pered. In all the years he had been blind, he had never once
complained of it, and many times when the other Horses were about to say
or do some ill-natured thing, they thought of him and stopped. They were
ashamed to be impatient when they were so much better off than he.

The Horses kept on eating their oats and resting from their hard work.
In the hay-loft above their heads, the Cat lay and purred and purred and
purred, never dreaming that her doing so made trouble for her friends
downstairs.

She had been hunting all the night before, creeping softly through the
barn and hiding behind bags and boxes to watch for careless Mice and
young Rats. They were night-runners as well as she, and many things
happened in the barn and farmyard while the larger four-legged people
were sound asleep and the fowls were dreaming with their heads tucked
under their wings. Sometimes there were not so many Mice in the morning
as there had been the evening before, and when this was so, the Cat
would walk slowly through the barn and look for a comfortable
resting-place. When she found it, she would turn around three times, as
her great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother used to do to
trample a bed in the jungle, and then lie down for a long nap. She said
she always slept better when her stomach was full, and that was the
habit of all Cats.

Sometimes she hunted in the fields, and many a morning at sunrise the
Cows had seen her walking toward the barn on the top of the fences. She
did not like to wet her feet on the dewy grass when it could be helped;
so, as soon as she was through hunting, she jumped on to the nearest
fence and went home in that way.

Yes, last night she had been hunting, yet she was not thinking of it
now. Neither was she asleep. A Rat gnawed at the boards near her, and
she hardly turned her head. A Mouse ran across the floor in plain sight,
and she watched him without moving. What did she care about them now?
Her first Kittens lay on the hay beside her, and she would not leave
them on this first day of their lives unless she really had to.

Of course she had seen little Kittens before--Kittens that belonged to
other Cats--but she was certain that none of them had looked at all like
her three charming babies. She could not decide which one of them was
the most beautiful. She was a Tortoise-shell Cat herself, and her fur
was spotted with white, black, and yellow. The babies had the same
colors on their soft coa