physically and big in tenderness and sympathy, usually "took the bit in their mouths and got whatever they went for," and with pretty smart directness, too. But they were shy, their nerve forsaking them entirely, when it came to tackling a woman on her own stamping ground, and that woman the very capable provider of their "three square per." Why she had taken this obstinate caprice and unreasonable dislike they did not try to conjecture. It was beyond male understanding and they lovingly alluded to her as the "one and original Chinese puzzle." They said "women is queer" with that long-suffering tolerance which the male human accords the vagaries of the female.

The rangeman is nothing if he lacks that one remarkably comfortable trait of adaptability, and so, although they were not "stuck on the job" of removing the cat, they were forced by virtue of their very large necessity not to get into a "mix-up," by reason of the woman's crabbed temper and strange antagonism.

So two volunteer martyrs, boiling, seething volcanoes inside, shamedly and reluctantly took up the basket, holding it as gingerly as if it were a case of eggs instead of a case of a mother and her harvest of shame, and dismally started for the ferry. After crossing the river they "pulled their freight" on the trail a mile farther back inland, which led upwards into a wide broad meadow and to the home of a friendly ranch-boss. The buxom wife welcomed their unexpected arrival and the "family" with open arms, telling them that she had long been wanting a younger breed of cats to take the place of "old Tom," now getting lazy and "no 'count," and that she felt flattered that these faithful friends had selected this ranch as the home for their pet. The men fixed a nice warm bed in the sanctuary of a vacant manger in one of the corrals, counted out the infants and found them all O. K., and then tried to coax the cat to nestle down and mother them. But she would not, merely crouching over them instead, in an anxious sort of way with her ears perked inquiringly forward, in an attitude of miserable bewilderment.

The outcome of her "happy surprise" had been a crushing blow, but one which would wake within her such a marvelous spirit of determination and endurance as to render her distinguished among cats. The second "happy surprise" she was to unfold for their entertainment was one little anticipated and one that would take the breath from even these hardened men.

As they turned finally to leave her she gave a long agonized mew that was so like a human call of utter desolation, and which caused such queer fluttering thumps in the men's hearts, that they went back to console her, if possible, and to tuck the babies all in again, with the caution to lie still and be good.

"Now look here, Cat, y'u don't want to take it to heart like this! Y'u've been treated low down and it's a darned shame, but there's no use getting all fussed up over it. Y'u can bank on yere pards making things pretty mean and sassy for that 'old porkypine.' She's sure in fer sorrow! The rats and mice will do things, something scandalous, in that old pantry of hern. Now, go by-low, and take good care of the babies till we come again."

Waving her a sorrowful "ta-ta" with their hands, they at last left her, to return by way of the ferry, singing as they went, in their mellow cowboy cadence, an old Scotch folk-lore song which they thought quite appropriate to the occasion and soothing to the mother:

Little they suspected that the echo of the thrilling tenderness in their voices as they chanted this low refrain, growing fainter and fainter as they disappeared down the hill, was stirring an impulse in her thumping heart, which when mature, would work out into so wise and cunning a scheme as to render their deliberate, well-planned human precautions as naught.

Down deep beneath the apparently indifferent nature of every animal quivers an intense human love of home that glows with a steady flame as long as life lasts. It is God's own gift to the animals and in the heart of this little exile it was a passion that had grown into an intense determination for that one bit of earth from which she had been torn, and the only place in all the world that seemed good to her. This divine longing for her old quarters was a vibrant thrill, thumping, thumping continually, like a trip-hammer in her homesick breast, and already daring the best and bravest in her nature to dangers appalling to a much bigger and bolder beastie. There was no outcry and no appeal for help in the desolate hours she must have spent in meditating on the venturesome risk of this dumb challenge, but deep down in that undiscovered country of the cat's outraged loyalty, there must have been something powerfully impelling to have given her the daring to undertake so desperate and venturesome a deed.

In the velvet dusk of a night, not long afterward, a solitary figure, lean, black, and small, might have been seen, trotting at a steady pace with a purposeful air that surely meant business, carefully picking her way among the weeds and undergrowth and making straight for the cottonwoods and willows that grew along the bank of the river. The determined form was steady of nerve, carrying her head high, and in her mouth a limp, nerveless black bundle of fur. When she reached the brink of the swift-flowing, trackless water, there was a quivering pause, as if she were perhaps weighing the chances of life and death; but only for an instant, for immediately there was a plunk and she sank right down into the whirl of the dreadful blackness and then—silence.

Holding her burden high in her mouth, safe and dry, she soon dragged her wet and heavy body up the bank on the opposite shore, and obeying the sure instinct of her useful little nose set her face right for the old place in the kitchen cabin which was the cherished spot of her determined desire. She placed this smallest and least pretty of her brood in the old nest that had been so rudely despoiled, but without waiting to comfort or even to warm the wee mite, turned her face resolutely toward the return journey. There was no time to stop, as ten times more she must fight the good fight and battle with the cold and danger of the awful and tedious transit.

The gray dawn was just breaking by the time the intrepid little mother, utterly exhausted, lay beside her six babies in her old homey bed, a mute reproach to the caprice or hasty anger that had made this cruel test necessary. The six sources of all her trouble were tugging hungrily at her breasts, looking as innocent and harmless as downy puffs, having already been licked and groomed into tidiness by their forgiving mother.

The housekeeper's gasp of astonishment changed into a cry of disbelief when she came into the cabin and found the family so snugly settled in their old quarters. Surely "the boys" had deceived her in regard to having taken the cat across the river, or how could this marvel be? The round, fixed and troubled eyes of the cat looked questioningly and bravely up into her enemy's startled face while her fate hung in the balance, with a courage that feared but did not flinch, and there could be no mistaking their half-defiant plea this time. It would, indeed, have been a heart of steel not to have been moved by the pity of it, as the frail bit of motherhood looked from the coldly inquiring eyes bending above her, to the collection at her breasts, with a