We laid the poor brute on the rug, and gave it warm milk. It drank very little, being too feeble, Mollie, full of anger, fetched Mr. Nickie Ben, another fine black cat, to survey his crippled mate. Mr. Nickie Ben looked, shrugged his sleek shoulders, and walked away with high steps. There was a general feminine outcry on masculine callousness. George came in for hot water. He exclaimed in surprise on seeing us, and his eyes became animated. “Look at Mrs. Nickie Ben,” cried Mollie. He dropped on his knees on the rug and lifted the wounded paws. “Broken,” said he. “How awful!” said Emily, shuddering violently, and leaving the room. “Both?” I asked. “Only one—look!” “You are hurting her!” cried Lettie. “It’s no good,” said he. Mollie and the mother hurried out of the kitchen into the parlour. “What are you going to do?” asked Lettie. “Put her out of her misery,” he replied, taking up the poor cat. We followed him into the barn. “The quickest way,” said he, “is to swing her round and knock her head against the wall.” “You make me sick,” exclaimed Lettie. “I’ll drown her then,” he said with a smile. We watched him morbidly, as he took a length of twine and fastened a noose round the animal’s neck, and near it an iron goose; he kept a long piece of cord attached to the goose. “You’re not coming, are you?” said he. Lettie looked at him; she had grown rather white. “It’ll make you sick,” he said. She did not answer, but followed him across the yard to the garden. On the bank of the lower mill-pond he turned again to us and said: “Now for it!—you are chief mourners.” As neither of us replied, he smiled, and dropped the poor writhing cat into the water, saying, “Good-bye, Mrs. Nickie Ben.” We waited on the bank some time. He eyed us curiously. “Cyril,” said Lettie quietly, “isn’t it cruel?—isn’t it awful?” I had nothing to say. “Do you mean me?” asked George. “Not you in particular—everything! If we move the blood rises in our heel-prints.” He looked at her seriously, with dark eyes. “I had to drown her out of mercy,” said he, fastening the cord he held to an ash-pole. Then he went to get a spade, and with it, he dug a grave in the old black earth. “If,” said he, “the poor old cat had made a prettier corpse, you’d have thrown violets on her.” He had struck the spade into the ground, and hauled up the cat and the iron goose. “Well,” he said, surveying the hideous object, “haven’t her good looks gone! She was a fine cat.” “Bury it and have done,” Lettie replied. He did so asking: “Shall you have bad dreams after it?” “Dreams do not trouble me,” she answered, turning away. We went indoors, into the parlour, where Emily sat by a window, biting her finger. The room was long and not very high; there was a great rough beam across the ceiling. On the mantel-piece, and in the fireplace, and over the piano were wild flowers and fresh leaves plentifully scattered; the room was cool with the scent of the woods.