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 36 As for the poor cat, her fate was sealed; and we can hardly wonder at the deep suspicion with which men regarded an animal so mysterious, and so closely allied to the supernatural. Even when her behaviour was harmless or beneficial, they feared a lurking malice which never lacked the power for evil things. M. Champfleury tells us of a French woman, a native of Billancourt, who was peacefully cooking an omelette, when a black cat strayed into her cottage, and sat upright on the hearth. She took no notice of the creature, but went on with her work. The cat watched the omelette attentively for a moment, and then said: "It is done. Turn it over." Indignant at advice from such a quarter, the woman hastily flung her half-cooked eggs at the beast's head, and the next morning had the satisfaction of seeing a deep red burn on the cheek of an evilly disposed neighbour.

The trials for witchcraft—always of absorbing interest—offer ample proof of Pussy's wicked associations. Again and again she figures with direful prominence in the records of demonology. A black-hearted Scottish witch confessed in the year 1591 that she had impiously christened a cat; and that she and other witches had carried this animal "sayling in their Riddles or Gives into the middest of the sea, and so left it before the towne of Leith; whereupon there did arise such a tempest at sea, as