144 
GRIMALKIN THE CAT 
The sweet clean smells of the night called to 
Grimalkin to come. He did not know what this 
impelling force might mean. He could not know 
that for centuries this had been the hour for his 
ancestors to rise and go forth to the night's hunting. 
He only knew that, come what might, he must leap 
out into the darkness, over the garden wall and into 
the woods beyond. They filled the night with that 
vast silence which is full of movement. They 
were his inheritance. He came from the hedgerows 
and thickets, and thither he would return. Behind 
him lay the dark kitchen where the embers threw a 
glow over the dead mouse the spoils of his first 
hunting ; and in front of him were the woods and 
the night. Grimalkin poised himself upon the 
window-sill for a moment, then the Night Longing 
called again, and he leaped. 
