“Now then, Ab,” said the Captain, briskly, “what’s this about our cat stealin’ your chickens?”

Mr. Bacheldor and Con, separately and together, burst into a tirade of invective against the offending David.

“That’s all right, that’s all right,” broke in the Captain, crisply.  “If that cat stole your chicken it ought to be shot.  But are you sure of the cat?  Do you know ours did it?  This girl here says ’twasn’t ours at all.”

“I know a dum sight better,” began Abner, savagely.  But this time it was Mary-’Gusta who interrupted.

“Cap’n Gould,” she said, “please ask him what time it was yesterday afternoon when he saw the cat run off with the chicken.”

Bacheldor did not wait to be asked.

“’Twas quarter-past four yesterday afternoon,” he declared.  “I know the time.”

“I don’t see what the time’s got to do with it,” put in Shadrach.

“But it’s got everything to do with it,” urged Mary-’Gusta.  “Honest truly it has.”

“Oh, it has, eh?  Why?”

“’Cause—­’cause—­Ask him if he’s sure?”

Again Abner did not wait.  “Course I’m sure,” he replied.  “I told Isaiah Chase—­yes, and I told that young-one, too—­that I looked at the clock just afore I looked out of the window and see the critter in the very act.  Yes, and Con see him too.”

Mary-’Gusta stamped her foot in triumph.  “Then it wasn’t David,” she said.  “It wasn’t David at all.  ’Twas somebody else’s cat, Mr. Bacheldor.”

“Somebody else’s nothin’!  Don’t you suppose I know—­”

“Hold on!  Heave to, Ab.  Mary-’Gusta, how do you know ’twasn’t our cat?”

“’Cause—­’cause David was with me from four o’clock till most five; that’s how.  He was in the—­in our house with me.  So,” triumphantly, “he couldn’t have been anywhere else, could he?”

Con and his father both began a protest, but Shadrach cut it short.

“Keep still, for mercy sakes,” he ordered.  “This ain’t Shoutin’ Methodist camp meetin’.  Let’s get soundin’s here.  Now, Mary-’Gusta, you say the cat was with you from four till five; you’re sure of that?”

“Yes, sir.  I know because Mr. Chase had gone out and we knew he wouldn’t be back until five ’cause he said he wouldn’t.  So we looked at the clock before we went in.”

“Went in?  Went in where?”

The girl hung her head.  It was evident that the answer to this question was one she dreaded to make.  But she made it, nevertheless.

“Before we went into—­into the parlor,” she said, faintly.

Captain Shad was the only one of her hearers who grasped the full significance of this confession.  No, there was one other, and he turned red and then white.

“The parlor?” repeated the Captain, slowly.  “The best parlor?”

“Ye-yes, sir.”

“Do you mean you went into the best parlor over to our house and—­and took that cat in with you?”