servant with some provisions; they were soon followed by an immense White Cat with one eye (but what a fierce one it was!) and a handsome Tabby, his son. Next came a Cat they called Mr. Dick, who wore a shabby grey coat, rather torn and patchy, and whose tail was ragged and dirty, yet to whom everybody showed a great deal of attention, because, as I afterwards learnt, he was very rich and ill-tempered. There were two or three others that I don't well remember, but which made the number complete.

As soon as they were all assembled, they sat down to breakfast; and I could see them through a chink in the roof as they demolished their meal. I had taken the precaution to bring something to eat too, and I now devoured it with much appetite; for the fresh morning air and my elevated position had made me hungry. As I munched my food, I could hear the conversation below, and was much edified by the terrible stories which some of them told about the fights they had had with rats as big as themselves, and the fierce battles they had won. I could not help observing that although Mr. Dick's adventures were much less wonderful than those of any other Cat present, they were heard with a great deal more interest, and were applauded as infinitely more remarkable.

Word was now given to prepare for the coming hunt, and every Cat rose from table, and came out among the timber. Hiding themselves behind various logs, my father stood up and uttered a loud cry, which I afterwards learnt was a signal for a quantity of ferrets, trained for that purpose, to rush into the rats' holes to drive them out. As the rats have the greatest horror of these creatures, they sprang from their hiding-places in the wildest confusion, and were at once pounced upon by the hidden Cats.

What a scene of confusion followed! The rats, who were scampering along, over and under the logs to escape from the hated ferrets, were suddenly aware of the presence of more detested and more formidable enemies, as, one by one, the sporting Cats jumped up, and made a dash at their bewildered prey.

My excitement at this spectacle was almost more than I could bear. As the growls of my friends and kindred, joined to the screams of the flying rats, became audible, and I could see the lashing of tails and the fierce glances of bright eyes, accompanied every now and then by a chase where some rat, which had been hiding beneath a log, suddenly leaped across the open ground, I sprang to my feet, I ran hither and thither, with my tail swollen to twice its natural size, from my eagerness to participate in the so-called sport of my relations.

I was not however destined to remain without my share of it, although I did not stir from the spot where I had been concealed. I said that a tree grew close to the hunting-box, on the roof of which I was placed, and that it was by its help that I had climbed to my present elevation. A large rat, with a body not very much smaller than my own, which had managed to escape from the fight where so many of his friends and relations had fallen, sought about for a place of refuge. Espying the tree, and seeing that all his enemies were at that moment too much engaged to attend to him, he sprang up the trunk and came rapidly towards me, little expecting to find another of his foes so far away from her companions. I watched him come, and resolved in my own mind that he should not escape, although my heart beat a good deal at the idea of the encounter.

The rat sprang on to the roof, and was going to scamper over it, when his fierce little eyes,—and quick nose too, no doubt, for it moved incessantly,—spied me out, crouching at a short distance and ready to spring. He stopped an instant, as if considering what it were best to do, then, thinking perhaps that if he attempted to run I should be at once upon his back, and, I suppose, observing from my look that I was only a Kitten after all, he came boldly towards me, and, just as I was about to pounce upon him, he sprang, like a flash of lightning, at my face, and made his sharp teeth meet in the most tender part of my nose. In vain I shrieked and beat the terrible creature with all my strength upon the roof; it was to no purpose that I fixed my sharp claws into his sides, and tried to tear him from his hold; he would not let go, and the pain was at last so great, that, squeezing him in my paws, I rolled over and over in my agony. The roof was sloping, and slippery besides with dew, so that, blinded with terror and not knowing what I did, I gradually got near the edge, and at last tumbled over on to the party below. I should probably have been much hurt by the fall, as I was not yet clever enough to tumble on my feet, but that I came down plump upon the back of a very stout Cat, who was standing a little aside quite tired out with his exertions. Him I knocked completely over, sending him flying, to his astonishment, a dozen paces off; the rat, detached from my nose by the shock, was at once strangled by my brother; and the rest of the party, running up to me, whom they thought dead, were not a little surprised to find the daughter of their friend. My father himself took the matter very quietly; I heard him exclaim, "I say, Tommy, how came your sister here? There will be a fine noise at home when your mother hears of this;" but I heard no more; I had fainted from loss of blood, and I did not recover my senses till I found myself in my own bed, with my mother's mild eyes, full of sorrow, looking down upon me.

Notwithstanding the great cause she had to feel anger at my conduct, which was in direct opposition to her wishes and even to her commands, so frequently expressed, I had little cause to fear a scolding while I was still confined to the house and suffering pain. And even when I recovered, her remarks upon the folly of my behaviour were made with such tenderness that, while I could not help admitting their truth, I felt that I loved my mother the better for her correction. I promised,—oh! how warmly I promised her, while the smart was still within my wound, and my face was yet swollen and inflamed, that I would never more be guilty of an act of disobedience; that I would, from that time, do only what I was sure must cause her pleasure, and that I would strive in all things to acquire a good name for gentleness and other female virtues.

Alas! a Kitten's resolutions, made in the midst of pain and sorrow caused through not attending to the advice of elders, are too apt to be forgotten, when the aches are gone and the grief has worn away; at least, to my shame be it spoken, it was so in my case, for when I recovered I was more than once guilty of acts of mischief, which, by good luck only, happened to be less serious in their results than the event of the rat-hunt.

A circumstance which helped to make me thus doubly naughty and disobedient, was the falling among bad companions. I had, at that time, the dangerous fault of easily making acquaintance, no matter whether the animals were such as I should or should not associate with. Not content also with simply speaking and being civil to them, I became at once extremely intimate, and therefore very naturally often found myself in places and among dangers which I had no right to enter into or incur.

There came into the town, from a distant and wild part of the country, a family of Cats, consisting of a father and nine daughters. They were strange, shabby, half-savage looking creatures, and, having lost their mother at an early age, had unhappily possessed no one who could restrain or teach them better, so had grown up more like Toms than quiet female Pussies. I was too young to know this at the time, and no warning voice had been raised against them; for, fearing I should be denied the pleasure of going out with my new acquaintance if I confessed to my mother that I