"Oh, Alice!" exclaimed Ruth.
"Well, I mean it! I am soaked, and you are, too. Besides, that lightning is awful—and the thunder! I can't stand it—come on. I'm sure he won't eat us!"
But the girls were saved any anxiety by the action of the strange man. Alice was trying to draw her sister toward the cabin, and Ruth, torn between a desire to get under shelter, and fear of the man, was hardly able to decide, when the stranger darted back into the cabin, and came out with an umbrella.
"Oh, he's going to offer it to us!" exclaimed Alice. "That is good of him."
But, to her surprise, no less than that of Ruth, the man called out:
"Come in, and welcome, young ladies. You may stay in this cabin as long as you like. The roof leaks in one place, but otherwise it is dry. I have to go away. Come in!"
And with that he put up the umbrella and hurried off, limping through the rain, but never once glancing back at the girls.
For a moment Alice and Ruth did not know what to do or think. The action was certainly strange. And why had not the man come to meet them with the umbrella, while he was about it? There was some little distance to go, from
