“If there be,” said the fishwife, “an ill-place for the souls o’ cats, that black beast ’ll hae a hot neuk in’t.”
“Ay, but,” said the grocer,—a godly man and an elder of the Free Church,—“speak nae ill o’ the dead, Eppie, but pass the whuskey, and I’ll gie ye a bit sang.” He sung the death of Heather Jock, which was by no means inappropriate.
“And so the nicht drave on wi’ sangs and clatter,” and the fingers of old Peter’s eight-day clock were creeping slowly towards “the wee short hour ayont the twal,” when,—
“Well, neighbours,” says Peter, the hypocrite, “we’re a’ glad the cat has gane we a’ his weight o’ crime on his sinfu’ shou’ders. Let us eat that last pound o’ steak, finish the bottle, and gang to bed.”
“There is many a slip ’twixt the cup and the lip;” and scarcely had Peter done speaking, when the door opened, apparently of its own accord. The cold night-wind blew in with a ghostly sough, and the candles were extinguished. But lo! on the table, in their very midst, and dimly seen by the smouldering firelight, stood Tom himself, with back erect and gleaming eyes. Never was such kicking and screaming heard anywhere. The fishwife fainted, and the milkwife fainted, and the godly grocer and his wife fainted, and the butcher—who hadn’t a wife at all, fell down on top of the others, for company’s sake. But Peter and the three guilty neighbours stood in a corner—dumb. When order was at length restored, and the candles re-lit, the old shoemaker told his true version of the story, and was very properly forgiven. But where was Tom? Tom was gone, and so was the beef steak! And from that day to this, never again was Tom heard of in that sweet little village near bonnie Dundee.
That cat was a thief.
CHAPTER XII.
[See [Note L], Addenda.]