The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge Part 25

"Jimmy and Arnold--my sons, my little boys!" Then, turning fiercely to Betty, he cried: "You're not lying to me, are you? Because I'll throw you into the river! I'll cut you into little pieces!"

As the man advanced menacingly, Grace screamed and Mollie ran forward with some wild idea of protecting her chum, but Betty waved them back.

"I'm not lying to you," she told the crazy man, looking straight into his glaring eyes. "Your boys were wounded, but not seriously, and they sailed a few days ago for this country on a hospital ship. They want to see you more than anything else in the world," she added, playing on the sudden softness that had crept into his wild eyes. "And they sent their love to their dad."

At sound of the old loving name all the fight went out of the old man and he sank to his knees on the gra.s.s, sobbing horribly.

They let him alone for a moment, then Betty motioned to Mollie, and together they lifted him to his feet. The sight of his tear-stained, unkempt old face, creased and lined with suffering, but with the wildness gone out of the eyes, stirred a profound pity in the girls and they wished more than anything in the world to make him happy again.

"We are going to take you home, Professor Dempsey," Betty told him soothingly, as with Mollie's help she half led, half carried, him through the woods toward the spot where they had left the boat, Amy and Grace following awed and silent behind them. "And as soon as your boys reach home we will bring them to you. Be careful of this big rock. Ah, here's the boat." And talking all the time, softly and soothingly as one would to a child, Betty at last succeeded in seating the derelict old man in the equally derelict old boat.

The girls tumbled in after him, and with a prayer in her heart Betty pushed off from sh.o.r.e.

That ride back across the river was as weird and unreal as any nightmare the girls had ever lived through. Their queer pa.s.senger, seeming the most unreal of all, was quiet for the most part but occasionally he would sit up and look about him wildly and could only be soothed back to reason by Betty's sweet voice telling him of his boys--Jimmy and Arnold.

Somehow they reached the opposite sh.o.r.e, and, after pulling the boat up among the bushes once more, they started back, the old man with them, to Wild Rose Lodge.

Chapter XXV

The Old Crowd Again

Mrs. Irving, who had been worried by their prolonged absence, met the girls at the door as they stumbled with the almost exhausted old man up the steps of the porch.

At sight of the latter she grew deathly pale, and leaned against the door for support. She felt that all the world was growing black----

"Oh, please, please don't faint!" she heard Betty's young voice calling to her desperately as it seemed from a long distance. "We've depended upon you to help us."

With a great effort she fought off the dizziness and drew herself away from Betty's supporting arm.

"It's all right," she said dazedly. "The shock, I guess. Betty what--who--is that----"

"Oh, please don't ask any questions now," Betty begged feverishly. "Just help us, and we will tell you all about it later. This is Professor Dempsey," she added, turning to the broken old man who stood staring at them uncomprehendingly. "He can have Mollie's and my room, can't he, Mrs.

Irving? and we will bunk somewhere else."

Mrs. Irving nodded automatically, still too dazed by the suddenness of the thing even to think, and they helped the old man into Betty's room and laid him on the bed. The tired, ragged, unkempt old head had hardly touched the pillow before its owner had sunk into a heavy sleep.

For a moment the girls were startled, for it almost seemed as though he were dead, but Betty put her hand on the ragged old shirt above the heart and found that the action was strong and regular.

"Perhaps it is the very best thing that could happen to him," she said softly, and, laying a light cover over him, tip-toed from the room, followed quietly by Mrs. Irving and the other girls.

Once in the other room, with the need for action over, the girls felt weak and spent, and it was only then that they realized that they had been through a terrible ordeal.

In broken sentences they told Mrs. Irving all that had happened and as she listened she more and more appalled at the risk they had run and the danger they had gone through.

"Girls, girls," she cried when they had finished, "I was half wild about you as it was. But if I had known the truth I think I should have gone crazy. Just the same," she added and her eyes shone with pride in them, "it was a glorious thing for you to do--an unselfish, wonderfully courageous thing. I'm proud of you!"

In spite of the fact that they were tired out, the girls insisted upon standing watch and watch that night. They felt that some one should be with Professor Dempsey all the time in case he should wake in the night with his old madness upon him. It was the longest night any of them had ever spent, and the morning dawned upon a hollow-eyed, worn-out set of Outdoor Girls.

"I never," said Betty, looking around at her white-faced chums wearily, "spent such a terrible night in my life. How is the patient?" she added, taking up the subject that had not left their minds for a minute. "Who was in there last?"

"I," said Grace, brushing out her hair, listlessly. "He is still asleep."

That report continued good all morning, and it was almost noon before the ragged, unbelievably unkempt old man on the bed opened his eyes.

The girls had been looking forward to, yet dreading, this minute. It had been decided that only one of them should be in the room with him when he awoke, but the rest were hovering close to the door ready to give a.s.sistance if it should become necessary.

But they need not have worried. The magic of his long sleep, together with the glad news he had heard the night before, seemed to have transformed the man overnight to his old gentle self.

To be sure, he was amazed at his strange surroundings, and looked uncomprehendingly into Betty's face as she bent compa.s.sionately over him.

But all he said was:

"I declare, this is all very strange, young lady--very strange. Would you mind--er--telling me where I am?"

At the tone, even more than the words, the girls felt a wild desire to shout aloud their relief. For the tone was the same, gentle, polite one that they remembered hearing that day when the little man had entertained them in his cabin in the woods.

Then Betty, as gently as she knew how, told him a little of what had happened to him, and the girls could see by the surprise on his face that he had no recollection whatever of the matters of which she was speaking.

"I declare it is most strange--most strange," he declared when she had finished, adding as he looked down and plucked distastefully at his tattered shirt: "And this is the result of my--er--temporary aberration, is it? Ah, but I remember," he sat up suddenly, a gleam of fear in his eyes. "It was when I read of the death of my boys. Something snapped in my brain, I think. You say"--he turned to Betty, grasping her hand imploringly--"you say that my sons are well--that they are coming to me?"

"Yes," said Betty soothingly, pressing him back upon the pillow. "They are well and safe and will be with you soon--in a few days, perhaps."

"Ah," said the little man, submitting to Betty's touch, a happy smile on his lips, "that is good. That is very--very--good--" and with a sigh like a tired child's, he fell asleep again!

"Did you hear what he said?" whispered Betty, her eyes shining as she tip-toed from the room, closed the door softly behind her and faced her awed and incredulous chums. "He's well, girls. He's completely sane again."

"It's a miracle," said Mollie breathlessly.

And so it came to pa.s.s that some little time later four good-looking young fellows, recently in the service of the greatest country on the earth, and one of them still wearing his regimentals, saw a rather unexpected sight as they swung down the path toward Wild Rose Lodge.

On the porch sat an elderly, contented looking man, clad in garments that would easily have accommodated two men of his size--garments belonging to Mollie's Uncle John, and seated about him in att.i.tudes of lazy comfort were four young girls.

These young girls--who were, at least from the standpoint of the four young men, exceedingly good to look upon, were engaged in doing some sort of fancy work. All but one of them, that is; for the fourth, a girl with wavy brown hair and bright brown eyes, pink cheeks, and a dream of a mouth, was reading to the elderly man who sat in the chair of state.

"Gee, Allen," whispered one of the tall youths to the one who still wore the uniform of his country's service, "I feel as though we were crabbing your act. Can't we fellows do the disappearing act----"

But just at the moment the girl with the brown eyes and the pink cheeks looked up, gave one little startled cry, and dropped the book to the porch.

The other girls looked up and then followed a scene that very nearly made the temporarily forgotten and neglected old man on the porch drop out of his chair in surprise.

"Allen!" screamed the girls, all except the brown-haired, pink-cheeked one, who, for some unaccountable reason hung back behind the others. "You perfect angel!"

"Why didn't you let us know you were coming so that we could have been prepared?"

"Oh, isn't your uniform lovely!"