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 hadn't been careless and left the dungeon unlocked the money
would have been in no danger, and if the twins hadn't wakened me I
wouldn't have known there was a burglar about the place, and if Fairy
hadn't kept me from rushing out to the dungeon to see if the money was
safe, he would have got away, and--it took the policemen to get him
out. Oh, I know that is not very grammatical, father, but it's just as