. Mrs. Bird said they were
sitting together in the sitting-room one evening when they heard it the
first time. She said her sister was knitting lace (Mrs. Dennison made
beautiful knitted lace) and she was reading the Missionary Herald (Mrs.
Bird was very much interested in mission work), when all of a sudden
they heard something. She heard it first and she laid down her
Missionary Herald and listened, and then Mrs. Dennison she saw her
listening and she drops her lace. 'What is it you are listening to,
Abby?' says she. Then it came again and they both heard, and the cold
shivers went down their backs to hear it, though they didn't know why.
'It's the cat, isn't it?' says Mrs. Bird.

"'It isn't any cat,' says Mrs. Dennison.

"'Oh, I guess it MUST be the cat; maybe she's got a mouse,' says Mrs.
Bird, real cheerful, to calm down Mrs. Dennison, for she saw she was
'most scared to death, and she was always afraid of her fainting away.
Then she opens the door and calls, 'Kitty, kitty, kitty!' They had
brought their cat with them in a basket when they came to East
Wilmington to live. It was a real handsome tiger cat, a tommy, and he
knew a lot.

"Well, she called 'Kitty, kitty, kitty!' and sure enough the kitty
came, and when he came in the door he gave a big yawl that didn't sound
unlike what they had heard.

"'There, sister, here he is; you see it was the cat,' says Mrs. Bird.
'Poor kitty!'

"But Mrs. Dennison she eyed the cat, and she give a great screech.

"'What's that? What's that?' says she.

"'What's what?' says Mrs. Bird, pretending to herself that she didn't
see what her sister meant.

"'Somethin's got hold of that cat's tail,' says Mrs. Dennison.
'Somethin's got hold of his tail. It's pulled straight out, an' he
can't get away. Just hear him yawl!'

"'It isn't anything,' says Mrs. Bird, but even as she said that she
could see a little hand holding fast to that cat's tail, and then the
child seemed to sort of clear out of the dimness behind the hand, and
the child was sort of laughing then, instead of looking sad, and she
said that was a great deal worse. She said that laugh was the most
awful and the saddest thing she ever heard.

"Well, she was so dumfounded that she didn't know what to do, and she
couldn't sense at first that it was anything supernatural. She thought
it must be one of the neighbour's children who had run away and was
making free of their house, and was teasing their cat, an