big old-fashioned fire-place.

The chimney itself was wide enough inside for a man to stand up and walk
about. So there was plenty of room for a little Tom Cat.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

He jumped right up into the fire-place, balancing himself upon the iron
bar where the kettle hangs.

[Illustration]

Tom Kitten took another big jump off the bar, and landed on a ledge high
up inside the chimney, knocking down some soot into the fender.

[Illustration]

Tom Kitten coughed and choked with the smoke; and he could hear the
sticks beginning to crackle and burn in the fire-place down below. He
made up his mind to climb right to the top, and get out on the slates,
and try to catch sparrows.

"I cannot go back. If I slipped I might fall in the fire and singe my
beautiful tail and my little blue jacket."

The chimney was a very big old-fashioned one. It was built in the days
when people burnt logs of wood upon the hearth.

The chimney stack stood up above the roof like a little stone tower, and
the daylight shone down from the top, under the slanting slates that
kept out the rain.

[Illustration]

Tom Kitten was getting very frightened! He climbed up, and up, and up.

[Illustration]

Then he waded sideways through inches of soot. He was like a little
sweep himself.

It was most confusing in the dark. One flue seemed to lead into
another.

There was less smoke, but Tom Kitten felt quite lost.

He scrambled up and up; but before he reached the chimney top he came to
a place where somebody had loosened a stone in the wall. There were some
mutton bones lying about--

"This seems funny," said Tom Kitten. "Who has been gnawing bones up here
in the chimney? I wish I had never come! And what a funny smell? It is
something like mouse; only dreadfully strong. It makes me sneeze," said
Tom Kitten.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

He squeezed through the hole in the wall, and dragged himself along a
most uncomfortably tight passage where there was scarcely any light.

[Illustration]

He groped his way carefully for several yards; he was at the back of the
skirting-board in the attic, where there is a little mark * in the
picture.

[Illustration]

All at once he fell head over heels in the dark, down a hole, and
landed on a heap of very dirty rags.

When Tom Kitten picked himself up and looked about him--he found himself
in a place that he had never seen before, although he had lived all his
li