“Well, it will keep till she comes downstairs,” Mr. Schofield said grimly. “You sit down till this meal is finished.” Penrod was becoming frantic. “I got to tell her--it's sumpthing Sam's mother told me to tell her,” he babbled. “Didn't she, Sam? You heard her tell me to tell her; didn't you, Sam?” Sam offered prompt corroboration. “Yes, sir; she did. She said for us both to tell her. I better go, too, I guess, because she said--” He was interrupted. Startlingly upon their ears rang shriek on shriek. Mrs. Schofield, recognizing Margaret's voice, likewise shrieked, and Mr. Schofield uttered various sounds; but Penrod and Sam were incapable of doing anything vocally. All rushed from the table. Margaret continued to shriek, and it is not to be denied that there was some cause for her agitation. When she opened the closet door, her light-blue military cape, instead of hanging on the hook where she had left it, came out into the room in a manner that she afterward described as “a kind of horrible creep, but faster than a creep.” Nothing 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.