“Yes,” said the Little Captain truthfully.  “I feel,” she added slowly, as though searching for words, “I feel as though the woods belonged to somebody and that we were sort of—­ sort of—­ intruding.”

“Why, Betty!” said Grace, staring at her, “what a funny thing to say.”

“I suppose it is,” said Betty, shaking off the illusion with a shrug of her shoulders.  “I am getting foolish in my old age I guess.  We shall all feel better when we get something to eat.”

“If we ever do,” said Grace gloomily, adding as a sudden turn in the woods shot them deeper into the gloom of it:  “Do be careful, Betty.  I feel as though we were going over a precipice.”

But Betty was too busy keeping the road to listen to her.

“Look behind,” she directed Grace, “and see if Mollie is following close to us.”

“She is right behind,” reported Grace, as two eyes of light shot their glare in her eyes.  “She is following us closer than a poor relation.”

Betty giggled at this, and then for a long time—­ or at least it seemed a long time to their strained nerves—­ they went on in silence, following the winding road wherever it led and getting deeper into the forest with every moment.

Then suddenly something loomed up dark against the shadows only a few hundred feet ahead of them, and with a great feeling of thankfulness they realized that they had reached their destination.  Directly ahead of them stood Wild Rose Lodge.  They had arrived!

But just as they were about to break into wild jubilation something happened that tightened Betty’s hand on the wheel and made Grace cry out with dismay.

Out from the shadow of the lodge a second shadow detached itself, a hunched up, bulky, fearful shadow that seemed neither beast nor man, but a combination of both of them.

For a moment, while the girls watched, paralyzed with fright, the thing seemed about to spring into the path of the moving car.  But in another instant it turned, wheeled, and disappeared into the thick bushes about the house.

Then and only then did Betty recover presence of mind enough to stop the car.

“Betty!  Betty!” cried Grace in a horrified whisper, grasping Betty’s hand as it clung to the wheel.  “What was it?  Oh, what was it?”

“I don’t know,” Betty answered mechanically.  “I only know it was horrible.”

Then quite suddenly and without warning Grace broke down and cried.

CHAPTER XV

 Wild roses

“We will go into the house,” Mrs. Irving answered to their concerted cry of “What shall we do?” “Whatever it was that has frightened us has disappeared now, and we shall certainly be safer inside the house than out here.  Come on, girls, I have the key.”