at the father of the
little girl who owned him was almost convincing when he declared that
the young cat was half broncho and half Malay pirate--though, in the
light of Gipsy's later career, this seems bitterly unfair to even the
lowest orders of bronchos and Malay pirates.

No; Gipsy was not the pet for a little girl. The rosy hearthstone and
sheltered rug were too circumspect for him. Surrounded by the comforts
of middle-class respectability, and profoundly oppressed, even in his
youth, by the Puritan ideals of the household, he sometimes experienced
a sense of suffocation. He wanted free air and he wanted free life; he
wanted the lights, the lights, and the music. He abandoned the
_bourgeoisie_ irrevocably. He went forth in a May twilight, carrying the
evening beefsteak with him, and joined the underworld.

His extraordinary size, his daring, and his utter lack of sympathy soon
made him the leader--and, at the same time, the terror--of all the
loose-lived cats in a wide neighbourhood. He contracted no friendships
and had no confidants. He seldom slept in the same place twice in
succession, and though he was wanted by the police, he was not found. In
appearance he did not lack distinction of an ominous sort; the slow,
rhythmic, perfectly controlled mechanism of his tail, as he impressively
walked abroad, was incomparably sinister. This stately and dangerous
walk of his, his long, vibrant whiskers, his scars, his yellow eye, so
ice-cold, so fire-hot, haughty as the eye of Satan, gave him the deadly
air of a mousquetaire duellist. His soul was in that walk and in that
eye; it could be read--the soul of a bravo of fortune, living on his
wits and his valour, asking no favours and granting no quarter.
Intolerant, proud, sullen, yet watchful and constantly planning--purely
a militarist, believing in slaughter as in a religion, and confident
that art, science, poetry, and the good of the world were happily
advanced thereby--Gipsy had become, though technically not a wildcat,
undoubtedly the most untamed cat at large in the civilized world. Such,
in brief, was the terrifying creature which now elongated its neck, and,
over the top step of the porch, bent a calculating scrutiny upon the
wistful and slumberous Duke.

The scrutiny was searching but not prolonged. Gipsy muttered
contemptuously to himself, "Oh, sheol; I'm not afraid o' _that_!" And he
approached the fishbone, his padded feet making no noise upon the
boards. It