hunder are you staring at me in that way for? It was a tornado--a
regular cyclone--and it struck her and jammed her against the
lightning-rod on the Baptist church-steeple; and there she
stuck--stuck on that spire about eight hundred feet up in the air, and
looked as if she had come there to stay."

"You may get just as mad as you like," said Mrs. Fogg, "but I am
positively certain that steeple's not an inch over ninety-five feet."

"Maria, I wish to _gracious_ you'd go up stairs and look after the
children.--Well, about half a minute after she struck out stepped that
tomcat onto the weathercock. It made Green sick. And just then the
hurricane reached the weathercock, and it began to revolve six hundred
or seven hundred times a minute, the cat howling until you couldn't
hear yourself speak.--Now, Maria, you've had your put; you keep
quiet.--That cat stayed on the weathercock about two months--"

"Mr. Fogg, that's an awful story; it only happened last Tuesday."

"Never mind her," said Mr. Fogg, confidentially.--And on Sunday the
way that cat carried on and yowled, with its tail pointing due east,
was so awful that they couldn't have church. And Sunday afternoon the
preacher told Bradley if he didn't get that cat down he'd sue him for
one million dollars damages. So Bradley got a gun and shot at the
cat fourteen hundred times.--Now you didn't count 'em, Maria, and I
did.--And he banged the top of the steeple all to splinters, and at
last fetched down the cat, shot to rags; and in her stomach he found
his thermometer. She'd ate it on her way up, and it stood at eleven
hundred degrees, so old--"

"No thermometer ever stood at such a figure as that," exclaimed Mrs.
Fogg.

"Oh, well," shouted Mr. Fogg, indignantly, "if you think you can tell
the story better than I can, why don't you tell it? You're enough to
worry the life out of a man."

Then Fogg slammed the door and went out, and I left. I don't know
whether Bradley got the stakes or not.

CHAPTER XVII.

_HOW WE CONDUCT A POLITICAL CAMPAIGN_.

The people of Millburg feel a very intense interest in politics, and
during a campaign there is always a good deal of excitement. The
bitterest struggle that the town has had for a long while was that
which preceded the election of a couple of years ago, when I was not a
resident of the place. One incident particularly attracted a good
deal of attention. Mr. Potts related the facts to me in the following
languag