hat
the skin seemed to be drawn over the bones. His shoulders slumped and his
arms hung loosely, whether from weariness or discouragement or laziness,
the girls found it impossible to tell.

But it was his eyes that they noticed even in that moment of excitement.
They were big, much too big for his thin face, and so dark that they
seemed deep-sunken. And the expression was something that the girls
remembered long afterward. It was brooding, haunted, mysterious, with a
little touch of wildness that frightened the girls. Yet his mouth was
kind, very kind, and looking at it, the girls ceased to be afraid.

"Who _are_ you?" the man repeated, and this time Billie found her voice.

"We--we got lost," she said hesitatingly, speaking more to the kind mouth
of the man than to the strange, wild eyes. "It began to rain----"

"And we found this little place," Laura caught her up eagerly, "and came
inside to keep from drowning to death."

"We hope you don't mind," Vi finished, with her pleading smile which
sometimes won more than all Billie's and Laura's courage.

"Mind," the man repeated vaguely, passing a hand across his eyes as if to
wake himself up. "Why should I mind? It isn't very often I have company."

The girls thought he spoke bitterly but the next minute he smiled at
them.

"I'm sorry I can't ask you to sit down," he said, so embarrassed that
Billie took pity on him.

"We don't want to sit down," she said, smiling at him. "We're too
nervous. Do you suppose the rain will ever stop?"

The man shook out his clothing and sent a shower of spray all about him.
He was soaking, drenching wet, and suddenly, looking at him, Billie had a
dreadful thought.

Suppose the man was not quite right in his mind? She had a horror of
crazy people. But what sane man would build himself a cabin in the woods
like this in the first place, and then go roaming around in the rain
without any protection?

A memory of the slow, measured steps they had heard approaching the cabin
made her shudder, and instinctively she drew back a little and snuggled
her hand into Laura's.

If he was not crazy he was probably a criminal of some sort, and neither
thought made Billie feel very comfortable. Three girls alone in the woods
with a crazy man or a criminal, with the darkness coming on----

Something of what she was thinking occurred to Laura and Vi also, and
they were beginning to look rather pale and scared.

As for the man--he hardly seemed