. If they choose to hold a
convention to discuss the affairs of rat-and-mousedom, they can do it
for all me. But they must go about it decently and in order. They must
talk matters over calmly; there must be no rioting, no fighting. They
must refrain from the use of profane language--they must not swear.
There's law against all this, and I had warned them long before that I
would stand no such nonsense. I told them frankly that I'd let drive
among them some night with a double-barrelled gun, loaded with powder
and duck-shot--and I meant it. But those cats did'nt believe a word I
said. They did'nt believe I had any powder and shot. They did'nt
believe I had any gun, or knew how to use it, if I had; and one great
Maltese, with eyes like tea-plates, and a tail like a Bologna sausage,
grinned and sputtered, and spit, in derision and defiance of my
threats. 'Very well!' said I. 'Very well, Mr. TOM CAT! very well,
indeed! On your head be it, Mr. TOM CAT! Try it on, Mr. TOM CAT, and
we'll see who'll get the worst of it.'

"Well, as I said, the moon came up one night, with her great round
face, and all the little stars hid themselves, as if ashamed of their
twinkle in the splendor of her superior brightness. I retired when the
rumble of the carriages in the streets, and the tramp on the stone
sidewalks had ceased, and the scream of the eleven o'clock train had
died away into silence, with a quiet conscience, and in the confidence
that I should find that repose to which one who has wronged no man
during the day, is justly entitled.

"It may have been midnight, or one o'clock, or two, when I was
awakened from a pleasant slumber, by a babel of unearthly sounds in
the rear of my chamber. I knew what those sounds meant, for they had
cost me fuel enough to have lasted a month. I raised the window, and
there, as of old, right opposite me, on the north end of that long
shed, was an assemblage of all the cats in that part of the town. I
won't be precise as to numbers, but it is my honest belief that there
was less than three hundred of them; and if one among them all was
silent, I did not succeed in discovering which it was. There was that
same old Maltese, with his saucer eyes and sausage tail; and over
against him sat a monstrous brindle; and off at the right was an old
spotted ratter; and on his left was one black as a wolf's mouth, all
but his eyes, which glared with a sulphurous and lurid brightness; and
dotted all around, over a