After I had worked so many years and so faithfully!
My beloved history! It is gone, never to return!"

And the tears ran down the cheeks of the man.

"Uncle Pierre, you must give up your lonely life here," said Giant,
after a pause. "You must come home with me."

At this suggestion the hermit, for the man was nothing less, shook
his head vigorously. He was certainly queer---talking sometimes
quite rationally and at others in a rambling fashion. He told how
he had come to make his home in the mountains, how he had once
visited a large city and purchased three parrots and brought them
to the wilderness, and how one parrot had died and another had
been shot.

"The third is still with me," he continued. "But I am tired of
him---he is driving me crazy."

"He shall never bother you again---if only you will come home with
me," said Giant. "You must come home---mother wants to see you.
All your books are there. Don't you remember how you used to love
those books, Uncle Pierre?"

"Yes! yes!" The man's eyes began to glisten. "And so you want me
to go home? You look like a good boy, Guillaume."

"Why does he call Giant Guillaume?" whispered Whopper to Snap.

"It's the French for William," answered the leader of, the club.
"Say, but doesn't this beat the Dutch!"

"If giant can get this uncle of his to go home perhaps they'll be
able to get possession of that fortune of one hundred thousand
francs," was Shep's comment. "I hope they can get it, for Mrs.
Caslette certainly deserves the money and needs it."

Giant continued to talk to the hermit, and gradually the other
boys joined in the conversation. The young hunters soon saw that
Pierre Dunrot's mind was very hazy on some matters while clear on
others. Since running away from the Caslette home he had lived
in the mountains near the lake and he had taken every precaution
to keep other folks away from him. He had taught his parrots to
scare newcomers, and had played ghost by rubbing phosphorus and
other shining substances on his clothing and cap. He said he
owned several canoes, hidden along the lake shore, and in these
he sometimes went fishing, usually at night.

"Well, this solves the mystery of the ghost anyway," said Snap.
"Won't folks around Fairview be astonished when they hear of it?"

"I don't believe we ought to let folks know all the details,"
answered the doctor's son. "It would hurt Giant's feelings and
also his mother's. We can simply sa