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.

[Illustration]

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 breech 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."

Many were the praises bestowed upon Paul. "How noble! how heroic!" the
people said. Hans told the s