Just as Button was on the window sill about to jump for the rope, the second night nurse who was to relieve the one now on duty came in the room, and it happened to be the one who had seen Button first and had been trying to argue herself into believing that she had not seen a big, black cat sitting on the window sill in the moonlight. On seeing the same cat again in the same place, she screamed and threw up her hands to cover her eyes. Her cry startled Button so that he nearly lost his hold of the rope, for he was just sticking his claws into it preparatory to climbing down when the nurse opened the door.
When she took her hands from her eyes to look once more and be sure that the cat was still there, the cat had disappeared, just as it had done before.
“There is something horrible going to happen to the hospital, I know,” she said to the other nurse, “for that is twice I have seen the vision of a big black cat.”
“And I too. I also saw it this evening, just where you did, when I first came in to take your place. I do hope it is not the forerunner of a German raid or that the Germans are going to drop bombs on us.”
It amused Button greatly to see how superstitious the nurses were about a black cat.
“I wonder how I shall pass the time until Stubby is taken out into the yard to-morrow,” he thought. “I think I will go over to the haymow and catch a mouse and see if French mice taste like American ones.”
He had crawled through a hole in the side of the barn and was quietly making his way toward where he thought the haymow would most likely be when he heard whispering voices. He stopped to listen and made out that they were speaking in German, not in French. And he immediately thought, “Spies, or escaped prisoners!”
“I’ll just listen and hear what they have to say,” he decided, “but I’ll try to get a little closer.”
Being black as a coal, he could not be seen easily unless the light struck his eyes. So he crept cautiously toward where the sound of the voices came from, and found it was in the haymow above his head. It took but a minute for Button to climb the ladder that led up to the mow, but as he stepped from the ladder onto the hay, it gave way and he fell into a hole in the hay made by one of the men’s legs when he had stepped off the ladder.
“What was that noise I heard?” said one of the two voices in a frightened tone.