lighted the slow-match, and the
crowd scattered. There was a loud explosion, a general distribution of
fragments of tin around the yard, and then out from the upper end of
the spout there sailed something black. It ascended; it went higher
and higher and higher, until it was a mere speck; then it came sailing
down, down, down, until it struck the earth. It was the cat, singed
off, burned to a crisp, looking as if it had been spending the summer
in Vesuvius, but apparently still active and hearty; for as soon as it
alighted it set up a wild, unearthly screech and darted off for the
woodshed, where it continued to howl until Potts went in and killed it
with his shotgun. It cost him forty dollars for a new spout, but he
says he doesn't grudge the money now that he has stopped that fiendish
noise.

* * * * *

Potts' clock got out of order one day last winter and began to strike
wrong. That was the cause of the fearful excitement at his house on a
certain night. They were all in bed sound asleep at midnight, when the
clock suddenly struck _five_. The new hired girl, happening to
wake just as it began, heard it, and bounced out of bed under the
impression that morning had come. And as it is dark at 5 A.M. just at
that season, she did not perceive her mistake, but went down into the
kitchen and began to get breakfast.

[Illustration: SHOOTING A BURGLAR]

While she was bustling about in a pretty lively manner, Potts happened
to wake, and he heard the noise. He opened his room door cautiously
and crept softly to the head of the stairs to listen. He could
distinctly hear some one moving about the kitchen and dining-room and
apparently packing up the china. Accordingly, he went back to his room
and woke Mrs. Potts, and gave her orders to spring the rattle out
of the front window the moment she heard his gun go off. Then Potts
seized his fowling-piece; and going down to the dining-room door,
where he could hear the burglars at work, he cocked the gun, aimed it,
pushed the door open with the muzzle and fired. Instantly Mrs. Potts
sprang the rattle, and before Potts could pick up the lacerated hired
girl the front door was burst open by two policemen, who came into the
dining-room.

Seeing Potts with a gun, and a bleeding woman on the floor, they
imagined that murder had been committed, and one of them trotted Potts
off to the station-house, while the other remained to investigate
things. Just t