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 grass, 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 shore.

That ride back across the river was as weird and unreal as any nightmare the girls had ever lived through.  Their queer passenger, 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 shore, 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——­”