from him;--and watch the effect.

Instantly, Lad was athrill with the spirit of the game. In one
scurrying backward jump, he was off the veranda and on the lawn,
tail vibrating, eyes dancing; satchel held tantalizingly towards
its would-be possessor.

The light sound of his body touching ground reached the man.
Reasoning that the sweep of his own arm had somehow knocked the
bag off the porch, he ventured off the edge of the veranda and
flashed a swathed ray of his pocket light along the ground in
search of it.

The flashlight's lens was cleverly muffled; in a way to give
forth but a single subdued finger of illumination. That one brief
glimmer was enough to show the thief a right impossible sight.
The glow struck answering lights from the polished sides of the
brown bag. The bag was hanging in air, some six inches above the
grass and perhaps five feet away from him. Then he saw it swig
frivolously to one side and vanish in the night.

The astonished man had seen more. Feeble was the flashlight's
shrouded ray, too feeble to outline against the night the small
dark body behind the shining brown bag. But that same ray caught
and reflected back to the incredulous beholder two splashes of
pale fire;--glints from a pair of deep-set collie-eyes.

As the bag disappeared, the eerie fire-points were gone. The
thief all but dropped his flashlight. He gaped in nervous dread;
and sought vainly to account for the witch-work he had witnessed.