trievably lost, and returned out of spirits to the house; about two in the morning, however, a gentle spring against the door of our bed-room aroused us from our sleep, and I went to open it, letting in as I did so a flood of moonlight as well as the truant, who entered boldly, like one permitted to return late from the play or from some other kind of evening entertainment, and evidently very anxious for supper.
There seemed to be for Possie a magical attraction in any dark hole, and not long after this ramble she discovered an opening in the calico ceiling of our room, by which she could run to a corner amongst the rafters, a sleeping-place apparently far more to her mind than either the carpet-bag or the eider-down quilt. Her reasons for preferring the roof were precisely those that made us object to it. We had wished to try the possibility of inducing her to be less nocturnal in her habits, but from this new abode there were no means of enticing her before her own time for waking, which was generally after dark; when, if we were not on the watch, she would creep down and escape to spend the night in the open air, returning, it is true, with such regularity to knock at the door that, if I knew she was gone out, I always, as a last act on retiring to rest, set out her supper, to which she betook herself in a most orderly and methodical manner immediately on admission.
If the doors stood open on account of the heat she would awaken me with springing on the bed to let me know that she was come in, and once I was startled out of my sleep with the noise that she made in trying to lift off the lid of the sugar basin, with which she was well
