"Maybe all night," returned Billie.

"Oh, do you really think it will last that long?" came pleadingly.

"You know as much about it as I do."

"What will they think of our absence at the Hall?" broke in Laura.

"They may send out a searching party----" began Billie.

"Hush," cried Vi suddenly, and her tone sent the gooseflesh all over them
again. "I hear something. Don't you think we'd better put something
against the door?"

CHAPTER III

FERNS AND MYSTERY

"Th-there's nothing to put against the door," stammered Billie nervously.
"I might put out the light though." She started for the candle, but Laura
put out a hand and stopped her.

"No," she said. "I'd rather see what's after us, anyway. I hate the
dark."

The noise that Vi had heard was a slow measured step that sounded to the
girls' overwrought nerves more like the stealthy creeping of an animal
than the tread of a man. But whoever or whatever it was, it was coming
steadily toward the hut--that much was certain.

The girls drew close together for protection and watched the little door
wide-eyed.

"It sounds like a bear," whispered Vi hysterically.

"Silly," Laura hissed back at her. "Don't you know that bears don't grow
in this part of the country?"

"But if it was a man," Vi argued, "he wouldn't be walking so slowly--not
in this kind of weather."

"Hush," commanded Billie. "He's almost here."

"If it's the Codfish--" Vi was saying desperately, when the little door
opened and she clapped her hand to her mouth, choking back the words.

Some one was coming through the door, some one who had to bend so much
that for a startled moment the girls were not at all sure but what it was
an animal, after all, and not a man that they had to reckon with.

Then the visitor stood up and they saw with real relief that it was a man
after all. As a matter of fact, after the first startled minute it was
the newcomer who seemed frightened and the girls who tried to make him
feel at home.

At first sight of the girls the man staggered backward and came up with a
thump against the wall of the hut. From there he regarded them with eyes
that fairly bulged from his head.

"Hullo!" he muttered, "who are you?"

The girls stared for a moment, then Laura giggled. Who could be
frightened when a person wanted to know who they were?

He was a queer looking man. He was tall, over six feet, and so thin t