While we were playing, the little pebble suddenly began to roll down hill. How fast it went! I watched it for a few instants, and then something said: “Go after it, Black-Face!”
I tried hard not to. I looked back at my parents sunning themselves on the door-step, I stared at Serena and Jimmy Dory who were cautious young cats, and rarely disobeyed their parents.
“I'll just snatch it and run back,” I mewed hastily; then I ran.
I caught the little pebble, but alas! Something caught me. Just as I put my paw on it, I saw out of the corner of my eye a group of boys standing in a near alley. I turned to run, but it was too late. One of them sprang toward me, and seized me by the back.
Then he started to race, not up the hill, but further down. I was nearly suffocated with fright and pain, for the boy held me so tightly that I could scarcely breathe. No one had ever clutched me like this before. I had never been whipped. I had never been roughly handled, for Margaret and Billy were good children.
This boy was a monster. His face was red and dirty, his eyes were bulging from his head, and he stumbled as he ran, so that I was afraid he would fall on me and kill me.
I may as well say here that the boy was not as bad as he seemed to me. He had not stolen me. He was merely having some fun, or what he called fun. He was some poor child that had had no one to teach him to be kind to animals. He did not dream that I was suffering. He did not think that a cat was capable of suffering.
So he hurried on and on, and some of the other boys ran yelling behind him. I don't know exactly what streets he took. I was too terrified to notice the way we were going, but soon I saw a river in the distance. Was he going to throw me in it? Half choked as I was, I dug my claws in his coat, and gave a frantic “Meow!” for, like all cats, I hate water.
“Boy,” called a policeman suddenly, “what are you doing with that cat?”
My captor was frightened and dropped me, and he and the other boys turned and ran back. You may be sure that I made a dash for liberty. I sprang wildly past the policeman, and not daring to follow the boys who were going toward my home, I leaped into a narrow, dirty street where there was a dreadful confusion of wagons, cars and throngs of people.