Putting the bottle down, I went to work with a will at the platters before me. A pleasant sigh came from my lips. I had finished my dinner, and a pleasing feeling of languor and content swept over me--that thoughtful, expansive sensation, that we only experience after a good meal, when we are in a mood for thought and reverie, at peace with the world and ourselves. Talk about a clear conscience! It may be a great thing to make thee feel happy and contented, but if thou canst not have that, by all means, my friend, have that next best thing, a full stomach, and an hour to muse and ponder over life and all it contains. It was in this retrospective, peaceful mood that I pushed aside my plate, and tilting my chair back against the wall, fell to studying the label upon the bottle, and watching the light as it glistened upon the wine, as I turned the bottle this way and that. No such liquor as this had I seen since I drank the wine of the King of Spain with DeNortier, that night in the far-away isle of Eldorado. Opening the bottle, I poured out a glass of the noble fluid, and held it up to the light; it sparkled as though it held imprisoned within itself the sunlight of merry France. Such wine was for kings and nobles, and not for a friendless and forgotten man, alone and deserted; it should grace the banquet board where mirth and laughter rang, and the toasts were drank to the clink of the glasses. The goblet still stood upon the table in front of me, as I sat there. Idly I jostled the wine to and fro in the bottle, as I absently toyed with it. I started abruptly. What was that? A little grain of some white substance for an instant rose to the surface, and then sank out of sight as though eager to be lost from view. A sudden thought came into my mind, and like a flash I turned the bottle upside down. Yes, in the bottom, clinging to it, was some whitish powder which had not yet dissolved in the liquor. It was some poison I doubted not. The villainous Marsden had taken the hint of the carpenter, and had chosen the quieter way. At my feet lay a great black cat, which White had brought out with him from England, and which had grown quite friendly with me. Leaning over I took from the platter, in which lay the remains of my meal, a bit of meat, and dipping it into the glass, I threw it to the animal. She snatched it up greedily and gobbled down most of it; then lying down again, she resumed her nap. I sat there silently watching her; five minutes she lay there, asleep. Perhaps after all I had been mistaken, had misjudged the man--but no, with a wail of agony the cat sprang to her feet, and with staring eyes and trembling body began to run around the room, uttering cry after cry of dumb brute pain. For a minute she ran thus, and then sinking forward on her paws, she lay quiet. I touched her with my foot--she was dead.