emitted by the cat, and, to Mr. Lamb's intense alarm, the animal began
swishing around the room with hair on end and tail in convulsive
excitement, screeching like a fog-whistle. Mr. Lamb is not certain,
but he considers it a fair estimate to say that the cat made the
entire circuit of the room, over chairs and under tables, seventy-four
times every minute, and he is willing to swear to seventy times,
without counting the occasional diversions made by the brute for the
purpose of snatching at Mr. Lamb's pantaloons and hair. Just as Mr.
Lamb had about made up his mind that the cat would conclude the
gymnastic exercises by eating him, the animal dashed through the glass
sash of the door into the shop, whisked two jars of licorice root and
tooth-brushes off the counter, tore out the ipecac-bottle and four
jugs of hair-dye, smashed a bottle of "Balm of Peru," alighted on
the bonnet of a woman who was drinking soda-water, and after a few
convulsions rolled over into a soap-box and died.

Mr. Lamb is now satisfied that a cat actually can be killed in the
manner aforementioned, but he would be better satisfied if old Squills
didn't insist upon collecting from him the price of those drugs and
the glass sash.

* * * * *

Last summer Peter's brother spent a few weeks with him. He owned a
"pistol cane," which he carried about with him loaded; but when he
went away, he accidentally left it behind, and without explaining to
Peter that it was different from ordinary canes.

So, one afternoon a few days later, Peter went out to Keyser's farm to
look at some stock, and he picked up the cane to take along with him.
When he got to Keyser's, the latter went to the barnyard to show
him an extraordinary kind of a new pig that he had developed by
cross-breeding.

"Now that pig," said Keyser, "just lays over all the other pigs on the
Atlantic Slope. Take him any way you please, he's the most gorgeous
pig anywheres around. Fat! Why, he's all fat! There's no lean in him.
He ain't anything but a solid mass of lard. Put that pig near a fire,
and in twenty minutes his naked skeleton'd be standing there in a
puddle of grease. That's a positive fact. Now, you just feel his
shoulder."

Then Peter lifted up his cane and gave the pig a poke. He poked it
two or three times, and he had just remarked, "That certainly is a
splendid pig," when he gave it another poke, and then somehow the
pistol in the cane went off an