and we kept the stones flying faster and faster, but he just blinked and played possum without wincing either at our best shots or at the noise we made.  I happened to strike him pretty hard with a good-sized pebble, but he still blinked and sat still as if without feeling.  “He must be mortally wounded,” I said, “and now we must kill him to put him out of pain,” the savage in us rapidly growing with indulgence.  All took heartily to this sort of cat mercy and began throwing the heaviest stones we could manage, but that old fellow knew what characters we were, and just as we imagined him mercifully dead he evidently thought the play was becoming too serious and that it was time to retreat; for suddenly with a wild whirr and gurr of energy he launched himself over our heads, rushed across the yard in a blur of speed, climbed to the roof of another building and over the garden wall, out of pain and bad company, with all his lives wideawake and in good working order.

After we had thus learned that Tom had at least nine lives, we tried to verify the common saying that no matter how far cats fell they always landed on their feet unhurt.  We caught one in our back yard, not Tom but a smaller one of manageable size, and somehow got him smuggled up to the top story of the house.  I don’t know how in the world we managed to let go of him, for as soon as we opened the window and held him over the sill he knew his danger and made violent efforts to scratch and bite his way back into the room; but we determined to carry the thing through, and at last managed to drop him.  I can remember to this day how the poor creature in danger of his life strained and balanced as he was falling and managed to alight on his feet.  This was a cruel thing for even wild boys to do, and we never tried the experiment again, for we sincerely pitied the poor fellow when we saw him creeping slowly away, stunned and frightened, with a swollen black and blue chin.

Again—­showing the natural savagery of boys—­we delighted in dog-fights, and even in the horrid red work of slaughter-houses, often running long distances and climbing over walls and roofs to see a pig killed, as soon as we heard the desperately earnest squealing.  And if the butcher was good-natured, we begged him to let us get a near view of the mysterious insides and to give us a bladder to blow up for a foot-ball.

But here is an illustration of the better side of boy nature.  In our back yard there were three elm trees and in the one nearest the house a pair of robin-redbreasts had their nest.  When the young were almost able to fly, a troop of the celebrated “Scottish Grays,” visited Dunbar, and three or four of the fine horses were lodged in our stable.  When the soldiers were polishing their swords and helmets, they happened to notice the nest, and just as they were leaving, one of them climbed the tree and robbed it.  With sore sympathy we watched the young birds as the hard-hearted robber