Mrs. P.—"There were not more than two hundred people there. I counted them myself."

P.—"Oh, don't bother me! I say you never heard such a yell, as the balloon went scooting up into the sky, pretty near out of sight. Bradley said she went up about one thousand miles, and—now don't interrupt me, Henrietta; I know what the man said—and that cat, mind you, a-howling like a hundred fog-horns, so's you could a' heard her from here to Peru. Well, sir, when she was up so's she looked as small as a pin-head, something or other burst. I dunno how it was, but pretty soon down came that balloon a-flickering toward the earth at the rate of fifty miles a minute, and old——"

Mrs. P.—"Mr. Potts, you know that the balloon came down as gently as——"

P.—"Oh, do hush up! Women don't know anything about such things. And old Bradley, he had a kind of a registering thermometer fixt in the balloon along with that cat. Some sort of a patent machine; cost thousands of dollars, and he was expecting to examine it; and Green had an idea he'd lift out a dead cat and scoop in the stakes. When all of a sudden, as she came pelting down, a tornado struck her—now, Henrietta, what in the thunder are you staring at me in that way for? It was a tornado—a regular cyclone—and it struck her and jammed her against the lightning-rod on the Baptist Church steeple, and there she stuck—stuck on that spire, about eight hundred feet up in the air."

Mrs. P.—"You may get just as mad as you like, but I am positively certain that steeple's not an inch over ninety-five feet."

P.—"Henrietta, I wish to gracious you'd go up-stairs and look after the children. Well, about half a minute after she struck out stept that tom-cat on to the weathercock. It made Green sick. And just then the hurricane reached the weathercock, and it began to revolve six hundred or seven hundred times a minute, the cat howling until you couldn't hear yourself speak—now, Henrietta, you've had your put; you keep quiet. That cat stood on that weathercock about two months——"

Mrs. P.—"Mr. Potts, that's an awful story; it only happened last Tuesday."

P. (confidentially)—"Never mind her. And on Sunday the way that cat carried on and yowled, with its tail pointing due east, was so awful that they couldn't have church. And Sunday afternoon the preacher told Bradley if he didn't get that cat down he'd sue him for a million dollars damages. So Bradley got a gun, and shot at the cat fourteen hundred times—now, you didn't count 'em, Henrietta, and I did—and he banged the top of the steeple all to splinters, and at last fetched down the cat, shot to rags, and in her stomach he found the thermometer. She'd ate it on her way up, and it stood at eleven hundred degrees, so old——"

Mrs. P.—"No thermometer ever stood at such a figure as that."

P. (indignantly)—"Oh, well, if you think you can tell the story better than I can, why don't you tell it? You're enough to worry the life out of a man."