“Why don’t you go to bed now, too?” asked Tom, when they had finished talking about animal photography.  “You need the rest, I know, Ralph.”

“I’m going, in a few minutes, just as soon as I finish this letter.  Trot along, boys!”

“Well, good night,” grunted Arthur, as he disappeared into his room.

“Good night.”

“Don’t be too long at it, Ralph.”

“No, I won’t.  Good night, old top.”

His gaze followed Tom as his sleepy guest slouched out of the room, and when he heard Tom’s heavy footsteps on the creaking stairs, he took up his pen once more.  Propping his head with his other hand, and shading his eyes from the lamplight, he wrote on.  In a few minutes the springs of Tom’s bed creaked violently as he dropped down on it, and soon the sound of his heavy breathing in the room above showed that he was dead to the world.

Ralph’s eyelids began to droop drowsily.  In vain he struggled to keep them open.  He put his head down on the table, with a sigh, and before he realized it he was asleep.

The next thing he knew was that he found himself sitting up, wide awake.  He had a distinct impression that he had been roused by the sound of a human voice.  How long he had slept he could not tell.  The lamp had gone out and the room was in inky darkness.  As he sat listening, all at once he heard a sound of some one moving about the room.

“Wonder if we forgot to lock the kitchen door?” was his first thought.  Then he spoke aloud:  “Who’s there?”

No answer.

“Who is it?” Ralph demanded, in a louder tone.  “What are you doing?  What do you want?”

Still no answer.  Only an impressive and uncanny silence.

Reaching out for his walking stick, which lay on the table beside him, Ralph got up from the chair without noise or further ado, and took a few steps forward.  As he did so, a burly form crashed against him in the darkness, knocking him down.  Unhurt, though considerably startled, Ralph sprawled upon the carpet and stared quickly up at the window, by which the intruder would have to pass in order to reach the doorway leading into the kitchen.  At the same moment, he raised his voice and called out: 

“Tom!  Arthur!  Come down here!  Oh, Tom!”

“Curse you!” muttered a harsh voice.   “Shut up, or I’ll-----”

“Tom!” yelled Ralph, defiantly.  He would have risen at once and grappled with the intruder, only, with a weak ankle, he did not care to run the risk of a nasty blow or a bad fall.  He yelled lustily instead, and in a minute he heard Tom spring out of bed and come tearing down the stairs.

But his mysterious assailant lost not a moment in making a getaway; he did not even wait to slip out by the rear door, through which he must have entered.  Springing to the window, he smashed it with a kick, and was in the act of crawling through and dropping to the ground outside, when Tom flung himself upon him and dragged him back into the room.  Fear of cutting himself on the broken glass evidently made the scoundrel yield more readily than he would otherwise have done.  As it was, he put up a game fight, notwithstanding that Ralph, forgetting his ankle, joined in the fray.