"The pedlar made his way up to Scotland and, meeting a very shabby old fellow upon the road, sold him the coat and Star after the hardest bit of bargaining he had ever known in his life. This old chap turned out to be the first Duke in all Scotland, and he was driven to buy the finery as he had been commanded to appear at Court. When he got to London in his ramshackle old coach, he rubbed up the Star, put on the coat, inked the seams a bit, then went to the Palace, where he found the King playing dominoes with one of the English Dukes. 'Gott in Himmel!' cried his Majesty, 'His Grace has got my old Star. I know it's mine, for 'twas made in dear old Sharmany.' The Scot was trying to explain that the Star had been made to order by his village blacksmith, when the English Duke chimed in, 'And he's wearing one of my cast-off coats!' At this point the manuscript breaks off abruptly. "That's the true English history of this old Star, which I purchased for sixpence from a sailor in whose family it had been an heirloom for the last two hundred years." "Ain't that wonderful!" exclaimed a lady. "It do seem to make they old kings and Druid volk wonderful clear avore us," murmured the Yellow Leaf. The Captain led his guests into the garden, while George, after laboriously collecting a handful of dead flies, followed, ready to support his uncle if necessary, but still more anxious to support himself. "My cats are famous," said the Captain, approaching a building which had been once a stable, and was now divided into two compartments; one with a wired front for use in summer; the other closed and kept warm for winter quarters. "I have now succeeded in obtaining a highly scientific animal, combining the sleek beauty of the pure Persian with the aggressive agility of the British species. For the last twenty years I have supplied cats to the ships of the mercantile marine, and by so doing have saved much of the commerce of this country; for a single rat will destroy five shillings' worth of perishable cargo in one day; while a single cat of my variety will readily account for fifty rats, not to mention mice innumerable, during the same period. If you will reckon sixty cats, let us say, supplied by me annually, each cat accounting for fifty rats, again not reckoning mice innumerable, every day; if you will add a dozen cats supplied, again by me, to dockyards and custom houses swarming with vermin of every description, each rat doing damage to the extent of some shillings daily, with smaller vermin doing the same according to size and jaw power; if you will add sixty ships to twelve dockyards, and add, let us say, twenty cats supplied from my stock to foreign countries, reckoning in such cases in francs or dollars instead of shillings, and making due allowance for the different tonnage of vessels or dimensions of dockyards, if you will remember I have also supplied most of the cats at present commissioned to kill rats and mice