Whatever he expected, he had not long to wait, for all of a sudden as he stared at that roll of canvas, a head appeared above it. A small figure dragged itself over the canvas into the space before it. The boy barely escaped uttering an audible gasp. It was the little dark man.
That night as he slept in his second-story bedroom of his grandfather’s house, Johnny was troubled by strange dreams. He seemed to be riding on a limitless sea in a cockle-shell of a boat. The wind began to whisper across the small waves. It blew a whiff of air into his face. Then, with astonishing speed, it rose into a gale, driving damp spray against his cheek, and set his frail bark rocking perilously. The little craft climbed a wave, another, and yet another. It rose, then seeming to rear on high, came splashing down to dive, prow foremost, into the foam.
It was just as Johnny caught his breath, prepared to withstand this chilling plunge, that he awoke.
For a full moment, quite bewildered, he stared about him. At last, shaking himself, he murmured, “There was no storm. It was a dream. I am in my grandfather’s house.”
Then with a sudden start, he sat up wide awake and staring. It was true there was no storm and no sea. For all that, the wind was blowing strongly into his window. “It’s wide open!” His bare feet hit the floor. “And I left it open only a crack!”
Leaping to the window, he looked down. “Ah! I thought so!” A tall ladder leaned against the house. It reached his window. Whirling about, he looked where his trunk had been.
“Gone!” he muttered. “My trunk’s gone!”
He had not thought of that as a possibility. Now he realized how absurdly easy it had been. His trunk was small—an old army locker. The window was large. “What could be easier?” he whispered.
Slipping on his trousers, he crept down the stairs and out on the dew-drenched grass.
In a shadowy spot at the back of the house he found the trunk. The frail lock had been pried up. The thought-camera and his entire collection of think-o-graphs were gone. “As if they had never been,” he murmured.