It was dark; the stars were in the sky, and the fireflies were
flickering among the flowers of the garden when Jazbury and Fluffy met
under the rosebush again.
"Are you there, Jazbury?" mewed Fluffy.
"Yes; waiting for you. Come on!"
The two little kittens stole down the garden path to the gate, and out
into the road beyond.
"Are you sure you can find the way, Jazbury?" asked Fluffy.
"Now, Fluffy, you mustn't begin asking me that," said Jazbury. "If I
begin thinking, we'll get lost. We've just got to go along the way I
_feel_ like going, and then we'll get there."
The kittens were silent after that. They trotted along steadily through
the starlit night. They had no trouble about keeping to the road, for
kittens can see just about as well in the dark as in the light.
They came to the place where the ladies had found them that day that
now seemed so long ago. After a while they passed a big white gate, and
a long lane leading up toward a barn. There was a farm-house on beyond
the barn. They heard a dog barking there.
"Oh, Jazbury! I hope that dog won't come and catch us," whispered
Fluffy.
"Course he won't. He's too far away to see us."
The next moment the kittens stopped short, their little hearts leaping
with terror. Something was moving stealthily among the weeds at the
roadside. A dead twig cracked. There was a sound of breathing, and a
gleam of big yellow eyes.
"What's that, Jazbury?" whispered Fluffy.
"Hus-s-sh! I don't know!"
There was a silence. "Jazbury, I'm scared. Let's get away," whispered
Fluffy again.
"Hush, I tell you!"
The thing, whatever it was, was coming out from the weeds. Jazbury's
tail grew big. His fur stood on end. The next moment a well-known yowl
broke the stillness.
"Yowler!" cried Jazbury.
"Yeh! Yowler," answered that kitten, as he gave a leap out from among
the weeds. "Hello, kits! I didn't know who you were until I heard you
whispering together. Where are you bound for?"
"We're going home," said Jazbury. He was not at all glad to meet with
Yowler again.
"Going home, are you! Well, now, that's not half bad. If you like,
maybe I'll go along with you."
"But I thought you wanted to live on a farm," said Fluffy.
"Well, so I did, and I've been living there, but I don't have to stay
in one place all the time."
"Don't you like it there?" asked Jazbury.
"Sure I did. Like it fine. Sure had a grand time. But I guess maybe the
baker's looking for me, and I might as well go home. One place's just
as good as another for me."
Neither Jazbury nor Fluffy wanted Yowler with them again, but they did
not know how to tell him that.
"Well, let's go on," said Jazbury. "No use staying here all night."
As the three kittens trotted along through the starry darkness Yowler
began to ask the kittens about where they had been living, how they had
been treated, and what they had to eat.
"Had pretty good times, didn't you?" he said at last.
"Yes; but we like our own homes best!" mewed Jazbury.
Yowler was silent for a while. Then suddenly he burst out, "Tell you
what! I said I liked it fine at the farm, but I didn't. They treated me
mean. Never got a thing to eat but mice and rats, and had to catch
everything for myself. They kept me in the barn, too, and if I even so
much as poked my nose outside it the dog was after me. Wow! If I'd had
a home like you two, catch me leaving it! But some kits have all the
luck."
Fluffy and Jazbury felt quite sorry for Yowler. He must indeed have had
a very hard time. But then, as Fluffy said to Jazbury later on, if he
hadn't been so mean to them and run away and left them, he might have
found a good home, too, just as they had, and have stayed there if he
had chosen to.