Lathrop, but no matter how good they are, evil and misery certainly seems sure to follow." The tirade stirred Mrs. Lathrop to her feet, but she was not resentful. She knew that Susan Clegg's bitterness was confined to her tongue, and that even with that she could salve as well as sting. "Can't I--?" she suggested. "Indeed you can," answered Miss Clegg. "I never felt as I needed a cup of tea more, and if the doughnuts I brought you ain't all eat up, I'd relish four or five of 'em right now." "You haven't--" began Mrs. Lathrop, taking down the teapot. "No; but I'm coming to it. I begun with the cause, and the effect'll come trailing after like the tails of Mary's little lambs. Only the tails in this case was bigger than the sheep. It may have been hearing the noise Jathrop makes when he eats, or it may have been your turkey gravy or your biscuits, Mrs. Lathrop, or all of 'em put together. Not knowing which, I'm not foolish enough to blame one more'n the other. But it's a fact as is undeniable that I never slept poorer than last night. I was in bed by nine, but I never closed my eyes till eleven, and I certainly heard the clock strike midnight. I counted goats jumping over a stile, and I counted 'em backward as well as forward, but I heard one struck, and I heard two. And then I heard something as set my hair up on end and the gooseflesh sprouting all over me. It sounded like footsteps in the 'But. Pan.,' and they was too heavy for the cat's, I could tell that at once, though at two in the morning it's surprising how loud a cat's footsteps can sound, especially when it's reached the pouncing stage, and the rat ain't got no hole to run to. I'd forgot to put the turkey leg in the ice-box as I'd carried home with me, and all I could think of was that if it was the cat, there'd be nothing left on that bone by morning, unless I stopped things right then and immediately. You'd never believe how cold a house can be at two o'clock in the morning of the day after Christmas unless you'd got up in it as I did; and now to look back at it, I see how lucky it was as it was as cold as it was, for if it hadn't of been, I'd a gone down just as I was, and I was in no trim to meet a man burglar, I can tell you _that_. So I just slipped into this flannel wrapper and a old pair of slippers, which I've got on now under these arctics, and I picked up the candle as I'd lit, and down-stairs I went. Well, Mrs. Lathrop, I hope you may never in your born days in this world or the other have such a shock as met me there face to face in my own new, built-over kitchen. If there wasn't the biggest giant of a man I ever see coming out of the shadows between the cookstove and the cellar door. And he with his head all wrapped around in one of my best plaid roller towels, so that nothing of him was to be seen but two fierce, staring, bloodshot eyes as gleamed like a wild beast's. Oh, my soul and body, Mrs. Lathrop, that minute! How I ever