very middle of the picnic-party.

Mrs. Blackie very nearly had a fit on the spot, and the shrike judged
that the time had about arrived for her to quit that vicinity.

Blackie himself, to do him justice, kept cool enough to do nothing.
Wives will say that he was just husband all over, but there were
reasons abroad. One of them shot past Blackie, who was low down, a
second later and a yard away, and had he not been absolutely still, and
therefore as invisible as one of the most conspicuous of birds in the
wild can be, he would have known in that instant, or the next, what
lies upon the other side of death.

Another reason shot through the lower hedge, and, both together, they
fell upon the young bird.

They were the cat of the house and her half-grown kitten, and they were
upon the unhappy youngster before you could shout, "Murder!"

What followed was painful. Mrs. Blackie went clean demented. Blackie
went--not so demented. (It always appeared to me that his was a more
practical mind than his wife's, perhaps because he wore a more
conspicuous livery.) Mrs. Blackie kept passing and repassing the cats'
backs, flying from bough to bough, and sometimes touching and sometimes
not touching them. It was useless, of course, this pathetic charging;
and it was foolish.

Blackie charged, too, but not within feet.

Suddenly the old cat, who had had one eye upon Mrs. Blackie the whole