On this particular day as he went home, his jacket on his shoulder, he only had one bird, of a kind unknown to him but which was covered with beautiful plumage that looked like variegated silk and burnished metal. The cat looked at him and begged loudly as usual. But this time Hauke did not want to give up his prey--it may have been a kingfisher--and paid no attention to the animal's desire. "Turn and turn about," he called to him, "my turn today, yours tomorrow; this is no food for a tom-cat!" But the cat crept up cautiously towards him; Hauke stood and looked at him, the bird hanging from his hand and the cat stopped with its paw raised. But Hauke seems not to have understood his friend thoroughly, for, as he turned his back on him and prepared to go on his way he felt his plunder torn from his grasp with a jerk, and at the same time a sharp claw dug into his flesh. A sudden fury like that of a beast of prey surged in the young fellow's blood; he grabbed madly about him and had the robber by the neck in a moment. Holding up the powerful creature in his fist he strangled it till its eyes obtruded from the rough hair, not heeding the strong hind claws that were tearing the flesh from his arm. "Ho, ho!" he shouted and gripped it still tighter; "we'll see which of us can stand it longest!" Suddenly the hind legs of the great cat dropped lifelessly from his arm and Hauke went back a few steps and threw it towards the cottage of the old woman. As the cat did not move he turned and continued his way home. But the Angora cat had been its mistress's treasure; it was her companion and the only thing that her son, the sailor, had left her when he came to his sudden end on the coast hard by, while trying to help his mother catch prawns in a storm. Hauke had scarcely taken a hundred steps, sopping up the blood from his wounds with a cloth as he went, when a loud outcry and lamentation from the direction of the cottage struck on his ear. He turned and saw the old woman lying on the ground in front of it while the wind blew her gray hair about the red handkerchief that covered her head. "Dead!" she shrieked, "dead!" and stretched out her thin arm threateningly towards him: "you shall be cursed! You killed him, you useless vagabond; you weren't worthy to stroke his tail." She threw herself on the animal and gently wiped away with her apron the blood that flowed from its nose and mouth. Then she again began her loud lamentation. "Will you soon be through?" called Hauke to her, "then let me tell you this: I will get you a tom-cat that is satisfied with the blood of rats and mice!" With this he went on his way, not apparently paying heed to anything. But the dead cat must have confused his head all the same, for when he came to the village he went on past his father's house and all the others too, out a long way on the dike towards the south, where the town lies.