Connie Danver’s Uncle Tom attended the lighthouse, and, living there all the year around, had become as much of a fixture as the island itself. Connie loved this uncle of hers, and had told the girls enough about him to rouse their curiosity and make them very eager to meet him.

   The girls walked on in silence for a little way and then, as they came to a path that led into the woods, Laura stopped suddenly and said in a dramatic voice:

   “Do you realize where we are, my friends? Do you, by any chance, remember a tall, thin, wild-eyed man?”

   Did they remember? In a flash they were back again in a queer little hut in the woods, where a tall man stood and stared at them with strange eyes.

   Laura and Vi started to go on, but Billie stood staring at the path with fascinated eyes.

   “I wonder why,” she said, as she turned slowly away in response to the urging of the girls, “nothing ever seems the same in the sunlight. The other night when we were running along that path we were scared to death, and now——”

   “You sound as if you’d like to stay scared to

   death,” said Laura impatiently, for Laura had not Billie’s imagination.

   “I guess I don’t like to be scared any more than any one else,” Billie retorted. “But I

    would

   like to see that man again. I wonder——” she paused and Vi prompted her.

   “Wonder what?” she asked.

   “Why,” said Billie, a thoughtful little crease on her forehead, “I was just wondering if we could find the little hut again if we tried.”

   “Of course we couldn’t!” Laura was very decided about it. “We were lost, weren’t we? And when the man showed us the way back it was dark——”

   “The only way I can see,” said Vi, who often had rather funny ideas, “would be to have one of us stand in the road and hold on to strings tied to the other two so that if they got lost——”

   “The one in the road could haul ’em back,” said Laura sarcastically. “That’s a 

 Prev. P 25/122 next