When I went down to let the woman in the next morning, I was never so surprised in all my life as to find her fondling the cat, whom she said she had found on the door-step with the very brick-bat tied to his neck which she told me she had put on before throwing him into the water overnight--though how on earth he could ever have managed to have got out of the canal alive and crawled back to our house with that great thing round his neck, is more than I’ve ever been able to comprehend. Mrs. Burgess agreed with me that it was perfectly wonderful; adding, that after all she had put upon him, the poor creature’s life certainly must have been spared by some superior power for some hidden purpose; so she begged of me in a most touching manner to try poor Tom for a few days more, as perhaps it would be a lesson to him and he would go on better for the future. I really hadn’t the heart to refuse, though I determined to keep it a secret from Edward, for I knew that he wouldn’t rest easy in his bed until he had killed the poor animal. So I kept Mrs. Burgess’s Tom unknown to my husband until it was impossible to keep him any longer, for really the things that creature would do, and the articles he would steal, no one would credit. It seemed to be more like the work of a Christian than a dumb animal. If we had a fowl for dinner, and I missed it in the morning, the cat was sure to have taken it;--if the tarts disappeared, the cat had eaten them;--if the flour ran short, the cat had upset it;--if I missed a silver spoon, the cat must have hidden it;--if any of the crockery or glass was broken, the cat had knocked them down;--if the cask of table ale was empty long before its time, why the cat had pulled out the spigot. In fact, nothing was missed that the cat didn’t take, and nothing was broken that the cat didn’t break. And so things went on until just before my Irish servant came in, when all of a sudden I missed a whole pound packet of Orange Pekoe Tea, which Edward had brought home from the City on purpose for me. This Mrs. Burgess assured me Tom must have taken for the mere sake of taking; for she herself had seen him scampering about the house like a mad thing with a bit of paper in his mouth, and which she had no doubt now was what the tea had been done up in--adding, that it really was quite a mercy that it hadn’t been a five-pound note, as, of course, it would have been all the same to a creature so dishonest as he was.