Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island Part 2

"And here's a pantry!" exclaimed Vi excitedly. "Look, girls, shelves and cans of things and--and--everything!"

The interior of the place was made of rough boards, rudely thrown together as if by an amateur. Why the person who had made the little cabin had not laid boards for his floor, n.o.body could tell. Perhaps he had run short of lumber or perhaps he preferred the hard earth floor.

As Vi had said, in one corner some boards had been nailed up to form shelves, and there were several tins of canned goods upon the shelves.

Quite evidently this must be the queer owner's pantry.

Besides this, the cot, the table, and an oddly-shaped chair, which had evidently been made from an old soap box, made the only furnishings of the place.

"I wonder," said Billie, looking about her while a sort of awe crept into her voice, "what the person is like that lives here. He must be very queer, to say the least."

"Oh," cried Vi, all her old fears coming back again. "Girls, I'd almost forgotten the Codfish. Do you suppose--"

"No, we don't," said Laura shortly, wishing that the very mention of the Codfish would not send the cold chills all over her. "Goodness, just listen to that rain," she added, shivering. "I guess we're in for a night of it."

"But we can't stay _here_ all night," said Billie anxiously.

"Suppose the owner should come back," added Vi, her teeth beginning to chatter.

"Well, he could only kill us if he did," said Laura gloomily.

"Besides, there are three of us to his one," said Billie, trying to speak lightly. But Laura spoiled the attempt by adding more gloomily than ever:

"How do we know there's only one of him?"

"Well it doesn't look as if a whole family resided here."

"That's so too--but there may be two, at least."

Again the girls looked around the queer place. They saw a few tools as if somebody had spent time in woodworking. There were shavings and parts of cut tree branches and strips of bark.

"I'll wager he's a queer stick--whoever he is," was Billie's comment.

"And what will he say if he finds us here, prying into his private affairs?" came from Laura, with something of a shiver. "Oh!"

All uttered a little cry as a crash of thunder reached them. Then the rain seemed to come down harder than ever.

"Just listen to that!"

"It's good we are under cover. If we weren't we'd be drowned!"

The rain came in at one corner of the shelter, forming a pool on the hard floor. But it did not reach the girls, for which they were thankful.

"I wonder how long it will last," sighed Vi presently.

"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 that 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.