d now, and we don't
speak. Yet these three families, one generation and another, have lived
here side by side and been as friendly as weavers for a hundred and fifty
years, till about a year ago."

"Why, what calamity could have been powerful enough to break up so old a
friendship?"

"Well, it was too bad, but it couldn't be helped. It happened like this:
About a year or more ago, the rats got to pestering my place a good deal,
and I set up a steel trap in my back yard. Both of these neighbors run
considerable to cats, and so I warned them about the trap, because their
cats were pretty sociable around here nights, and they might get into
trouble without my intending it. Well, they shut up their cats for a
while, but you know how it is with people; they got careless, and sure
enough one night the trap took Mrs. Jones's principal tomcat into camp
and finished him up. In the morning Mrs. Jones comes here with the
corpse in her arms, and cries and takes on the same as if it was a child.
It was a cat by the name of Yelverton--Hector G. Yelverton--a troublesome
old rip, with no more principle than an Injun, though you couldn't make
her believe it. I said all a man could to comfort her, but no, nothing
would do but I must pay for him. Finally, I said I warn't investing in
cats now as much as I was, and with that she walked off in a huff,
carrying the remains with her. That closed our intercourse with the
Joneses. Mrs. Jones joined another church and took her tribe with her.
She said she would not hold fellowship with assassins. Well, by and by
comes Mrs. Brown's turn--she that went by here a minute ago. She had a
disgraceful old yellow cat that she thought as much of as if he was
twins, and one night he tried that trap on his neck, and it fitted him
so, and was so sort of satisfactory, that he laid down and curled up and
stayed with it. Such was the end of Sir John Baldwin."

"Was that the name of the cat?"

"The same. There's cats around here with names that would surprise you.
Maria" (to his wife), "what was that cat's name that eat a keg of
ratsbane by mistake over at Hooper's, and started home and got struck by
lightning and took the blind staggers and fell in the well and was 'most
drowned before they could fish him out?"

"That was that colored Deacon Jackson's cat. I only remember the last
end of its name, which was Hold-The-Fort-For-I-Am-Coming Jackson."

"Sho! that ain't the one. That's the one t