Peter crawls up the ladder in pursuit, and Grey springs out of the window on to a headless poplar growing beside the house.
Peter, forgetting his age, makes a rash leap after her ... but misses his footing and falls into the water.
However, he is quickly on land again, where he sits down and waits faithfully under the tree in which the object of his senile affection is enthroned.
He shakes with cold, but endures bravely—and when the fisherman returns home in the evening, he finds his old comrade still sitting there, stiff and dead....
After that Grey inherited his office as a matter of course, and as time passed succeeded in discharging it entirely to her master’s satisfaction.
She was called “Puss” and “Pussy-girl”—and she had a busy time ridding the old, neglected hovel of mice. She soon made herself at home in the stall, barn, and loft, which were just as dark and dirty as the burial-mound and the willow bole.
One day, only six months later, she came running with her tail proudly hoisted, to meet the old fisherman as he was driving home, and jumped up beside him in the cart. And then, after the horse had been put in the stall and the fish-boxes unloaded, she was given two or three little eels or dabs.
Fish had always been her favourite food!