rls, sir," said the clerk
respectfully. "It's a pretty nervy little bunch! You must be proud of
them!"

"My girls!" ejaculated Mr. Starr.

"Haven't you seen the morning paper? You're Mr. Starr, the Methodist
minister at Mount Mark, aren't you?"

"I am! But what has happened to my girls? Is anything wrong? Give me
the paper!"

Mr. Starr was greatly agitated. He showed it.

But the clerk could not lose this opportunity to create a sensation.
It was a chance of a life-time. "Why, a burglar got in the parsonage
last night," he began, almost licking his lips with satisfaction. "The
twins heard him at their dresser, and when he stepped into the closet
they locked him in there, and yelled for the rest of the family. But
he broke away from them, and went, down-stairs and climbed down into
the dungeon to get the money. Then Prudence, she ran down-stairs alone
in the dark, and locked him in the dungeon,--pushed him down-stairs or
something like that, I believe,--and then telephoned for the police.
And she stayed on guard outside the dungeon until the police got there,
so he couldn't get away. And the police got him, and found it was
Limber-Limb Grant, a famous gentleman thief, and your girls are going
to get five hundred dollars reward for catching him."

Five minutes later, Mr. Starr and his suit-case were in a taxicab
speeding toward Union Station, and within eight minutes he was en route
for Mount Mark,--white in the face, shaky in the knees, but
tremendously proud in spirit.

Arriving at Mount Mark, he was instantly surrounded by an exclamatory
crowd of station loungers. "Ride, sir? Glad to take you home for
nothing," urged Harvey Reel. Mount Mark was enjoying more notoriety
than ever before in the two hundred years of its existence. The name
of Prudence was upon every tongue, and her father heard it with
satisfaction. In the parsonage he found at least two-thirds of the
Ladies' Aid Society, the trustees and the Sunday-school superintendent,
along with a miscellaneous assortment of ordinary members, mixed up
with Presbyterians, Baptists and a few unclassified outsiders. And
Prudence was the center of attraction.

She was telling the "whole story," for perhaps the fifteenth time that
morning, but she broke off when her father hurried in and flung her
arms about him. "Oh, papa," she cried, "they mustn't praise me. I had
no idea there was a burglar in the house when I ran down the stairs,
and if I