dock, by the way of
back streets, and escape the beast by going aboard the _Duchess_.

He set off, therefore, through several byways, coming out at last on a
water-front street of more prominence. Here were stores and tenements.
The gutters were crowded with noisy children, and the street with
traffic.

A fat butcher stood before his shop, with his thumbs in the string of
his apron. When he spied Purt and his close companion, he gave vent to
an exclamation of satisfaction and reached for the Central High boy
with a mighty hand.

"Here!" he said, hoarsely, his fat face growing scarlet on the
instant. "I been waiting for you."

"Waiting for me, Mister?" gasped Purt. "Weally--that cawn't be,
doncher know! I never came this way before."

"No, ye smart Ike! But yer dog has," growled the man, giving Prettyman
a shake that seemed to start every tooth in his head.

"Oh, dear me!" cried Purt. "I never saw you before, sir."

"But I've seen yer dog--drat the beast! And if I could ketch him I'd
chop him up into sassingers--that's what I'd do to _him_."

"He--he's not my dog," murmured Purt, faintly.

Fido had scurried across the street when he spied the butcher; but he
waited there, mouth agape, stump of tail wagging, and a knowing cock
to his good ear, to see how his adopted master was coming out with his
sworn enemy, the butcher.

"I tell yer what," hoarsely said the butcher, still gripping Purt's
shoulder, "a boy can deny his own father, but 'e can't deny his
dawg--no, sir! That there brute knows ye, bub. Only yisterday he
grabbed several links of frankfurter sassingers off'n this hook right
overhead 'ere.

"I ain't goin' to have no dumbed dawg like him come an' grab my
sassingers an' make off with 'em, free gratis for nothin'."

A little crowd--little, but deeply interested--had gathered again.
Had Purt been seeking notoriety in Lumberport, he was getting it
without doubt!

The grocer next door, with a great guffaw of laughter, cried:

"Hey, Bill! don't blame the dawg. He smelled some o' his relatives,
it's likely, in the frankfurters, an' set out to rescue 'em!"

"I do-ent care," breathed the fat butcher, growing more and more
excited. "No man's dawg ain't goin' ter do what he done ter me an' git
away with it. This boy has got ter pay for what the dawg stole."

Purt did not like to let go of money--among his school chums he was
considered a notorious "tight-wad"--but he was willing to do almost
anything to