 Brightness. I retired when the rumble of the carriages in 

 the streets, and the tramp on the stone sidewalks had ceased, 

 and the scream of the eleven o'clock train had died away 

 into silence, with a quiet conscience, and in the confidence 

 that I should find that repose to which one who has wronged 

 no man during the day, is justly entitled. 



" It may have been midnight, or one o'clock, or two, when 

 I was awakened from a pleasant slumber, by a babel of un- 

 earthly sounds in the rear of my chamber. I knew what 

 those sounds meant, for they had cost me fuel enough to 

 have lasted a month. I raised the window, and there, as of 

 old, right opposite me, on the north end of that long shed, 

 was an assemblage of all the cats in that part of the town. 

 I won't be precise as to numbers, but it is my honest belief 

 that there was less than three hundred of them ; and if one 

 among them all was silent, I did not succeed in discovering 

 which it was. There was that same old Maltese, with his 

 saucer eyes and sausage tail ; and over against him sat a 

 monstrous brindle ; and off at the right was an old spotted 

 ratter ; and on his left was one black as a wolf's mouth, all 

 but his eyes, which glared with a sulphurous and lurid bright- 

 ness ; and dotted all around, over a space some thirty feet 

 square, were dozens more, of all sizes and colors, and such 

 growling and spitting, and shrieking, and swearing, never be- 

 fore broke, with hideous discord, the silence of midnight. 



" I loaded my double-barrelled gun by candle-light I put 

 plenty of powder and a handful of shot into each barrel. I 



6 



