Shake! shake! shake! it came again, each time nearly tearing her little claws out of their sockets and scaring her to death. She saw the ground swim far below her, and felt that she would be mashed to death. Shake! shake! shake! shake! She could not hold out much longer, and she spat down at them. How those brutes below laughed! She formed a desperate resolve. She would get even with them. “Ah, if they were but--” Shake! sha-- With a fierce spit, partly of rage, partly of fear, Kittykin let go, whirled suddenly, and flung herself on the upturned face of the man next beneath her, from him to the man below him, and finally, digging her little claws deep in his flesh, sprang with a wild leap clear of the boughs, and shot whizzing out into the air, whilst the two men, thrown off their guard by the suddenness of the attack, loosed their hold, and went crashing down into the forks upon those below. The first thing Evelyn and the men on the ground knew was the crash of the falling men and the sight of Kittykin coming whizzing down, her little claws clutching wildly at the air. Before they could see what she was, she gave a bounce like a trap-ball as high as a man’s head, and then, as she touched the ground again, shot like a wild sky-rocket hissing across the yard, and, with her tail all crooked to one side and as big as her body, vanished under the house. Oh, such a shout as there was from the soldiers! Evelyn heard them yelling as she ran off after Kittykin to see if she wasn’t dead. They fairly howled with delight as the men in the tree, with scratched faces and torn clothes, came crawling down. They looked very sheepish as they landed among their comrades; but the question whether Kittykin had landed in a blanket or had hit the solid ground fifty feet out somewhat relieved them. They all agreed that she had bounced twenty feet. Why Kittykin was not killed outright was a marvel. One of her eyes was a little bunged up, the claws on three of her feet were loosened, and for a week she felt as if she had been run through a sausage mill; but she never lost any of her speed. Ever afterward when she saw a soldier she would run for life, and hide as far back under the house as she could get, with her eyes shining like two little live coals. For some time, indeed, she lived in perpetual terror, for the soldiers of both lines used to come up to the house, as the friendship they formed that day never was changed, and though they remained on the two opposite hills for quite a while, they never fired a shot at each other. They used instead to meet and exchange tobacco and coffee, and laugh over the way Kittykin routed their joint forces in the tree the day of the skirmish. As for Kittykin, she never put on any airs about it. She did not care for that sort of glory. She never afterward could tolerate a tree; the earth was good enough for her; and the highest she ever climbed was up in her little mistress’s lap. “NANCY PANSY.” I.