"Run, Paul! Run! he'll bite you!" cried Mr. Leatherby from the window of his shoe-shop. People looked out from the windows and repeated the cry, a half-dozen at once; but Paul took no notice of them. Those who were nearest him heard the click of his gun-lock. The dog came nearer, growling, and snarling, his mouth wide open, showing his teeth, his eyes glaring, and white froth dripping from his lips. Paul stood alone in the street. There was a sudden silence. It was a scene for a painter,--a barefoot boy in patched clothes, with an old hat on his head, standing calmly before the brute whose bite was death in its most terrible form. One thought had taken possession of Paul's mind, that he ought to kill the dog. Nearer, nearer, came the dog; he was not a rod off. Paul had read that no animal can withstand the steady gaze of the human eye. He looked the dog steadily in the face. He held his breath. Not a nerve trembled. The dog stopped, looked at Paul a moment, broke into a louder growl, opened his jaws wider, his eyes glaring more wildly, and stepped slowly forward. Now or never, Paul thought, was his time. The breach of the gun touched his shoulder; his eye ran along the barrel,--bang! the dog rolled over with a yelp and a howl, but was up again, growling and trying to get at Paul, who in an instant seized his gun by the barrel, and brought the breech down upon the dog's skull, giving him blow after blow. "Kill him! kill him!" shouted the people from the windows. "Give it to him! Mash his head!" cried Hans from the tree. The dog soon became a mangled and bloody mass of flesh and bones. The people came out from their houses. "That was well done for a boy," said Mr. Funk. "Or for a man either," said Mr. Chrome, who came up and patted Paul on his back. "I should have thrown my lapstone at him, if I could have got my window open," said Mr. Leatherby. Mr. Noggin, the cooper, who had taken refuge in Leatherby's shop, afterwards said that Leatherby was frightened half to death, and kept saying, "Just as like as not he will make a spring and dart right through the window!" "Nobly, bravely done, Paul," said Judge Adams. "Let me shake hands with you, my boy." He and Mrs. Adams and Azalia had seen it all from their parlor window. "O Paul, I was afraid he would bite and kill you, or that your gun would miss fire. I trembled all over just like a leaf," said Azalia, still pale and trembling. "O, I am so glad you have killed him!" She looked up into his face earnestly, and there was such a light in her eyes, that Paul was glad he had killed the dog, for her sake. "Weren't you afraid, Paul?" she asked. "No. If I had been afraid, I should have missed him, perhaps; I made up my mind to kill him, and what was the use of being afraid?"