As they turned finally to leave her she gave a long agonized mew that was so like a human call of utter desolation, and which caused such queer fluttering thumps in the men's hearts, that they went back to console her, if possible, and to tuck the babies all in again, with the caution to lie still and be good.
"Now look here, Cat, y'u don't want to take it to heart like this! Y'u've been treated low down and it's a darned shame, but there's no use getting all fussed up over it. Y'u can bank on yere pards making things pretty mean and sassy for that 'old porkypine.' She's sure in fer sorrow! The rats and mice will do things, something scandalous, in that old pantry of hern. Now, go by-low, and take good care of the babies till we come again."
Waving her a sorrowful "ta-ta" with their hands, they at last left her, to return by way of the ferry, singing as they went, in their mellow cowboy cadence, an old Scotch folk-lore song which they thought quite appropriate to the occasion and soothing to the mother:
There was an old cat, and a black cat, too,
That had so many children, she didn't know what to do.
To save them from fighting and scratching and bawling,
She pinned them all up by the ears when out calling.
Little they suspected that the echo of the thrilling tenderness in their voices as they chanted this low refrain, growing fainter and fainter as they disappeared down the hill, was stirring an impulse in her thumping heart, which when mature, would work out into so wise and cunning a scheme as to render their deliberate, well-planned human precautions as naught.
Down deep beneath the apparently indifferent nature of every animal quivers an intense human love of home that glows with a steady flame as long as life lasts. It is God's own gift to the animals and in the heart of this little exile it was a passion that had grown into an intense determination for that one bit of earth from which she had been torn, and the only place in all the world that seemed good to her. This divine longing for her old quarters was a vibrant thrill, thumping, thumping continually, like a trip-hammer in her homesick breast, and already daring the best and bravest in her nature to dangers appalling to a much bigger and bolder beastie. There was no outcry and no appeal for help in the desolate hours she must have spent in meditating on the venturesome risk of this dumb challenge, but deep down in that undiscovered country of the cat's outraged loyalty, there must have been something powerfully impelling to have given her the daring to undertake so desperate and venturesome a deed.