“Oh, please don’t ask any questions now,” Betty begged feverishly.  “Just help us, and we will tell you all about it later.  This is Professor Dempsey,” she added, turning to the broken old man who stood staring at them uncomprehendingly.  “He can have Mollie’s and my room, can’t he, Mrs. Irving? and we will bunk somewhere else.”

Mrs. Irving nodded automatically, still too dazed by the suddenness of the thing even to think, and they helped the old man into Betty’s room and laid him on the bed.  The tired, ragged, unkempt old head had hardly touched the pillow before its owner had sunk into a heavy sleep.

For a moment the girls were startled, for it almost seemed as though he were dead, but Betty put her hand on the ragged old shirt above the heart and found that the action was strong and regular.

“Perhaps it is the very best thing that could happen to him,” she said softly, and, laying a light cover over him, tip-toed from the room, followed quietly by Mrs. Irving and the other girls.

Once in the other room, with the need for action over, the girls felt weak and spent, and it was only then that they realized that they had been through a terrible ordeal.

In broken sentences they told Mrs. Irving all that had happened and as she listened she grew more and more appalled at the risk they had run and the danger they had gone through.

“Girls, girls,” she cried when they had finished, “I was half wild about you as it was.  But if I had known the truth I think I should have gone crazy.  Just the same,” she added and her eyes shone with pride in them, “it was a glorious thing for you to do—­ an unselfish, wonderfully courageous thing.  I’m proud of you!”

In spite of the fact that they were tired out, the girls insisted upon standing watch and watch that night.  They felt that some one should be with Professor Dempsey all the time in case he should wake in the night with his old madness upon him.

It was the longest night any of them had ever spent, and the morning dawned upon a hollow-eyed, worn-out set of Outdoor Girls.

“I never,” said Betty, looking around at her white-faced chums wearily, “spent such a terrible night in my life.  How is the patient?” she added, taking up the subject that had not left their minds for a minute.  “Who was in there last?”

“I,” said Grace, brushing out her hair, listlessly.  “He is still asleep.”

That report continued good all morning, and it was almost noon before the ragged, unbelievably unkempt old man on the bed opened his eyes.

The girls had been looking forward to, yet dreading, this minute.  It had been decided that only one of them should be in the room with him when he awoke, but the rest were hovering close to the door ready to give assistance if it should become necessary.

But they need not have worried.  The magic of his long sleep, together with the glad news he had heard the night before, seemed to have transformed the man overnight to his old gentle self.