ind out what we were doing in
this cabin! That's all there is to that!"

"Whoever came to the window tonight," Will repeated, "came there
for the purpose of hypnotizing one of us boys into telling where
the Little Brass God is hidden!"

"Then he must be about fourteen miles off his trolley," laughed
Sandy. "We don't know where the Little Brass God is hidden."

"He threw an Oriental perfume or narcotic of some, kind into the
room and let out his persuasive language," Will went on. "If you
don't believe he hypnotized Thede, just ask him what he heard just
before he got out of bed."

"I heard some one calling to me," Thede answered.

"What did he say?"

"He told me to come to him."

"And you was obeying that command when you started toward the
window?"

"I guess that's right," answered the boy, "but it's all so hazy
that I don't know much about it."

"And then I fired at the window and broke the spell and also the
pane of glass!" explained Will. "If he comes back here again, I'll
shoot from the outside! We can't be kept awake nights by any East
Indian magic."

"East Indian granny!" declared Sandy.

"You read about such occurrences in the newspapers every day!"
declared Will. "We see people hypnotized and forced to obey the
commands of others, not only in the private parlor but on the open
stage. Sometimes, too, the hypnotic influence is assisted by
strange Oriental perfume. There's nothing extraordinary about it
at all! In fact, there is only one word that describes it, and
that is the word uncanny."

"Fix it anyway you want it!" grinned Tommy. "There's a broken
window, and there's blood on the snow, and we found Thede lying on
the floor when we sprang out of bed. If that doesn't make a good
case of circumstantial evidence, I don't know what does!"

"This Little Brass God is getting on my nerves!" declared Sandy
after a short pause. "We've been up against smugglers on Lake
Superior; up against rattlers and wreckers in the Florida
Everglades, and up against train robbers on the Great Divide, but
this ghost business gets my goat!"

"Perhaps you'd like to go back to Chicago empty-handed?" asked
Tommy.

"Not so you could notice it!" was the reply. "If there's anything
I like, it's nice little Boy Scout excursions like this. All we
have to do to get busy is to get a camping outfit together and
march off into the wilderness. Everything else comes right along
as a matter of course. Everythin