As Shunk reached the mouth of the alley and prepared to turn toward his own yard, two newcomers were added to the volunteer escort. But these two men were not content to look on in passive disgust. The elder of them hurled himself bodily at Shunk. Link intervened as his enraged father-in-law was about to seize the dog catcher by the throat. “Don’t!” he warned, thrusting Chatham back. “There’s the cop! You’re a judge. You sure know a better way to get Shunk than to punch him. If you hit the man you give him a chance to sue. Do the suing, yourself!” While he talked, Link was using his hastily drawn farm knife in scientific fashion. One slash severed the noose from about Chum’s furry throat. A second cut parted the drawstring of the net. A dexterous tug at the meshes tore the net off the dog’s head, setting free the terrible imprisoned jaws. Meanwhile, choking back his craving to assail Shunk, Old Man Chatham strode up to the dumfounded constable. “Officer,” Chatham commanded in his very best bench manner, albeit still sputtering with rage and loss of breath, “you’ll arrest that man—that Shunk person, there—and you’ll convey him to the court room over my store. There I’ll commit him to the calaboose to await a hearing in the morning.” Shunk gobbled in wordless and indignant dismay. The constable hesitated, confused. “I accuse him,” went on the grimly judicious accents, “of striking and knocking down my six-year-old daughter, Olive. He struck her, here, in the public thoroughfare, causing possible ‘abrasions and contusions and mental and physical anguish,’ as the statoot books describe it. The penalty for striking a minor, as you know, is severe. I shall press the charge, when the case comes before one of my feller magistrates, to-morrow. I shall also bring civil action for—” “Hold on, there!” bleated Shunk as the constable, overawed by the array of legal terms, took a truculent step toward him. “Hold on, there! The brat—she beat at me with both her fists, she did, an’—” “And in self-preservation against a six-year-old child you were obliged, to knock her down?” put in Link. “That’s a plea that’ll sure clear you. ’Specially if there’s any of the jury that’s got little girls of their own.” "I didn’t knock nobody down!" fumed Shunk, wincing under the constable’s grip on his shoulder. “She was a-pummellin’ me an’ tryin’ to git the dog away from me. I just slapped her, light like, to make her quit. She slipped an’ tumbled down. It didn’t hurt her none. She was up an’ off in a—” "You’ll all bear witness," observed Link, “that he confesses to hittin’ the child and that she fell down when he hit her. We hadn’t anything but her word to go on till now. And children are apt to get confused in court. Shunk, you’ve just saved us a heap of trouble by ownin’ up.”