of them, while they were clinched in mortal
combat in the gutter.

There is no reason to suppose that she ever caught another Rat; but the
negro secures a dead one when he can, for purposes of exhibition, lest
her pension be imperilled. The dead one is left in the hall till the
proprietor comes; then it is apologetically swept away. "Well, drat dat
Cat, sah; dat Royal Ankalostan blood, sah, is terrors on Rats."

She has had several broods since. The negro thinks the Yellow Tom is
the father of some of them, and no doubt the negro is right.

He has sold her a number of times with a perfectly clear conscience,
knowing quite well that it is only a question of a few days before the
Royal Analostan comes back again. Doubtless he is saving the money for
some honorable ambition. She has learned to tolerate the elevator, and
even to ride up and down on it. The negro stoutly maintains that once,
when she heard the meat-man, while she was on the top floor, she
managed to press the button that called the elevator to take her down.

She is sleek and beautiful again. She is not only one of the four
hundred that form the inner circle about the liver-barrow, but she is
recognized as the star pensioner among them. The liver-man is
positively respectful. Not even the cream-and-chicken fed Cat of the
pawn-broker's wife has such a position as the Royal Analostan. But in
spite of her prosperity, her social position, her royal name and fake
pedigree, the greatest pleasure of her life is to slip out and go
a-slumming in the gloaming, for now, as in her previous lives, she is
at heart, and likely to be, nothing but a dirty little Slum Cat.

ARNAUX

THE CHRONICLE OF A HOMING PIGEON

We passed through the side door of a big stable on West Nineteenth
Street. The mild smell of the well-kept stalls was lost in the sweet
odor of hay, as we mounted a ladder and entered the long garret. The
south end was walled off, and the familiar "Coo-oo, cooooo-oo,
ruk-at-a-coo," varied with the "whirr, whirr, whirr" of wings, informed
us that we were at the pigeon-loft.

This was the home of a famous lot of birds, and to-day there was to be
a race among fifty of the youngsters. The owner of the loft had asked
me, as an unprejudiced outsider, to be judge in the contest.

It was a training race of the young birds. They had been taken out for
short distances with their parents once or twice, then set free to
return to the loft. Now for the first t