dog, trotting soberly along the road, fell dead in the dust, when the witch came to her doorway, and fixed her cold malignant eye upon him. Who ever heard of a cat dying of such delicate susceptibility? Perronon Méguin, another witch of the same town, did indeed contrive to kill an enemy's cat by smearing it with a poisonous ointment; but this was a natural and laborious method, akin to bootjacks and blunderbusses. People, unaided by Satan, have done as much.
Finally, as proof indubitable of Pussy's guilt, we have the report of the learned jurist, Kessner, who collected the records of countless witch-trials, and published them for the enlightenment of the curious, and the edification of the devout. In the evidence offered at these trials, it was shown that, whereas the Arch-Fiend appeared to his followers but sixty times as a cavalier, and but two hundred and fifteen times as a he-goat, he took more than nine hundred times the congenial form of a black cat;—reason enough for giving this accursed animal a wide and cautious berth.
So it came to pass that Pussy entered upon long years of persecution, and her annals are so freighted with misery that, to one who loves her dearly, the mere recital of her pain is beyond measure grievous. There is still to be seen a receipt for two hundred "sols parisis," dated 1575, and signed by
