If Uncle Joe did as he had threatened, what should she do? There seemed to be no place for her and Prince to run away to. She did not know her way about Sunrise Cove and The Corners. During the weeks she had lived here she had learned to know nobody well enough to fly to for protection, or of whom to beg shelter for herself and her dog. She knew Mr. Stagg to be a very firm and determined man. Even Aunty Rose, who in most things guided affairs at the Stagg homestead, could go only so far. What Uncle Joe really determined to do, not even the austere housekeeper could balk. No, there seemed no escaping the awful tragedy that was to be. And if Prince had to die—— “I’m quite sure I don’t want to live,” thought Carolyn May dismally. “If papa, and mamma, and Prince are _all_ dead—why! there aren’t enough other folks left in the world to make it worth while living in, I don’t believe. If Prince isn’t going to be alive, then _I_ don’t want to be alive, either.” [Illustration: _She had watched the huge vessel sweep off from the dock_] By-and-by Prince began to get very uneasy. It was long past his dinner hour, and every time he heard the screen door slam he jumped up and gazed eagerly and with cocked ears and wagging tail in that direction. “You poor thing, you,” said Carolyn May at last. “I s’pose you _are_ hungry. It isn’t going to do you a bit of good to eat; but you don’t know it. I’ll ask Aunty Rose if she has something for you.” She got up wearily and went across the yard. Aunty Rose stood just inside the screen door. “Don’t you want any dinner, Car’lyn May?” she asked. “No, ma’am. I guess I’d better not eat,” said the child. “Why not?” “’Cause my stomach’s so trembly. I just _know_ I couldn’t keep anything down, even if I could swallow it. But Prince’ll eat his, please. He—he don’t know any better.” “Tut, tut!” murmured the woman. “He’s the most sensible of the two of you, I declare.” But she did not urge Carolyn May to eat. There was a platter of broken meat and bread for the dog, and Prince ate with apparent thankfulness. “But you wouldn’t gobble that down so, if you knew what was going to happen to us, you poor dear,” Carolyn May whispered. Later she took Prince around the premises on his leash. She led him along the edge of the brook. The Stagg place bordered on both sides of the stream, and on the farther side were hayfields. Uncle Joe did not till any land save the garden in which the unhappy Prince had done such damage. The little girl found, she believed, what must be the deepest hole in the brook. It was not far beyond the great, widely spreading tree on the knoll where she loved to sit. The water was brown and cloudy in this pool, and a trout jumped there and left a wake of bubbles behind him where he dived again with the luckless fly he had snapped out of the air. “I wonder if that trout will stay there if you are drownd-ed right where he lives?” Carolyn May asked of Prince.