ic yelps.

These laboratory experiments on animals developed under the able tutors,
and Jim was instructed in the cat's war dance, an ingenious mode of
inspiring puss to outdo her own matchless activity in a series of wild
gyrations, by glueing to each foot a shoe of walnut shell, half filled
with melted cobbler's wax to hold it on. Flattered by their attentions
at first, the cat purred blandly as they fitted on the shoes. Jim's eyes
were big and bright with tensest interest. The cat was turned loose in
the grain room. To hear her own soft pads drop on the floor, each with a
sharp, hard crack, must have been a curious, jarring experience. To find
at every step a novel sense of being locked in, must have conjured up
deep apprehensions in her soul. And when she fled, and sought to scale
the partition, to find that her claws were gone--that she was now a
thing with hoofs--must have been a horrid nightmare. Fear entered into
her soul, took full control; then followed the wild erratic circling
around the room, with various ridiculous attempts to run up the walls,
which were so insanely silly that little James shrieked for joy, and
joining in with the broom, urged the cat to still more amazing evidences
of muscular activity not excelled by any other creature.

It was rare sport with just a sense of sin to give it tang, for he had
been forbidden to torment the cat, and Jim saw nothing but the funny
side; he was only seven.

It was a week later that they tried the walnut trick again, and Jim was
eager to see the "circus." But the cat remembered; she drove her teeth
deep into Hall's hand and fought with a feline fury that is always
terrifying. Jim was gazing in big-eyed silence, when Hall, enraged,
thrust the cat into the leg of a boot and growled, "I'll fix yer
biting," and held her teeth to the grindstone till the body in the boot
was limp.

At the first screech of the cat, Jim's whole attitude had changed.
Amusement and wild-eyed wonder had given way to a shocking realization
of the wicked cruelty. He sprang at Hall and struck him with all the
best vigour of his baby fists. "Let my kitty go, you!" and he kicked the
hostler in the shins until he himself was driven away. He fled indoors
to his mother, flung himself into her arms and sobbed in newly awakened
horror. To his dying day he never forgot that cry of pain. He had been
in the way of cruel training with these men, but the climax woke him up.
It was said that he never