“We will soon find out,” said Gray Lady. “Will you boys go down to the stable and ask Jacob to come up? I will watch here.” As soon as they had gone, Gray Lady went into a corner and seated herself upon a box. Presently she heard a rustle among the cornstalks and out stalked a great tiger-striped cat, licking her whiskers. After snuffing the footsteps of the boys, she began to lash her tail to and fro, which in a cat means anger, and quite the reverse of the dog’s sociable, “I’m glad to see you” tail-wag. Then, looking back at the hole in the corn stack through which she had come, she made a strange sound, half purr, half growl, that Gray Lady thought was evidently intended as a note of warning, and then the cat slunk off through the snow, keeping as close to the fence as possible and dropping her body low as she hurried away. When Jacob came, he took a hayfork and began to shift the cornstalks from the corner to the empty floor opposite. The feathers, he said, had all been gathered during the two past weeks, for when he had last taken the wood-sled from the barn, no feathers were to be seen. “Here they are!” he exclaimed, as the last stack was reached, but even as he spoke, six half-grown kittens, brindled like their parent, sprang in different directions, some going up on the beams and others diving into the hay, only one remaining, with arched back and flashing eyes, to hiss a protest at the disturbing of their comfortable home. “What’s the use of making bird laws and feeding birds and all that, and letting wild beasts like these multiply about the country?” said Jacob, resting on the handle of the fork. “_No, ma’am_, if I had my way, I’d get up a Kind Heart Club of men to help the birds and rid the township of homeless cats, red squirrels, and English Sparrows—yes, I would, ma’am! “I have eyes and I use them, and I know cats are worse enemies to birds, counting wild birds and poultry together, than everything else that walks or flies humped together. Tame house cats are bad enough, for they’ll kill for pleasure when they’re not hungry. My sister over at Hill’s farm says she’s taken over fifty dead or half-dead birds away from her pet cat this summer, until it sickened her of the idea of keeping cats. “But when it comes to the half-breeds that some folks let grow up because they’re too slack to kill ’em, it’s just a crime! Look at this piece of work here; the cat that has done all this is one of the outcasts of the lot down at the grist-mill. Cats are only half tamed at best; let them get a taste of hunting and back they go and are savages.