wer, please angels.
Angels no hurt anybody.

"Chinaman look down--see devil. Devil he can hurt everybody. Chinaman
put'm chicken for devil. Devil heap pleased:--no hurt Chinaman.

"Just allee same,--allee same! White man flower;--Chinaman chicken!"

Jim laughed. "Best forget it, Phil;--he's a dyed-in-the-wool Chinaman,
fully Canadianised. You can't beat him. He has a pat answer for
anything you like to put up to him. And, after all, when you come to
analyse the darned thing,--there is about as much sense in the pork
and punk-stick stuff as there is in the flowers. Give me my bouquets
when I am alive,--that's what I say."

After breakfast, Phil saddled his horse and rode to town. It was still
snowing softly, but a rift of blue and a shaft of sunlight overhead
gave promise of a let-up, while a wind with a nip in it prophesied a
drop in the barometer and a tightening up.

When he got back in the evening, he found the front door bolted on
the inside. He rapped on the panel, and Jim opened it very slightly,
making a scooping motion with his foot along the floor, as if helping
something out of the kitchen or trying to prevent something from
coming in.

"What's up, Jim? Scared for burglars?"

"Burglars,--no! Darned black cats! The door won't stay closed without
being bolted, and these ugly black devils of Sing's have taken such a
fancy to the place and the heat, that I have been busy all day
slinging them outside."

"That accounts for the negro shuffle you did as I came in," laughed
Phil.

"Exactly! I've got the habit now."

"But what on earth does the Chinaman do with so many black cats?"

"Just another tom-fool notion these loonies have. They're plumb scared
o' the dark. The dark and the devil work a sort of co-operative
business against the chink. That is why Sing keeps his light burning
all night."

"But where do the cats come in?" asked Phil.

"You wouldn't ask that if you had had to punt them out all day,
to-day, as I did. But, punning aside:--Sing and his kind think that
when there's no light, safety lies in having black cats around.
Somehow, his Satanic Majesty--poor devil--is scared for black cats."

The conversation changed as Phil surveyed the interior of the house.
He found a great change had come over their abode. For one thing, it
was decidedly cosier. The damp, bug-like feel had gone from the place.
An odour of varnish pervaded. The holes in the ceiling and floors had
been boarded over, the wi