that hopping
run of theirs, fifteen or twenty of them I should think, up
the beach.

"Increase and multiply, my friends," said Montgomery.
"Replenish the island. Hitherto we've had a certain lack of meat here."

As I watched them disappearing, the white-haired man returned with a
brandy-flask and some biscuits. "Something to go on with, Prendick,"
said he, in a far more familiar tone than before. I made no ado,
but set to work on the biscuits at once, while the white-haired man
helped Montgomery to release about a score more of the rabbits.
Three big hutches, however, went up to the house with the puma.
The brandy I did not touch, for I have been an abstainer from
my birth.

VII. THE LOCKED DOOR.

THE reader will perhaps understand that at first everything was so strange
about me, and my position was the outcome of such unexpected adventures,
that I had no discernment of the relative strangeness of this
or that thing. I followed the llama up the beach, and was overtaken
by Montgomery, who asked me not to enter the stone enclosure.
I noticed then that the puma in its cage and the pile of packages
had been placed outside the entrance to this quadrangle.

I turned and saw that the launch had now been unloaded, run out again,
and was being beached, and the white-haired man was walking towards us.
He addressed Montgomery.

"And now comes the problem of this uninvited guest. What are we
to do with him?"

"He knows something of science," said Montgomery.

"I'm itching to get to work again--with this new stuff,"
said the white-haired man, nodding towards the enclosure.
His eyes grew brighter.

"I daresay you are," said Montgomery, in anything but a cordial tone.

"We can't send him over there, and we can't spare the time to build
him a new shanty; and we certainly can't take him into our confidence
just yet."

"I'm in your hands," said I. I had no idea of what he meant
by "over there."

"I've been thinking of the same things," Montgomery answered.
"There's my room with the outer door--"

"That's it," said the elder man, promptly, looking at Montgomery;
and all three of us went towards the enclosure. "I'm sorry to make
a mystery, Mr. Prendick; but you'll remember you're uninvited.
Our little establishment here contains a secret or so, is a kind
of Blue-Beard's chamber, in fact. Nothing very dreadful, really, to a
sane man; but just now, as we don't know you--"

"Decidedly," said I, "I should