“He’s a brute--Oh, what a brute!” cried the little fellow. “Was a constable--the mean kind. Turned a poor woman out of her house in the cold last winter. She died, and her two big brothers met Stoggs one dark night and nearly kicked the life out of him. He had to give up business, for they crippled him.” “Go ahead,” encouraged Frank. “He had some pol--politicattle friends, I think they call it. One of them was a sharp lawyer. He raked up a lot of old ord--ordinants.” “Ordinances, I suppose you mean?” suggested Frank. “Yes, sir, that sounds more like it,--anyway, village laws, see? They said Riverton should have a pound. They worked it so that Stoggs got the job of poundmaster. The town pays him a big rent for these old barracks. Used to be a trotting park. He drives around in a little dog cart, and picks up all the stray horses and cows he can catch. Then the owners have to pay two dollars to get them out of the pound. Stoggs gets half. Wish that was Stogg,” and the boy kicked a dirt clump so hard that he stubbed his toe and winced. “And what about the dogs?” asked Frank. “That’s a new wrinkle. About a month ago Stoggs’ lawyer fished up another old law about dog license, or tax, or something of that kind. Since then he’s been capturing all the dogs he could find for miles around. It wouldn’t matter, if he was kind to them,” went on the lad, “but he isn’t. He starves them. He beats them, too awfully. And you’d ought to see the dirty old water trough where he makes them drink. Mother is poor. We can’t pay any two dollars to get Fido out. But I come here every day and bring all the meat I can gather up, and feed the poor things. The trouble is, though, there is so many of them in there, and they are so hungry, and poor Fido is so small, he hardly ever gets a nibble. There’s a grand, big dog in there looks out for him when he can, and divides a bone with him, but the rough dogs get most of the food.” “Have you tried to get this Stoggs to let you have Fido back?” inquired Frank. “Yes, but he only abused me, laughed at me, and drove me away. Yesterday he caught me trying to dig that board loose near the boulders. He kicked me, and struck me twice with his club. Wish I had a shovel. It would be safe to dig a bit now. A big balloon went over here a little while ago. I saw Stoggs in his cart driving over to the hill to get a better sight of it.” “H’m,” mused Frank. “Quite an interesting situation. I’ll take a look inside there, I guess. Hey, hello, why--Christmas!” Frank, in mingled pleasure and astonishment, fairly shouted out this name. The minute he had mounted the boulders and peered in through the crack in the fence, he made out his own missing canine among a motley group of over forty dogs.