arp eyes flashed and she
puffed her lips in and out. Pol didn't say anything but Tillie could see
she was miffed and there was in her sharp eyes a look that said, "Never
mind, Tillie Bocock, you'll pay for this."

Next morning Pol Gentry was up bright and early, rattling the pot on the
stove and grumbling to herself. "I'll show Tillie Bocock a thing or two.
So I will. Sending her young ones out of my hearing."

Far down the ridge Tillie Bocock was up early too, for already the sun
was bright and there was corn to hoe. Tillie and the children had washed
the dishes, and she had carried out the soapy dishwater with cornbread
scraps mixed in it and poured it in the trough for the pig. "Spotty,"
they called their pet. The Bococks had no planks with which to make a
separate pen for the spotted pig so they kept its trough in a corner of
the chicken lot.

"Mazie, you and Saphroney go fetch a bucket of cold water for Spotty,"
Tillie called to her two eldest. "A pig likes a cold drink now and then
same as we do." So off the children went with the cedar bucket to the
spring. When they returned they poured some of the water into the
dishpan and Spotty sucked it up greedily while they hurried to pour the
rest into the mudhole where the pig liked to wallow.

The sun caked the mud on the pig's sides and legs as it lay grunting
contentedly in the chicken yard.

And when Tillie and the children came in from hoeing corn at dinner time
Spotty still lay snoozing in the sun. An hour later they returned to
toss a handful of turnip greens into the pig. But Spotty didn't even
grunt or get up, for on its side was a sleek black cat. A cat with green
eyes stretched full length working its claws into the pig's muddy sides,
now with the front paws, now with the hind ones.

The children screamed and stomped a foot. "Scat! Scat!" they cried but
the black cat only turned its fierce eyes toward them.

Hearing their screams Tillie came running out. She fluttered her apron
at the cat to scare it away but it only snarled, showing its teeth,
lifting its bristling whiskers. Then Tillie picked up a stone and threw
it as hard as she could, striking the cat squarely between the eyes. It
screamed like a human, Tillie told afterwards. Loud and wild it
screamed, and leaping off the pig it darted off quick as a flash.

When the cat reached the cliff halfway up the mountain that led toward
Pol Gentry's it turned around and looked back. With one paw uplifted