Mr. Starr had been greatly interested in the accounts of the evangelistic services being held in Burlington.  The workers were meeting with marked success, and Mr. Starr felt he should get in touch with them.  So on Thursday morning he took the early east-bound train to Burlington.  There he sought out a conveniently located second-class hotel, and took up residence.  He attended the services at the tabernacle in the afternoon and evening, and then went to bed at the hotel.  He slept late the next morning.  When he finally appeared, he noticed casually, without giving it thought, that the clerk behind the desk looked at him with marked interest.  Mr. Starr nodded cheerfully, and the clerk came at once from behind the desk to speak to him.  Two or three other guests, who had been lounging about, drew near.

“We’ve just been reading about your girls, 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.