inhabitants of which had gone away for a holiday, and had forgotten the
cat. When Ovid took the poor creature home with him in his carriage,
popular feeling decided that the unknown gentleman was "a rum 'un." From
that moment, this fortunate little member of a brutally-slandered race
attached herself to her new friend, and to that friend only. If Ovid had
owned the truth, he must have acknowledged that her company was a relief
to him, in the present state of his mind.

When a man's flagging purpose is in want of a stimulant, the most
trifling change in the circumstances of the moment often applies the
animating influence. Even such a small interruption as the appearance of
his cat rendered this service to Ovid. To use the common and expressive
phrase, it had "shaken him up." He wrote the letter--and his patient
companion killed the time by washing her face.

His mind being so far relieved, he went to bed--the cat following him
upstairs to her bed in a corner of the room. Clothes are unwholesome
superfluities not contemplated in the system of Nature. When we are
exhausted, there is no such thing as true repose for us until we are
freed from our dress. Men subjected to any excessive exertion--fighting,
rowing, walking, working--must strip their bodies as completely as
possible, or they are nor equal to the call on them. Ovid's knowledge
of his own temperament told him that sleep was not to be hoped for,
that night. But the way to bed was the way to rest notwithstanding, by
getting rid of his clothes.

With the sunrise he rose and went out.

He took his letter with him, and dropped it into the box in his friend's
door. The sooner he committed himself to the new course that he had
taken, the more certain he might feel of not renewing the miserable and
useless indecision of the past night. "Thank God, that's done!" he
said to himself, as he heard the letter fall into the box, and left the
house.

After walking in the Park until he was weary, he sat down by the
ornamental lake, and watched the waterfowl enjoying their happy lives.

Wherever he went, whatever he did, Carmina was always with him. He
had seen thousands of girls, whose personal attractions were far more
remarkable--and some few among them whose manner was perhaps equally
winning. What was the charm in the little half-foreign cousin that had
seized on him in an instant, and that seemed to fasten its subtle hold
more and more irresistibly with every minute of