stall. Claws out, tail big, fur all on end, she had leaped straight at his head, which he ducked, and, landing squarely upon it, had steadied herself there for a moment with sharp, protruding claws; thence she had jumped to a feed-box, thence to a beam, thence to the mow, from the dusky recesses of which she had glared at him with big, green, menacing eyes. Not since that experience, which, in spite of his soft hat, had left certain marks upon his scalp, had he ever attempted to catch her. Instead, he had borrowed a gun, and a dozen times had fired at her; but although he counted himself a fair shot, he had never made even a scant bit of fur fly from her disreputable back.

And now he knew she laughed at him. Yes, laughed at him, for she had more than human intelligence. There was something demoniac in her cleverness, her immunity from harm, her prodigious energy, her malevolent mischief, her raillery. Actually, he had grown morbid about the beast; he had a superstitious feeling that in the end she would bring him bad luck. How he hated her!

There she lay, with eyes shut, unsuspecting, comfortable, and basked in the warm September sunshine. Here at his hand was a double-barreled shotgun. The chance was too good. This vagrant, this outlaw, this trespasser, this thief—he catalogued her misdeeds in his mind as he clanged the ramrod down the barrels to see if the piece was loaded.

It was not. But ammunition was at hand. He put in a generous charge from Jim's powder-flask and rammed it home with a paper wad. He grabbed up the shot-pouch and released the proper charge into his hand. He was disappointed; it was bird shot. Scattering as it would scatter, it could do that cat no harm. Nevertheless, he poured the pellets into the barrel. As he rammed home the paper wad on top of these, his eye caught the marbles lying on the table. He took one that fitted, and rammed that home also—for luck. He placed a cap, lifted the gun to his shoulder, and fired.

With a leap which sent her six feet into the air the Calico Cat landed four-square in Mr. Peaslee's chicken-yard, almost on the back of the dignified rooster, which fled with a startled squawk. She dodged like lightning across the chicken-yard, between cackling and clattering hens, went up the wire-netting walls, leaped to the roof, paused, considered, began to reflect that she had been shot at before and to wonder at her own fright, stopped, and, sitting down on the ridgepole, looked inquiringly in Mr. Peaslee's direction. She was, of course, entirely unharmed.

But other matters were claiming Mr. Peaslee's attention. Out from behind the screen formed by the asparagus plumes, the currant-bushes, the sunflowers, and the lilacs, all of which grew not so far from the spot on the fence where the Calico Cat had been sitting, fell a man!

Solomon had a mere glimpse. Standing behind taller bushes, the stranger had fallen behind lower ones, and only while his falling figure was describing the narrow segment of a circle had he been visible.

But the glimpse was enough. Mr. Peaslee's jaw dropped, his face turned white. But the next moment he gave a great sigh of relief. He saw the man rise and slip into cover of the bushes, and so disappear through the orchard. He had not, then, killed the fellow!

Relieved of that fear, he thought of himself. What would people say were he charged with firing at a man—he, a respectable citizen, a director in the bank, a grand juror? They must not know!

He silently laid the gun back against the window-sill, turned with infinite care, and tiptoed quickly back into the sitting-room, into the hall, into the street.

Not a soul was visible. Nevertheless, such was Mr. Peaslee's agitation, so strongly did he feel the need of silence, that, placing a shaking hand upon the fence to steady himself, he tiptoed along the sidewalk all the way to his own house. There the fear of his wife struck him. He was in no condition to meet that sharp-eyed, quick-tongued lady!

He softly entered the front door and penetrated to the dark parlor, where, as no one would ever enter it except for a funeral or a wedding, he felt safe from intrusion. There he sank down upon the slippery horsehair lounge, and, staring helplessly at the severe portrait of Mrs. Peaslee, done by a lugubrious artist in crayon, wiped the sweat from his forehead and tried to collect his scattered faculties.

"Whew!" he breathed. "Whew!"

II

Meanwhile, at the Edwards house, life had grown suddenly interesting.

When the report of the gun reached Jim, he had stopped pawing over the apple barrel, and was sitting on the upper step of the staircase at the extreme end of the loft, slowly munching an apple and thinking.

Jim was a healthy, active boy, with no more sense than naturally belongs to a boy of fifteen, and with a lively imagination, which had been most unfortunately overstimulated. Without a mother, and with a father who paid him scant attention, he read whatever he liked, and as a result, his head was full of romantic road-agents delightfully kind to little crippled daughters at home, fierce pirates who supported aged and respectable mothers, and considerate bandits who restored valuable watches when told that they were prized on account of tender associations.

His imagination had been still further fed by certain local legends and happenings, highly colored enough to excite the keenest interest. Ellmington is, as has been said, near the Canadian border. The place abounds in tales of smuggling, and the popular gossip, as gossip everywhere has a pleasing way of doing, associates the names of the most respectable and unlikely people with the disreputable ventures of the smugglers.

Of course a story of contraband trade is the more striking if the narrator can hint that the judge of probate or the most stern of village deacons might tell a good deal if he were disposed, and there are always persons ready to give this sort of interest to their "yarns."

In Ellmington lived Jake Farnum, an ex-deputy marshal and an incorrigible liar, about whom gathered the boys, Jim among them, to hear exciting stories of chase and detection, exactly as boys in a seaport town gather about an old sailor to hear tales of pirates and buccaneers. And Jake loved to hint darkly that the best people shared in the illicit traffic.

With it all, Jim's sense of right and wrong was in a fair way to become hopelessly "mixed." Exactly as boys at the seashore are prone to believe that a pirate is, on the whole, an admirable character, so these border boys, and especially Jim, had come to feel—only with more excuse, because of the generally indulgent view of the community—that smuggling is an occupation in which any one may engage with credit, and which is much more interesting than most.

Now it is not likely that Jim's father, a stern, secretive, obviously prosperous man, with an intermittent business which