After a time the chickens on our friend Robert's place disappeared. They could find no trace of the robber, though they watched very carefully.
Max would bark nights, and Bruno, the cat, seemed to be very uneasy at the same time, as if he heard some intruder. One of the boys would stay out at night till quite late, but the hen-coop was peaceful; and though they tried every means, they never caught the intruder. And the chickens disappeared, all the same.
At last the boys discovered a hole in the back of the hen-coop, where the earth had been dug down and room made large enough for a cat to enter. The boys declared they had seen a cat that looked like Mossy come out of the pine woods at the back of the hen-coop, and they believed she had stolen the chickens.
Robert said, "If it is Mossy, do not harm her, but coax her here and feed her."
Robert had always petted her when he could get the chance, but she seemed to shrink from and distrust every one.
The boys were not of the same mind. They had no love for Mossy, and believed in punishing the one who had stolen the chickens. So they baited a trap with poisoned meat, just outside of the hole, and poor Mossy was caught. She was quite dead; but, not satisfied, they battered her head with stones.
Robert's wrath was terrible when he learned of poor Mossy's fate. He not only cuffed them right and left, but he told them they had forfeited the right to the pleasure trips and fun he had promised them. Robert had a scientific turn of mind, and his experiments were a great wonder and pleasure to the boys, and the loss of his favor was a severe punishment.
The next day, when they went out, they said, "We will take the body of Mossy into the woods and bury it, and perhaps we shall find out where she made her home."
They had laid down the body of Mossy on the grass while they went to dig a grave for her, when a mewing, shrill but feeble, greeted their ears. They looked back, and a most pathetic sight greeted them: the dead body of poor Mossy was completely covered by five little kittens. They were half starved, and were trying to nurse their dead mother. "Oh, ho!" said the boys, "this is what she was up to! She wanted to raise a family all by herself."
The three boys each took a kitten, and, whirling it around, dashed its little life out against a tree, saying, "We will send her orphans after the chicken stealer."