“You have hidden it!” the voice said.

There was a long pause and then the voice broke the silence again.

“Arise and come to me.”

The next moment the boy heard Thede moving in the bunk above.  The lad first threw his legs over the rail, and Will heard him drawing away the blankets.  Then the boy slipped softly to the floor and moved, as one who walks in his sleep, toward the north window.

“Come to me, come to me, come to me!” the voice repeated insistently.

“I’ll come to you, all right, in about a minute,” Will mused, “if you try any of that magic business here.”

Thede continued to move toward the window, walking with his hands outstretched, as the somnambulist frequently walks.

When the boy reached the window he staggered back as if from a blow, then moved forward again, as if bent on leaving the cabin by way of the narrow opening.

Will raised himself in the bunk, drew an automatic from under his pillow, and fired point blank at the glass.  There was a crash and the cabin grew cloudy with powder smoke.

Thede sat down on the floor abruptly and began rubbing his eyes.

“I guess I walked in my sleep,” he said.  “I do sometimes.”

The shot had awakened Tommy and Sandy, who came bounding to the floor.

“What’d you shoot at?” they asked.

“The Little Brass God!”

“I guess you’ve got the Little Brass God on the brain!’’ grinned Sandy.

“Yes,” Tommy cut in, “you’ve gone and busted a perfectly good pane of glass when there isn’t another one within a hundred miles.”

“Did you hit any one?” George called feebly from the bunk.

“I don’t know!” replied Will.  “I’m going out to see in a minute.”

But Tommy and Sandy were out of the door and chasing around the corner of the house before Will could disentangle himself from the blanket.

Instead of passing outside, then, he stepped over to the window and looked out.  The boys were there looking over the freshly fallen snow with an electric searchlight.

“Did I see anything?” asked Will with a note of victory in his voice.

“Somebody saw something!” answered Sandy.  “There’s blood on the snow!  Some one found a bullet!”

“I’m going to dress and find out where these tracks lead to!” Tommy declared.  “This is too much mischief for me!”

“Stick your face up in the air,” advised Will with a grin.

“Snow!” shouted Tommy with a gesture of disgust.  “These tracks’ll be full of the beautiful before we could walk forty rods!”

“That’s about the size of it!” agreed Will.  “So you may as well come back into the house and we’ll go back to bed.”

When the boys entered and closed the door again, it was four o’clock and they decided not to go back to bed again that night.

“How’d you know there was some one there?” Sandy asked of Will.