The cat sat on the coat. Then she turned round, and put her nose into the pocket of it, and stayed there.Abigail laughed. She went down on her knees at the bench with the basket on her arm, close, so that her face was level with the cat's, and laughed at her, and the cat drew her head out of the pocket and looked at Abigail with her yellow eyes half shut and one paw on the coat, as if she had signed it.And the Duke of Walsingham, on the other side of the bench in his shirtsleeves in the cold with his hat in his hand, did not look at the cat at all. He looked at her.At the fire behind them, the Duchess of Brigstock was at her own bellows in her leather apron, because her husband had gone out to the yard with the grey, and she did not turn round; and the whole shop was gold with the fire, and the doorway was white with the frost, and the carrier at the gate saw it, and carried it to Northampton, and told it wrong."She knows a good man," the village said of the nose in the pocket. That is what the village said.The pocket smelled of herring. That is what the cat knew.By the Saturday, the Fleece's tap-room had a book on it: wagers taken and written up and paid when the thing settled, and Zadok Tinsley did not keep it, and it was kept on the tap-room slate in his potboy's hand.It began small: Would the cat go down to the Fleece tonight? Even money, and nobody took it, because she went.Then: How many mornings would the Duke of Walsingham carry her? Enos Bletsoe, the miller's son, said three, and put a shilling on it. The carrier said a fortnight. Tuddenham said till the frost broke.And on the Saturday evening, old Jethro Mabbott came up the lane on his own feet in his gauntlets, for the first time that winter, and stood in the tap-room door. He put a shilling on the slate.