ipe and dismembering me. My drowsiness, which I verily believe was
in a great measure due to the peculiar fascination he had for me,
steadily increased, and it was only with the most desperate efforts,
egged on by the knowledge that my very existence depended on it, that I
could keep my eyelids from actually coming together and sticking fast.
At last they closed so nearly as to deceive my companion, who, rising
stealthily to his feet, showed his teeth in a broad grin of
satisfaction, and whipping from his coat pocket a glittering,
horn-handled knife, ran his dirty, spatulate thumb over the blade to see
if it was sharp. Grinning still more, he now tiptoed to the window,
pulled the blind as far down as it would go, and, after placing his ear
against the panel of the door to make sure no one was about, gaily spat
on his palms, and, with a soft, sardonic chuckle, crept slowly towards
me. Had he advanced with a war-whoop it would have made little or no
difference--the man and his atmosphere paralysed me--I was held in the
chair by iron bonds that swathed themselves round hands, and feet, and
tongue. I could neither stir nor utter a sound,--only look, look with
all the pent-up agonies of my soul through my burning, quivering
eye-lashes. A yard, a foot, an inch, and the perspiring fingers of his
left hand dexterously loosened the gaudy coloured scarf that hid my
throat. A second later and I felt them smartly transferred to my long,
curly hair. They tightened, and my neck was on the very verge of being
jerked back, when between my quivering eyelids I saw on the sheeny
surface of his bulging eye-balls,--the cat--the damnable, hated cat. The
effect was magical. A wave of the most terrific, the most ungovernable
fury surged through me. I struck out blindly, and one of my fists
alighting on the would-be murderer's face made him stagger back and drop
the knife. In an instant the weapon was mine, and ere he could draw his
six-shooter--for the suddenness of the encounter and my blow had
considerably dazed him--I had hurled myself upon him, and brought him to
the ground.

"The force with which I had thrown him, together with my blow, had
stunned him, and I would have left him in that condition had it not been
for the cat--the accursed cat--that, peeping up at me from every
particle of his prostrate body, egged me on to kill him. My intense
admiration for his genius now manifested itself in the way in which I
imitated all his movements,