But Sig froze. A sound, a scraping sound. It had come from the room where he had found the box. Artie! Maybe Artie was still here and he could catch him!

Sig tiptoed down the hall to the half-open door. Artie could not have expected Sig or he would have hidden. So Sig could surprise him—

He paused by the door. The room was lighter than it had been yesterday. One of the shutters which crossed the window had been opened. And there he was by the table with the box!

“Got you!” Sig pressed the button on the flashlight and the ray caught that figure.

Only it was not Artie at all. It was that Ras guy. But he did have the box. Its lid was open and some of the pieces were spilled out on the tabletop. Of all the nerve!

“Give me that!” Sig moved quickly. “That’s mine! What do you think you’re doing?”

“Yours?” Ras grinned and Sig did not like that grin, nor the tone of his voice as he added, “Who gave it to you? Finders keepers.”

“It’s mine!” Somehow getting that box into his own hands again seemed to Sig the most important thing in the world. But before he could grab it Ras snatched it away, so that a lot of the pieces inside sifted over the rim and fell out on the dusty tabletop. Their bright colors sparkled as if they really were jewel stones, so brilliantly they glowed.

“Yours?” Ras repeated. “I don’t think so. I think you found it here and now you want to steal it. Yeah, steal it! It belongs to whoever owns this house, not to you. Isn’t that true now? You stole it, whitey. Just like your kind steal a lot of things. My brother, he’s got the right of it, whitey. Your kind aren’t any good.”

Ras deliberately shook the box again and a sprinkling of pieces fell over its edge. Sig cried out and tried to jerk the box out of Ras’s hold, but the other boy eluded him easily. Then Sig threw away the flashlight and launched himself in a tackle. He was clumsy, but he brought Ras down and the other dropped the box to defend himself.

Sig had been in fights before, but this was more real than any of those. It seemed as if Ras wanted to hurt, and Sig discovered that he wanted to hurt back. But, though they flailed at each other, few of the blows found their mark. However, Sig’s determined advance did herd Ras into the hall. Then that hot fury, which had been building in Sig ever since he had discovered the box missing, boiled over and he jumped at Ras in a blind rage.