Thereby he had put himself into Aunty Rose’s power. She had renovated the old kitchen and some of the other rooms. If Mr. Stagg at first trembled for his bank balance, he was made so comfortable that he had not the heart to murmur. And, besides, he believed in keeping his word. He had declared himself “game.” But that had all happened years before. This matter of expense for Hannah’s Car’lyn was an entirely different matter. Moreover, the mischievousness of Prince, the mongrel, was really more than Mr. Joseph Stagg thought he was called upon to bear. Of course, Carolyn May let Prince run at large when she was sure Uncle Joe was well out of sight of the house, but she was very careful to chain him up again long before her uncle was expected to return. Prince had learned not to chase anything that wore feathers; Aunty Rose herself had to admit that he was a very intelligent dog and knew what punishment was for. But how did he know that in trying to dig out a mole he would be doing more harm than good? The mole in question lived under a piece of rock wall near the garden fence. When let free for his first morning run, Prince had been much interested in the raised roofs of the tunnels he found in the sod down there. Aunty Rose called the mole “a pesky creature.” Uncle Joe had threatened to bring home a trap with which to impale it. How should Prince know—and this was the question Carolyn May asked afterwards—that he would not be considered a general benefactor if he managed to capture the little blind nuisance? At any rate, when Uncle Joe came home to dinner on one particular Saturday he walked down to the corner of the garden fence, and there saw the havoc Prince had wrought. In following the line of the mole’s last tunnel he had worked his way under the picket fence and had torn up two currant bushes and done some damage in the strawberry patch. “And the worst of it is,” grumbled the hardware dealer, “he never caught the mole. That mongrel really isn’t worth a bag of dornicks to sink him in the brook. But that’s what he’s going to get this very evening when I come home. I won’t stand for him a day longer.” Carolyn May positively turned pale as she crouched beside the now chained-up Prince, both arms about his rough neck. He licked her cheek. Fortunately, he could not understand _everything_ that was said to him, therefore the pronouncement of this terrible sentence did not agitate him an atom. But his little mistress held to him tightly, dry sobs shaking her slight form. Uncle Joe went in to dinner with little appreciation of the horror and despair that filled the soul of Hannah’s Car’lyn, out under the tree in the back yard. CHAPTER VIII—MR. STAGG IS JUDGED