She was about to push the door open, but Grace detained her with a nervous hand on her arm.

“Oh, I don’t think we had better go in, Betty!” she cried.  “You know what we were speaking of in the car.  Suppose we should find that he has—­ that he has——­”

“That he has what?” asked Amy, her eyes wide.  “For goodness’ sake, what do you mean, Grace?”

Betty tried to stop her, but Grace hurried on heedlessly.

“He may have committed suicide,” she cried, adding, in response to Mollie’s and Amy’s cry of horror:  “You know he must have been desperate enough to do anything, poor old man, out here all alone.”

At the conviction in Grace’s tone, Betty felt her own nerve slipping.  She did not want to go into that silent house any more than the other girls did.  Every instinct in her commanded that she run from the place to the commonplace safety of the road.  She was afraid of what she might find on the other side of that unlocked door.  And yet——­

“I’m going in,” she cried, and, suiting the action to the word, pushed the door quickly open and stepped over the threshold.

Emboldened by her example, the other girls followed and stopped short with a cry of dismay.  They had not found what they feared—­ but something almost as bad.

The room, which had been so neat and orderly when they had last seen it, was now the scene of such utter confusion as one might only hope to see depicted in a cubist’s nightmare.

The animal skins which had adorned the walls had been torn down and lay in a tattered heap upon the floor.  The shelves upon which had rested the professor’s botanical specimens had been swept clean and their contents also were scattered about the floor.

The bench upon which the girls had sat and partaken of the queer little man’s hospitality was overturned and the one chair in the room was upside down on top of it.  The whole room looked as though a cyclone—­ or a maniac—­ had been at work.

The girls stared for a minute and then drew closer together as if seeking protection from some unseen menace.  They had some vague conception of what had taken place here in this lonely little cottage.  The elderly and already nervous professor, reading the tragedy of his sons’ death, all alone perhaps, with no one to comfort or restrain him, had lost his mind, temporarily at least, and had found an outlet in ruthlessly destroying everything which came within reach of his hand.

And if this were so, might he not even now be hiding about somewhere, watching them, perhaps?

This thought seemed to strike the girls at the same time, for after peering for a second about the room, they turned and made a concerted dash for the door.

Once outside the room, in the reassuring sunshine, they turned and looked at each other sheepishly.  Then Betty wheeled about and started for the door again.

“Betty, you are never going back into that place again?” cried Amy wildly, holding to her skirt.  “I won’t let you!  Do you hear me?  Come back here!”