“Well, Johnny Reed was the sexton, as I’ve already said, and he and his wife kept a cat, a well enough behaved creature, sure enough, and a beast as he had no fault to set on, saving a few of the tricks which all cats play at times, and which seem born in the blood of the creatures. It was all black except one white paw, and seemed as honest and decent a beast as could be, and Tom would as soon have suspected it of being any more than it really seemed to be as he would one of his own children themselves, like many other folk, perhaps, who, may be, have cats of the same kind, little thinking it. “Well, the cat had been with him some years when a strange thing occurred. “One night Johnny was going home late from the churchyard, where he had been digging a grave for a person who had died on a sudden, throwing the grave on Johnny’s hands unexpectedly, so that he had to stop working at it by the light of a lantern to have it ready for the next day’s burying. Well, having finished his work, and having put his tools in the shed in a corner of the yard, and having locked them up safe, he began to walk home pretty brisk, thinking would his wife be up and have a bit of fire for him, for the night was cold, a keen wind blowing over the fields. “He hadn’t gone far before he comes to a gate at the roadside, and there seemed to be a strange shadow about it, in which Johnny saw, as it might be, a lot of little gleaming fires dancing about, while some stood steady, just like flashes of light from little windows in buildings all on fire inside. Says Johnny to himself, for he was not a man to be easily frightened, being accustomed by his calling to face things which might upset other folk— “‘Hullo! What’s here? Here’s a thing I never saw before,’ and with that he walks straight up to the gate, while the shadow got deeper and the fires brighter the nearer he came to it. “Well, when he came right up to the gate he finds that the shadow was just none at all, but nine black cats, some sitting and some dancing about, and the lights were the flashes from their eyes. When he came nearer he thought to scare them off, and he calls out— “‘Sh—sh—sh,’ but never a cat stirs for all of it. “‘I’ll soon scatter you, you ugly varmin,’ says Johnny, looking about him for a stone, which was not to be found, the night being dark and preventing him seeing one. Just then he hears a voice calling— “‘Johnny Reed!’ “‘Hullo!’ says he, ‘who’s that wants me?’ “‘Johnny Reed,’ says the voice again. “‘Well,’ says Johnny, ‘I’m here,’ and looking round and seeing no one, for no one was about ’tis true. ‘Was it one of you,’ says he, joking like, to the cats, ‘as was calling me?’ “‘Yes, of course,’ answers one of them, as plain as ever Christian spoke. ‘It’s me as has called you these three times.’