. This is a
survival of primeval man, who must take every chance to get his dinner.
So, when Penrod and Sam drove the hapless Whitey up the alley, they were
really responding to an impulse thousands and thousands of years old--an
impulse founded upon the primordial observation that whatever runs is
likely to prove edible. Penrod and Sam were not "bad"; they were never
that. They were something that was not their fault; they were historic.

At the next corner Whitey turned to the right into the cross-street;
thence, turning to the right again and still warmly pursued,
he zigzagged down a main thoroughfare until he reached another
cross-street, which ran alongside the Schofields' yard and brought him
to the foot of the alley he had left behind in his flight. He entered
the alley, and there his dim eye fell upon the open door he had
previously investigated. No memory of it remained; but the place had a
look associated in his mind with hay, and, as Sam and Penrod turned
the corner of the alley in panting yet still vociferous pursuit, Whitey
stumbled up the inclined platform before the open doors, staggered
thunderously across the carriage-house and through another open door
into a stall, an apartment vacant since the occupancy of Mr. Schofield's
last horse, now several years deceased.

CHAPTER VIII. SALVAGE

The two boys shrieked with excitement as they beheld the coincidence of
this strange return. They burst into the stable, making almost as much
noise as Duke, who had become frantic at the invasion. Sam laid hands
upon a rake.

"You get out o' there, you ole horse, you!" he bellowed. "I ain't afraid
to drive him out. I--"

"WAIT a minute!" Penrod shouted. "Wait till I--"

Sam was manfully preparing to enter the stall.

"You hold the doors open," he commanded, "so's they won't blow shut and
keep him in here. I'm goin' to hit him--"

"Quee-YUT!" Penrod shouted, grasping the handle of the rake so that Sam
could not use it. "Wait a MINUTE, can't you?" He turned with ferocious
voice and gestures upon Duke. "DUKE!" And Duke, in spite of his
excitement, was so impressed that he prostrated himself in silence, and
then unobtrusively withdrew from the stable. Penrod ran to the alley
doors and closed them.

"My gracious!" Sam protested. "What you goin' to do?"

"I'm goin' to keep this horse," said Penrod, whose face showed the
strain of a great idea.

"What FOR?"

"For the reward," said Penrod simply.

Sam sat