There they sat talking until suddenly a volley of heart-broken screams broke in upon them. Up the path from the street rushed little Olive, her eyes streaming, her baby mouth in a wide circle, from which issued a series of panic cries. Both men sprang to their feet and hurried down the path to meet her. Her mother and sister rushed from the house at the same moment and ran to succour the screaming child. But Olive thrust them back, squealing frantically to Link: “That awful man’s got Chummie! He tooked him from me and he says he’ll beat him till he’s dead. I pulled Chummie away and the man slapped me over and he’s running off with Chummie!” Old Man Chatham was an elder in the church at Hampton. Yet on hearing of the blow administered to his worshipped child and at the sight of an ugly red mark athwart her plump baby face, an expletive crackled luridly from between his pious lips—an expletive which should have brought him before the consistory of his church for rigid discipline. Then, by the time Olive had sobbed out her pitiful tidings, both he and Link Ferris had set off down the street at a dead run. Instinctively they were heading for an alley which bisected the street a furlong below—an alley wherein abode Eben Shunk and where his backyard pound was maintained. Truly, Chum had let himself and others in for an abundance of trouble when he scratched and nosed at the recalcitrant barn door until he pried it wide enough open to let him slip out. He had caught the scent, as Link predicted, and he had turned into the main street of Hampton a bare five minutes behind the carryall. As he was on his orderly journey toward the Chatham home, Olive spied him from the dooryard and ran out to greet him. And Eben Shunk, seeing them, waited only long enough to snatch up his rope and landing net, and gave chase. Coming upon the unsuspecting pair from behind, he was able to jam the net over Chum’s head before the placidly pacing collie was aware of his presence. Chum, catching belated sight and scent of his enemy, sought right valiantly to free himself and give battle. But the tough meshes of the net had been drawn as tightly over his head and jaws as any glove, holding him helpless. And Shunk was fastening the rope about the wildly struggling neck. It was then that Olive sprang to her canine comrade’s aid, only to be slapped out of the way by the irate and overoccupied man. Whereat, she had fled for reinforcements. A dog has but a single set of weapons, namely, his mighty jaws. The net held Chum’s mouth fast shut. The noose was cutting off his wind. And bit by bit strangulation and confusion weakened the collie’s struggles. With a final wrench of the noose, Shunk got under way. Heading down street toward his own alley, he dragged the fiercely unwilling prisoner behind him. A crowd accompanied him, as did their highly uncomplimentary remarks.