“Now you’d better get up and run for it If you’re caught around here again, it’ll be the worse for you.”

The vagabond staggered to his feet, and he looked savagely enough at Dab; but the latter looked so very ready to put in another hit with that terrible cudgel, and the whole situation was so unpleasantly suggestive of further difficulty, that the youngster’s advice was taken without a word.  That is, if a shambling kind of double limp can be described as a “run for it.”

“Here it is:  I’ve found my pocket-book,” said Annie, as her enemy made the best of his way off.

“He did not hurt you?”

“No:  he only scared me, except that I suppose my arm will be black-and-blue where he caught hold of it.  Thank you ever so much, Dabney:  you’re a brave boy.  Why, he’s almost twice your size.”

“Yes; but the butt of my rod is twice as hard as his head,” said Dabney.  “I was almost afraid to strike him with it.  I might have broken his skull.”

“You didn’t even break your rod.”

“No; and now I must run back for the other pieces and the tip.  I dropped them in the road.”

“Please, Dabney, see me home first,” said Annie.  “I know it’s foolish, and there isn’t a bit of danger; but I must confess to being a good deal frightened.”

Dab Kinzer was a little the proudest boy on Long Island, as he walked along at Annie’s side, in compliance with her request.  He went no farther than the gate, to be sure, and then he returned for the rest of his rod:  but before he got back with it, Keziah Kinzer hurried home from a call on Mrs. Foster, bringing a tremendous account of Dab’s heroism; and then his own pride over what he had done was only a mere drop in the bucket, compared to that of his mother.

“Dabney is growing wonderfully,” she remarked to Samantha, “He’ll be a man before any of us know it.”

If Dab had been a man, however, or if Ham Morris or Mr. Foster had been at home, the matter would not have been permitted to drop there.  That tramp ought to have been followed, arrested, and shut up where his vicious propensities would have been under wholesome restraint for a while.  As it was, after hurrying on for a short distance, and making sure he was not pursued, he clambered over the fence, and sneaked into the nearest clump of bushes.  From this safe covert he watched Dab Kinzer’s return after the lighter pieces of his rod; and then he even dared to crouch along the fence, and see which house his young conqueror went into.

“That’s where he lives, is it?” he muttered, with a scowl of the most ferocious vengeance.  “Well, they’ll have some fun there before they git to bed to-night, or I’ll know the reason why.”

It could not have occurred to such a man that he had been given his dinner at the door of that very house.  What had the collection of his rights as a “tramp” to do with questions of gratitude and revenge?