household fault was this. He loved to steal
upstairs, and stretch his square, tawny limbs, on the comfortable beds,
covered over with delicate white counterpanes. But the cleanliness of
the parsonage arrangements was perfect; and this habit of Keeper's was so
objectionable, that Emily, in reply to Tabby's remonstrances, declared
that, if he was found again transgressing, she herself, in defiance of
warning and his well-known ferocity of nature, would beat him so severely
that he would never offend again. In the gathering dusk of an autumn
evening, Tabby came, half-triumphantly, half-tremblingly, but in great
wrath, to tell Emily that Keeper was lying on the best bed, in drowsy
voluptuousness. Charlotte saw Emily's whitening face, and set mouth, but
dared not speak to interfere; no one dared when Emily's eyes glowed in
that manner out of the paleness of her face, and when her lips were so
compressed into stone. She went upstairs, and Tabby and Charlotte stood
in the gloomy passage below, full of the dark shadows of coming night.
Down-stairs came Emily, dragging after her the unwilling Keeper, his hind
legs set in a heavy attitude of resistance, held by the "scuft of his
neck," but growling low and savagely all the time. The watchers would
fain have spoken, but durst not, for fear of taking off Emily's
attention, and causing her to avert her head for a moment from the
enraged brute. She let him go, planted in a dark corner at the bottom of
the stairs; no time was there to fetch stick or rod, for fear of the
strangling clutch at her throat--her bare clenched fist struck against
his red fierce eyes, before he had time to make his spring, and, in the
language of the turf, she "punished him" till his eyes were swelled up,
and the half-blind, stupified beast was led to his accustomed lair, to
have his swollen head fomented and cared for by the very Emily herself.
The generous dog owed her no grudge; he loved her dearly ever after; he
walked first among the mourners to her funeral; he slept moaning for
nights at the door of her empty room, and never, so to speak, rejoiced,
dog fashion, after her death. He, in his turn, was mourned over by the
surviving sister. Let us somehow hope, in half Red Indian creed, that he
follows Emily now; and, when he rests, sleeps on some soft white bed of
dreams, unpunished when he awakens to the life of the land of shadows.

Now we can understand the force of the words, "Our poor little cat