hair in the haunted
room, brooding peacefully above a quieted baby.

Lucy's cat--guided by what instinct only his Creator and ours knows--had
found his way to her grave over two hundred miles of fen, field, and
forest. Not finding her there, he had tracked me to the room where she
had last played with him. When carried to other parts of the house, he
cried piteously all day and all night. When the north wing was locked
against him, he went back to the grave and could not be coaxed away.
Finally, my mother proposed that he be allowed to stay there, until
cold weather. He was the plantation-pet all summer, growing plump, but
never playful, with nourishing food and rest. His meals were sent to him
twice a day, but he partially supported himself by catching birds and
field-mice in the burying-ground, which he never left. We got used to
his presence there after a while, and his habit of patrolling the top of
the wall, several times a day, for exercise, or under the impression
that he was guarding the short green mound where he slept every night.

As the winter approached repeated efforts were made to tempt him to the
house, and when they were ineffectual my father took him there in his
own arms. The cat refused food and sleep, keeping the household awake
with his cries, and in the morning flew so savagely at his jailers that
we were obliged to let him go.

The fiercest tempest known in mid-Virginia for forty years beset us on
the anniversary of Lucy's death, and raged for three days. When the
drifts in the graveyard melted, we found Alexander the Great dead at his
post.

[Illustration]

Chapter VII

Just For Fun

[Illustration]

The floor of the summer-house at Uncle Carter's was of lovely white
sand, and did not soil my clean pink gingham frock, although I sat down
flat upon it. Under one of the three benches that furnished it, I had
dug a vault yesterday. It was modelled upon the description given in
_The Fairchild Family_ of one belonging to a nobleman's estate. My
self-education was essentially Squeersian. When I read a thing, I
forthwith went and did it. The gardener had lent me a trowel, and I had
found a thin, flat stone that served as a cover. Digging was easy work
in the top-dressing of sand and the substratum of loose, dry soil.

There were eight niches in the vault--two on a side. When all was
finished, I sallied forth in quest of occupants. My vault was stocked by
nightfall. In one niche was a d