After looking mysteriously round to see that no one was watching us, he took me down into the cellar, and pointed to some meat in barrel.

"It is half a horse," he said, in the tone of a man who is showing some one the corpse of his murdered victim.

"A neighbouring coachman killed him, and we salted him down and divided it." Then he opened a closet in which sat a huge cat.

"I am fattening her up for Christmas-day, we mean to serve her up surrounded with mice, like sausages," he observed.

Many Englishmen regard it as a religious duty to eat turkey at Christmas, but fancy fulfilling this duty by devouring cat.