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Page 33
The clock was striking eleven when quiet was at last restored, and the
exhausted sufferer began to think of sleep. At this moment she heard a
sound before which her heart sank like lead. You must know that Keturah
has a very near neighbor, Miss Humdrum by name. Miss Humdrum is a--well,
a very excellent and pious old lady, who keeps a one-eyed servant and
three cats; and the sound which Keturah heard was Miss Humdrum's cats.
Keturah descended to the wood-shed, armed herself with a huge oaken log,
and sallied out into the garden, with a horrible _sang-froid_ that only
long familiarity with her errand could have engendered. It was Egyptian
darkness; but her practised eye discerned, or thought it discerned, a
white cat upon the top of the high wooden fence. Keturah smiled a
ghastly smile, and fired. Now she never yet in her life threw anything
anywhere, under any circumstances, that did not go exactly in the
opposite direction from what she wanted to have it. This occasion proved
no exception. The cat jumped, and sprang over, and disappeared. The
stick went exactly into the middle of the fence. Keturah cannot suppose
that the last trump will be capable of making a louder noise. She stood
transfixed. One cry alone broke the hideous silence.
"_O_ Lord!" in an unmistakably Irish, half-wakened howl, from the open
window of the one-eyed servant's room. "Only that, and nothing more."
Keturah returned to her apartment, a sadder if not a wiser woman. Marius
among the ruins of Carthage, Napoleon at St. Helena, M'Clellan in
Europe, have henceforth and forever her sympathy.
She thinks it was _precisely_ five minutes after her return, during
which the happy stillness that seemed to rest upon nature without and
nature within had whispered faint promises of coming rest, that there
suddenly broke upon it a hoarse, deep, unearthly breathing. So hoarse,
so deep, so unearthly, and so directly underneath her window, that for
about ten seconds Keturah sat paralyzed. There was but one thing it
could be. A travelling menagerie in town had lost its Polish wolf that
very day. This was the Polish wolf.
The horrible panting, like the panting of a famished creature, came
nearer, grew louder, grew hoarser. The animal had found a bone in the
grass, and was crunching it in his ghastly way. Then she could hear him
sniffing at the door.
And Amram's room was on the lower story! Perhaps wolves climbed in at
windows!
The awful thought roused Keturah from the stupor of her terror. She was
no coward. She would face the fearful sight. She would call and warn him
at any risk. She faltered out upon the balcony. She leaned over the
railing. She gazed breathlessly down into the darkness.
A cow.
Another cow.
Three cows.
Keturah sat down on the window-sill in the calm of despair.
It was succeeded by a storm. She concludes that she was about five
seconds on the passage from her room to the garden. With "hair flotant,
and arms disclosed," like the harpies of heraldic device, she rushed up
to the invaders--and stopped. Exactly what was to be done? Three great
stupid, browsing, contented cows _versus_ one lone, lorn woman. For
about one minute Keturah would not have wagered her fortune on the
woman. But it is not her custom to "say die," and after some reflection
she ventured on a manful command.
"Go away! Go! go!" The stentorian remark caused a result for which she
was, to say the least, unprepared. The creatures coolly turned about and
walked directly up to her. To be sure. Why not? Is it not a part of our
outrageous Yankee nomenclature to teach cows to come to you when you
tell them to go away? How Keturah, country born and bred, could have
even momentarily forgotten so clear and simple a principle of philology,
remains a mystery to this day. A little reflection convinced her of the
only logical way of ridding herself of her guests. Accordingly, she
walked a little way behind them and tried again.
"Come here, sir! Come, good fellow! Wh-e-e! come here!"
Three great wooden heads lifted themselves slowly, and three pairs of
soft, sleepy eyes looked at her, and the beasts returned to their clover
and stood stock-still.
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