Page:Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1904).djvu/57

 in quickly, seized the "coon" by the scruff of its neck, hauled it out, and held it up, in a plunging, kicking, teeth-showing state for me to look at, remarking—"Does it not look like a devil?" to which I agreed. It seemed to me a most dangerous creature to tackle, and I would not have held it as he did upon any consideration.

This beast gave a world of trouble and annoyance by constantly escaping. At one time it suddenly disappeared, and no one knew what had become of it until there came a letter from a lady, who lived some doors away, containing a bill for eggs destroyed by the "coon," which had made its way regularly down a chimney into her henroost! With some difficulty it was captured, and once more put back into what appeared safe keeping, but ere a few weeks had elapsed it was out again on the warpath. This time no trace could be found of it, until the necessity arose of looking up a lot of Rossetti's manuscript poetry, lying in the bottom drawer of the massive Elizabethan wardrobe, when, to my surprise, I found the manuscript gnawed into little bits! The "coon" had been hiding there all the while, prowling about the house at night in search of food. This accounted for certain mysterious noises which had occurred in the dark hours of the night—sounds, as it were, of a faint, flat footfall up and down the stairs, which to the housekeeper, who had just lost her husband and was in a chronically hysterical state, seemed to be that of his ghost! Eventually