"The Lord have mercy on your soul!" squeaks Sandy, pulling the drop. Down goes the cat, wriggling so natural she near lost a half a dozen of her lives before I recovered enough to interfere. I resisted a craving to kick Mr. Sandy over the barn, and struck in to amuse him at something else. First off, he hung back, but by and by I had him tearing around lively, because we were aboard ship with a storm coming up to port, a pirate to sta'bbud, breakers forrud, and a rocky coast aft. Anybody would step quick under them conditions. So Sandy he moseyed aloft and hollered down the pirates was gaining on us, the storm approaching fast, the breakers breaking worse than ever, and the rock-bound coast holding its own. I hastily mounted three cord wood cannon, reefed the barn door, and battened down the hatches in the chicken-coop, without a hen being the wiser. We were in the most interesting part when an unexpected enemy arrived on the scene, in the person of Sandy's mother, and did us in a single pass. She saw him up in the tree; she give me one glare and begun to talk. I climbed the fence and went home. All the way back I felt this was a wicked and ungrateful world. The more I thought about it, the worse I felt. I wanted to get to my own room without mother's seeing me, but she came to the head of the stair when I was half up. "Well, son," she says, smiling so it didn't seem quite such a desert, "how did you make out with the little Gray boy?" "Oh, not anything special," says I, airily, hoping to pass by. "Come in and tell me," she says. So I went in, hedging at first, but limbering up when she stroked my hair. Finally my wrongs come out hot and fast. I told about his hanging the cat, and made it as bad as I could. I enlarged upon the care and pains I spent in leading him into better ways. "And, then," says I, "just as we were having a good time, that mother of his comes out. And what do you suppose she says?" Mother rubbed her hand over her mouth, swallowed once or twice, and managed to look as serious as anything. "I can't imagine," she answers; "you tell me." I shook my finger. "Can I say exactly what that woman said?" "Yes." "Well," says I, imitating Mrs. Gray, voice and all--voice like a horse-fiddle, head stuck front, and elbows wide apart--"well," I says, "she looked up the tree and saw Sandy. 'Sandy Gra-a-y!' she hollers; 'Sandy Gray! You one-eyed, warp-sided, nateral-born fool! What you mean, playing with that Bill Saunders? You come in this house quick, afore you git you' other gol-damn eye knocked out!'" Mother dropped her sewing and had a fit on the spot. That made me mad for a minute. Then I laughed, too. "Don't give up, Will," says mother. "It takes time to learn to do the right thing. You kiss your mother and forget all about it--you didn't want Mrs. Gray to pay you for amusing Sandy, anyway, did you?" "Of course not," I replies. "But she needn't of.... Darn him, he was hanging a cat!" Mother went off the handle again.