ep them away from the wild
animals of the wilderness tonight."

There was a hushed silence for a long time in the room. The boys
involuntarily turned their eyes away from the two inanimate objects
which had so recently possessed the power of speech and motion.

Presently Sandy saw something glistening at the breast of the dark
man. Where his heavy coat of fur dropped back the boy thought he
distinguished a gleam of gold. Thinking that it might possibly be
some trinket calculated to reveal the identity of the man, Sandy
advanced to the body and threw the coat open.

There was the Little Brass God!

"We didn't have to find it," Tommy said slowly after a short pause.
"The fellow brought it to us!"

Will took it into his hand and made a careful examination of it.

"Do you think this is the one we are after?" he asked.

"Holy Moses!" exclaimed Sandy. "You don't think there are two
Little Brass Gods, do you? One seems to have kept us pretty busy!"

"I've heard of their traveling in pairs," Thede suggested.

"Is this the man who made the search of the house?" asked Will of
George.

"That is one of them!" was the reply. "The other seemed to be a
man in the employ of this man. He was dressed like a trapper and
acted like one. They quarreled over some suggestion made by this
man and the one whom I took to be a guide went away in a rage."

"You are sure he didn't find what he was looking for?"

"Dead sure!"

"Then there are two Little Brass Gods!" insisted Tommy.

"Yes, and I guess the one we want is the one we haven't got!" Will
said.

"I don't see how this fellow could have the one containing the last
will of Simon Tupper," Tommy argued. "Can you open the tummy of
the Little Brass God, Will?" asked Sandy.

"Mr. Frederick Tupper showed me how to do the trick," Will answered.

"Then why don't you see whether this is the right one or not?"
asked Sandy. "If you can open it, it's the one; if you can't, it
isn't the one!"

"Wise little boy!" exclaimed Will taking the ugly image into his
hands again.

He pressed here and there on the surface of the Little Brass God,
touching now a shoulder, now a foot, now the top of the head, for
all the world like one operating the combination of a safe.

"You see," he said, as he continued his strange employment, "the
shell of the image is not very thick and when I press on certain
parts, certain things take place on the inside."

He put his ear to the side of t