An old sea captain, of the name of Mahy, who for many years had navigated a cutter between Guernsey and England, had, at last, by industry and perseverance, amassed a sufficient competency to enable him to give up his arduous and dangerous profession, and pass the remainder of his days in peace on shore. At least, so he hoped, but, alas! the expectation of happiness, which poor mortals indulge in, is often doomed to be disappointed, and often by apparently trivial causes. Who could have guessed that a cat would have embittered the remaining days of the old sailor? Yet so it was. The mischievous tricks of this imp of Satan rendered his life almost unbearable; not a moment’s rest could he enjoy in his own house. In vain did he attempt to drive the troublesome brute away. If ejected by the door, she returned immediately by the window, or down the chimney. It was useless to attempt to catch her; she never slept, and her activity was so great that she escaped every blow aimed at her. One day, as he was sitting by his fireside, the tricks of the cat became unsupportable; if he dozed off for a moment, his wig was twitched off his head; if he laid down his pipe, puss was watching her opportunity to give a sly pat and knock it off the table; the moment his glass of grog left his hand, it was sure to be upset. At last his patience being quite exhausted, he seized the poker and gave chase, but with as little effect as ever. Puss contrived to elude him, and managed so well that blows, aimed at her, fell on the furniture and crockery. After leading him several times round the room, she escaped into the passage, and seated herself on the “hecq” or half door, which was formerly to be found in almost every house. Mahy seized a gun that was lying on the bacon-rack, and aimed at the cat, exclaiming at the same time, “Now I have you!” The cat paused, turned round, and, in a voice which domestic jars and curtain lectures made by far too familiar to him, said, very quietly and distinctly, “Pas _acouâre_.” (“Not yet.”) [Illustration: “Old Mill House at La Vrangue, at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century.”] He then, for the first time, remembered that he had never seen puss and his wife at one and the same moment, and the unpleasant truth flashed across his mind that his good woman was one of those who frequent the weekly entertainments given by his Satanic Majesty on Friday nights at Catioroc, Pleinmont, le Cimetière de Torteval, and elsewhere.