othing was to
be seen except the creeping cape, she said, but, of course, she could
tell there was some awful thing inside of it. It was too large to be a
cat, and too small to be a boy; it was too large to be Duke, Penrod's
little old dog, and, besides, Duke wouldn't act like that. It crept
rapidly out into the upper hall, and then, as she recovered the use of
her voice and began to scream, the animated cape abandoned its creeping
for a quicker gait--"a weird, heaving flop," she defined it.

The Thing then decided upon a third style of locomotion, evidently, for
when Sam and Penrod reached the front hall, a few steps in advance of
Mr. and Mrs. Schofield, it was rolling grandly down the stairs.

Mr. Schofield had only a hurried glimpse of it as it reached the bottom,
close by the front door.

"Grab that thing!" he shouted, dashing forward. "Stop it! Hit it!"

It was at this moment that Sam Williams displayed the presence of mind
that was his most eminent characteristic. Sam's wonderful instinct for
the right action almost never failed him in a crisis, and it did not
fail him now. Leaping to the door, at the very instant when the rolling
cape touched it, Sam flung the door open--and the cape rolled on. With
incredible rapidity and intelligence, it rolled, indeed, out into the
night.

Penrod jumped after it, and the next second reappeared in the doorway
holding the cape. He shook out its folds, breathing hard but acquiring
confidence. In fact, he was able to look up in his father's face and
say, with bright ingenuousness:

"It was just laying there. Do you know what I think? Well, it couldn't
have acted that way itself. I think there must have been sumpthing kind
of inside of it!"

Mr. Schofield shook his head slowly, in marvelling admiration.

"Brilliant--oh, brilliant!" he murmured, while Mrs. Schofield ran to
support the enfeebled form of Margaret at the top of the stairs.

... In the library, after Margaret's departure to her dance, Mr. and
Mrs. Schofield were still discussing the visitation, Penrod having
accompanied his homeward-bound guest as far as the front gate.

"No; you're wrong," Mrs. Schofield said, upholding a theory, earlier
developed by Margaret, that the animated behaviour of the cape could be
satisfactorily explained on no other ground than the supernatural. "You
see, the boys saying they couldn't remember what Mrs. Williams wanted
them to tell Margaret, and that probably she hadn't told them