His maundering voice trailed away. Just before him, at the spot where Shunk had jettisoned his defiled and much-rolled-on coat, was a scrap of paper. It was dirty and it was greasy and it had been folded in a half sheet. His hard-learned lessons in neatness impelled Link to stoop and pick up this bit of litter which marred the clean surface of the sward. The doubled half sheet opened in his hand as he glanced carelessly at it. The first of several sentences scrawled thereon leaped forth to meet the man’s gaze. Ferris stuck the paper in his shirt pocket and stared down the road after the receding Shunk with a smoulder in his eye that might have stirred that village functionary to some slight alarm had he seen it. Olive’s visit to her big sister ended a week later. Link and Dorcas escorted her back to the Chathams’ Hampton home. Old Man Chatham ran the village’s general store and post office and had the further distinction of being a local justice of the peace. Olive did not at all care for the idea of changing her outdoor life at the Ferris farm for a return to the metropolitan roar and jostle of a village with nine hundred inhabitants. And she showed her disapproval by sitting in solemn and semi-tearful silence on the slippery back seat of Link’s ancient carryall all the short way into town. Only as the carryall was drawing up in front of the store, which occupied the southerly half of her ancestral home, did she break silence. Then she said aggrievedly: “This is just like when I get punished. And poor Chummie got punished, too, for something. Why did Chummie get punished, Link?” “Old Chum never got punished in his life,” answered Link. “Whatever gave you that notion, Baby?” “When I looked for him, to say by-by,” explained Olive, “he wasn’t anywheres at all. So I called at him. And he barked. And I went to where the bark was. And there was poor old Chummie all tied up to a chain in the barn. He was being punished. So I—” "He wasn’t being punished, dear," said Dorcas, lifting the child to the ground. “Link tied him up so he wouldn’t follow us to town. There are so many autos on the roads Saturday afternoons. Besides, Eben Shunk—” “Oh,” queried Olive. “Was that why? I thought he was punished. So I unpunished him. I let him loose. Not outdoors. Because maybe you’d see him and tie him again. I let him loose and I shut the barn door, so he could stay in there and play and not be tied.” "It’d take Chum just about ten minutes to worry the barn door open!" grinned Link. “He’ll get our scent and come pirootin’ straight after us.” “Oh!” exclaimed Dorcas. “Hadn’t you better turn back and—” But the hurrying of the child’s father and mother from the house to welcome the newcomers drove the thought out of her mind. Link had but grinned the wider at her troubled suggestion. Greeting his parents-in-law, Ferris hitched his horse and followed Dorcas and her mother to the veranda.