Miss Minnie screamed. The man, with a rough threat, darted forward to seize her purse.
Just then Carolyn May unsnapped the leash from Prince’s collar and let him go.
“Save Miss Minnie, Princey!” she cried after the charging dog.
Prince did not trouble about the door. The open window, through which the tramp had spied upon the schoolmistress, was nearer. He went up the wall and scrambled over the sill with a savage determination that left no doubt whatever in the tramp’s mind.
With a yell of terror, the fellow bounded out of the door and tore along the road and through The Corners at a speed never before equalled in that locality by a Knight of the Road.
Prince lost a little time in recovering his footing and again getting on the trail of the fleeing tramp. But he was soon baying the fellow past the blacksmith shop and the store.
The incident called the entire population of The Corners, save the bedridden, to the windows and doors. For once the little, somnolent village awoke, and, as before pointed out, a Prince awoke it.
Hiram Lardner, the blacksmith, declared afterwards that “you could have played checkers on that tramp’s coat tails, providin’ you could have kep’ up with him.”
When Prince came back from the chase, however, the tramp’s coat tails would never serve as a checkerboard, for the dog bore one of them in his foam-flecked jaws as a souvenir.