Now for the truth of his embarking his favourite cat as a venture, to be sold at a profit in some foreign port. The story, regarded with a knowledge of those times, is by no means an improbable one. Indeed, to go further, it is quite likely. Cats were in that era comparatively rare. They had a high value at home; were even more valuable in Europe, and in the darkly-known countries on the confines of the known world—a small world, too, before the discovery of America—they were almost priceless. Many childish searchings of heart have arisen over Dick’s parting with his cat for love of gain. Did Dick, like the Arab who sold his steed, repent with tears? Perhaps Dick was the happy possessor of two cats, and his favourite was a “tom.” If the other was a she-cat, and as prolific as are our own, no doubt Dick would have been glad to have got rid of her; except that the progeny themselves were marketable. To this, then, we are reduced: that Dick Whittington as a boy bred cats for exportation, and that his black-and-white Tom, as the progenitor of them all, was the founder of his fortunes. The legend tells us of only one cat, which, when the vessel was driven out of her course to the coast of Barbary, was sold for immense riches of gold and precious stones to the Sultan, whose palace was infested with mice. That may do for the pantomimes; but, unhappily, the ships that were so unfortunate in those times as to be driven on those shores were plundered and their crews slain. It was cheaper than buying. But whatever the details, it is certain that Whittington owed his first successes to his cat. Several things, despite all destructive criticism, point to the essential truth of the popular story. Firstly, original portraits, painted from the life, testify to it by showing Whittington’s hand laid caressingly on a black and white cat. Then, Whittington was the rebuilder of the old New Gate, and his effigy, with a cat at his feet, stood in one of its niches until the building was pulled down hundreds of years afterwards. Finally, a very remarkable confirmation of the story came from Gloucester in 1862, when, on a house occupied by the Whittington family until 1460 being repaired, the fragment of a carved chimney-piece of that century was discovered, bearing the sculpture of a boy carrying a cat in his arms. It may reasonably be claimed that these evidences, together with the popular belief in the story, which can be traced back almost to Whittington’s own day, confound unbelievers.