guilt and told the story of his life. He comes
from an excellent family, is a graduate of the University of
Utopia, and had a thriving business until, several years ago, he
became addicted to drink. During the summer of 1913, in a
drunken frenzy, he gouged out one eye of a cat named Pluto, who
had formerly been one of his pets. More recently he had
destroyed this animal by hanging it with a clothes line in his
yard. Remorse for this cruel deed caused him about two months
ago to domesticate another cat, which was exactly like the first
except that, whereas the first was entirely black, the second
had on its breast a white spot, shaped like a gallows.

This circumstance, the fact that the animal had only one eye,
and his own nervous condition soon made Edwards loathe and fear
the new cat. On the morning of November 17, he and Mrs. Edwards
went to the cellar to inspect their supply of coal. The cat
followed them down the steep stairs and nearly overthrew
Edwards, who thereupon seized an axe and would have slain it,
had not Mrs. Edwards interposed. In his fury at being thwarted,
he buried the axe in her skull. As the cellar had been newly
plastered, he had no difficulty in removing some bricks from the
chimney, in concealing the remains in its interior, and in
repairing the wall in such a way that it did not differ in
appearance from the rest of the cellar.

Dr. Felix Leo, Professor of Zooelogy at Columbia, on having these
facts told him this morning, said he thought it unlikely that
Cat Number Two was the same individual as Cat Number One, though
the story of Androcles and the lion, if true, would indicate
that animals of the feline species sometimes remember and
reciprocate a kindness. "Why, then," said the doctor, solemnly
closing one eye, "may we not suppose that a cat would have the
will and the intelligence to revenge an injury?"

The theory of Edwards, who is now confined in a padded cell in
the Tombs, is different. He maintains that the two cats are one
and the same, and that the body of the beast is occupied by that
ubiquitous spirit who is variously known as Satan, Hornie,
Cloots, Mephistopheles, Pluto, and Old Nick.

VI. Analysis of Model

This story is simply a translation into newspaper English of Edgar Allen
Poe's story entitled _The Black Cat_. Its three parts ar