“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?”

   “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 

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