pened.

Then why Aunt Matilda's about-face, hiding the pictures and telling me
to go back to Chicago? Had she threatened whoever was behind this, and
gotten her money back? Or had she again become convinced that her
financial venture was sound?

In either case, why was she trying to keep me from knowing about the
pictures?

I made up my mind. Whether Aunt Matilda liked it or not, I was going to
stay until I got to the bottom of things. What Aunt Matilda evidently
didn't realize was that no inventor who really had something would waste
time trying to find backing in a place like Sumac.

Getting dressed, I decided that first on the agenda would be to find
where Matilda had hidden those pictures, and get a good look at them.

That was simpler than I expected it to be. When I came out of my room I
stuck my head in the kitchen doorway and said good morning to her, and
she leaped to her feet to get some breakfast ready for me. It was
obvious that she was anxious to get me fed and out of the house.

Then I simply took the two steps past the bathroom door to the door to
her bedroom and went in. The pictures were stacked against the side of
her dresser. The one of the church was the first one. It was on its
side.

With a silent whistle of amazement I bent down to watch it. The car was
not parked at the curb in it, but there were several children walking
along, obviously on their way to school. And they were walking. Moving.

* * * * *

I picked up the picture. It was as heavy as it should be, but not more.
A faint whisper of sound seemed to come from it. I put my ear closer and
heard children's voices. I explored with my ear close to the surface,
and found that the voices were loudest when my ear was closest to the
one talking, as though the voices came out of the picture directly from
the images!

All it needed to be perfect was a volume control somewhere. I searched,
and found it behind the upper right corner of the picture. I twisted it
very slowly, and the voices became louder. I turned it back to the
position it had been in.

The next picture was of the railroad depot. The telegrapher and baggage
clerk were going around the side of the depot towards the tracks. A
freight train was rushing through the picture.

Even as I watched it in the picture, I heard the wail of a train whistle
in the distance, and it was coming from outside, across town. That
freight train was going through