ake it a dollar, my beauty. I'll call it all
square for a dollar."

The whine grew louder as he spoke, and the wheedling grin upon his
disgusting face changed into an expression so menacing that Annie drew
back with a shudder, and was about to return her little portemonnaie to
her pocket.

"No you don't, honey!"

The words were uttered in a hoarse and husky voice, and were accompanied
by a sudden grip of poor Annie's arm with one hand, while with the other
he snatched greedily at the morocco case.

Did she scream? How could she help it? Or what else could she have done
under the circumstances? She screamed vigorously, whether she would or
no, and at the same moment dropped her pocket-book in the grass beside
the path, so that it momentarily escaped the vagabond's clutches.

"Shut up, will you!" and other angry and evil words, accompanied with
more than one vicious threat, followed thick and fast, as Annie
struggled to free herself, while her assailant peered hungrily around
after the missing prize.

It is not at all likely he would have attempted anything so bold as that
in broad daylight if he had not been drinking too freely, and the very
evil "spirit" which had prompted him to his rascality unfitted him for
its immediate consequences. These latter, in the shape of Dab Kinzer and
the lower "joint" of a stout fishing-rod, had been bounding along up the
road from the landing at a tremendous rate for nearly half a minute.

A boy of fifteen assailing a full-grown ruffian?

Why not? Age hardly counts in such a matter, and then it is not every
boy of even his "growth" that could have brought muscles like those of
Dab Kinzer to the swing he gave that four feet length of seasoned
ironwood.

Annie saw him coming, but her assailant did not until it was too late
for anything but to turn and receive that first hit in front instead of
behind. It would have knocked over almost anybody, and the tramp
measured his length on the ground, while Dabney plied the rod on him
with all the energy he was master of.

"Oh, don't, Dabney, don't; you'll kill him!" pleaded Annie.

"I wouldn't want to do that," said Dabney, but he added, to the tramp:
"Now you'd better get up and run for it. If you are caught around here
again it'll be the worse for you."

The vagabond staggered to his feet, looking savagely enough at Dab, but
the latter seemed so very ready to put in another hit with that terrible
cudgel, and the whole situation was