And just on a par with this boy's ignorance, is the unbelieving ignorance of some people who doubt everything they cannot understand, however well authenticated. This doubting implies an assumption on their part that the knowledge they possess is the highest attainable, that their minds are, in fact, complete in themselves. It is people of this class--fools--who doubt the existence of even a Supreme Being. I read in a late number of the _Live Stock Journal_ an account of a cat, which, seeing its master sick in bed, and unable to move, brought a mouse to him, and on her master pretending to eat it, the same day brought him a striped squirrel; and every day, until he got well, brought "game" of some sort and laid them on his bed. I believe I, myself, was the first who ever _dared_ to publish a case of the same kind. The story was this: A poor ploughman, who lived in a little hut at the foot of the Moffat Hills, in Scotland, fell sick of a long, lingering illness--and when the poor are ill they are poorer still; it is then the shoe pinches. This poor man had nothing in the house but meal and milk. The doctor said he must have wine. His wife pledged her marriage-gown to get it. The doctor said he must have meat. That was beyond their power to procure. But a merciful Providence had willed the man should live; and one day the little tortoiseshell cat, which was a great favourite with the poor ploughman, and had been very dull and wretched since his illness, brought in a rabbit--a thing, mind you, she had never done before--and placed it on the bed. She appeared to brighten up as she saw it skinned and cooked by the ploughman's wife, and partaken of by her sick master. And next day she brought another, and so on, almost every day, a rabbit or a bird, until her master was well, after _which she brought no more_. I took very considerable pains to test the truth of this story, and went to some expense about it as well, and found it in every whit true as first related to me. [See "Cats," by same Author. Dean and Sons, Publishers, 160a, Fleet Street.] Since then I have had one or two cases precisely similar to the above, in which cats brought their "game-bag" to the bed of a sick master or mistress. It is indisputable, then, that such things have been done over and over again. And now the question comes to be, how are we to account for it? In ancient times, these poor, affectionate pussies would doubtless have been condemned to death as being witches in feline form. In our own day such cases are usually put down to a special interposition of Providence. Now, without doubting for a moment that there is a Divinity which shapes the end, we must remember that that Divinity works more by simple laws than miraculous means, and consequently endeavour to account for the occurrences in a natural way.