Then Peter went around and handed over the stakes.  Hereafter he will gamble on other than biblical games.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  THE CAT SUCCUMBS]

Mr. Lamb has an inquiring mind.  He is always investigating something.  He read somewhere the other day that two drops of the essential oil of tobacco placed upon the tongue of a cat would kill the animal instantly.  He did not believe it, and he concluded to try the experiment to see if it was so.  Old Squills, the druggist, has a cat weighing about fifteen pounds, and Mr. Lamb, taking the animal into the back room, shut the door, opened the cat’s mouth, and applied the poison.  One moment later a wild, unearthly “M-e-e-e-e-ow-ow-ow!” was emitted by the cat, and, to Mr. Lamb’s intense alarm, the animal began swishing around the room with hair on end and tail in convulsive excitement, screeching like a fog-whistle.  Mr. Lamb is not certain, but he considers it a fair estimate to say that the cat made the entire circuit of the room, over chairs and under tables, seventy-four times every minute, and he is willing to swear to seventy times, without counting the occasional diversions made by the brute for the purpose of snatching at Mr. Lamb’s pantaloons and hair.  Just as Mr. Lamb had about made up his mind that the cat would conclude the gymnastic exercises by eating him, the animal dashed through the glass sash of the door into the shop, whisked two jars of licorice root and tooth-brushes off the counter, tore out the ipecac-bottle and four jugs of hair-dye, smashed a bottle of “Balm of Peru,” alighted on the bonnet of a woman who was drinking soda-water, and after a few convulsions rolled over into a soap-box and died.

Mr. Lamb is now satisfied that a cat actually can be killed in the manner aforementioned, but he would be better satisfied if old Squills didn’t insist upon collecting from him the price of those drugs and the glass sash.

* * * * *

Last summer Peter’s brother spent a few weeks with him.  He owned a “pistol cane,” which he carried about with him loaded; but when he went away, he accidentally left it behind, and without explaining to Peter that it was different from ordinary canes.

So, one afternoon a few days later, Peter went out to Keyser’s farm to look at some stock, and he picked up the cane to take along with him.  When he got to Keyser’s, the latter went to the barnyard to show him an extraordinary kind of a new pig that he had developed by cross-breeding.

“Now that pig,” said Keyser, “just lays over all the other pigs on the Atlantic Slope.  Take him any way you please, he’s the most gorgeous pig anywheres around.  Fat!  Why, he’s all fat!  There’s no lean in him.  He ain’t anything but a solid mass of lard.  Put that pig near a fire, and in twenty minutes his naked skeleton’d be standing there in a puddle of grease.  That’s a positive fact.  Now, you just feel his shoulder.”