CHAPTER IV
AT THE SCHOOL AGAIN
"There's only one word worse," said a gloomy voice so close behind themthat Vi clapped a hand to her mouth to keep from crying out. "And that,"the gloomy voice went on, "is _theft_!"
The girls never afterward knew what kept them from breaking loose andrunning away. Probably it was because they were paralyzed with fright.
While they had thought the man was still in the hut he had come softly upbehind them and had overheard the last, at any rate, of what they hadsaid. Billie, as usual, was the first to recover herself.
"Will you take us to Three Towers now?" she asked in a voice that shehardly recognized as her own. "Do you know the way?"
"Yes," he answered, adding moodily, as though to himself: "Hugo Billingsought to know the way."
Billie caught at the name quickly, for she had been wondering what thisstrange person called himself.
"Hugo Billings!" she said eagerly. "Is that your name?"
The man had started on ahead of them through the dark woods, but now hestopped and looked back and Billie could almost feel his eyes boring intoher.
"Did I say so?" he asked sharply, then just as quickly turned away andstarted on again.
"Goodness, I guess he must be a crazy criminal," thought Billieplaintively, as she and her chums followed their leader, stumbling onover rocks and roots that sometimes bruised their ankles painfully. "Isuppose there are some people that are both. Anyway, he must be acriminal, or he wouldn't have been so mad about my knowing his name."
The rest of that strange journey seemed interminable. There were timeswhen the girls were sure the man who called himself Hugo Billings was nottaking them toward Three Towers Hall at all. It seemed impossible thatthey could have wandered such a long way into the woods.
Then suddenly their feet struck a hard-beaten path and they almost criedaloud with relief. For they recognized the path and knew that the openroad was not far off. Once on the open road, they could find their wayalone.
Abruptly the man in front stopped and turned to face them. Once more thegirls' hearts misgave them. Was he going to make trouble after all? Whydidn't he go on?
And then the man spoke.
"I won't go any farther with you," he said, and there was something inhis manner of speaking that made them see again in imagination the tiredslump of his shoulders, the wild, haunted look in his eyes. "I don't likethe road. But you can find it easily from here. Then turn to your right.Three Towers is hardly half a mile up the road. Good night."
He turned with abruptness and started back the way they had come. Butimpulsively Billie ran to him, calling to him to stop. Yet when he didstop and turned to look at her she had not the slightest idea in theworld what she had intended to say--if indeed she had really intended tosay anything.
"I--I just wanted to thank you," she stammered, adding, with a swiftlittle feeling of pity for this man who seemed so lonely: "And if there'sanything I can ever do to--to--help you----"
"Who told you I needed help?" cried the man, his voice so harsh andthreatening that Billie started back, half falling over a root.
"Why--why," faltered Billie, saying almost the first thing that came intoher mind. "You looked so--so--sad----"
"Sad," the man repeated bitterly. "Yes, I have enough to make me sad. Buthelp!" he added fiercely. "I don't need help from you or any one."
And without another word he turned and strode off into the darkness.
After that it did not take the girls long to reach the road. They felt,someway, as if they must have dreamed their adventure, it had all been sostrange and unreal. And yet they knew they had never been more awake intheir lives.
"Please don't talk about it now," begged Vi when Laura would havediscussed it. "Let's wait till we get in our dorm with lights andeverything. I'm just shivering all over."
For once the others were willing to do as the most timid of the triowished, and they hurried along in silence till they saw, with hearts fullof thankfulness, the lights of Three Towers Hall shine out on the roadbefore them.
"Look, I see the lights!"
"So do I!"
"Thank goodness we haven't much farther to go."
"It's all of a quarter of a mile, Vi."
"Huh! what's a quarter of a mile after such a tramp as we have had?" camefrom Billie.
"And after such an experience," added Laura.
"We'll certainly have some story to tell."
"I want something to eat first."
"Yes, and dry clothes, too."
"What a queer hut and what a queer man!"
"I've heard of people being lost before," said Billie, as they ran up thesteps that led to the handsomest door in the world, or at least so theythought it at that moment. "But now I know that what they said about itwasn't half bad enough."
"But not every one finds a hut and a funny man when they get lost," saidVi.
"Well, you needn't be so conceited about it," said Laura, pausing withher hand on the door knob. "The girls probably won't believe us when wetell them."
But Laura was wrong. The girls did really believe the story of HugoBillings and the hut and became tremendously excited about it. At firstthey were all for making up an expedition and going to see it--the onlydrawback being that the chums could not have directed them to it if theywould.
And they would not have wished to, anyway. They had rather good reason tobelieve that Hugo Billings would not want a lot of curious girls spyingabout his quarters, and, being sorry for him and grateful to him forhelping them out of their fix, they absolutely refused to have anythingto do with the idea.
They were greeted with open arms on the night of their return. MissWalters, the much-beloved head of Three Towers Hall, said that she hadbeen just about to send out a searching party for them.
They were late for supper, but that only made their appetites better, andas they were favorites of the cook they were given an extra share ofeverything and ate ravenously, impatient of the questions flung at themby the curious girls.
"Thank goodness the Dill Pickles aren't here," Laura said to Billiebetween mouthfuls of pork chop. "Think of coming home with _our_appetites to the kind of dinners they used to serve us."
"Laura! what a horrible thought," cried Billie, her eyes dancing as shehelped herself to two more biscuits. "That's treason."
For the "Dill Pickles" were two elderly spinsters who had been teachersat Three Towers Hall when Billie and her chums had first arrived. Theirtartness and strictness and miserliness had made the life of the girls inthe school uncomfortable for some time.
And then had come the climax. Miss Walters, having been called away for aweek or two, Miss Ada Dill and Miss Cora Dill, disrespectfully dubbed bythe girls the twin "Dill Pickles," had things in their own hands andproceeded to make the life of the girls unbearable. They had taken awaytheir liberty, and then had half starved them by cutting down on themeals until finally the girls had rebelled.
With Billie in the lead, they had marched out of Three Towers Hall oneday, bag and baggage, to stay in a hotel in the town of Molata until MissWalters should get back. Miss Walters, coming home unexpectedly, had metthe girls in town, accompanied them back to Three Towers and, as one ofthe girls slangily described it, "had given the Dill Pickles all that wascoming to them."
In other words, the Misses Dill had been discharged and the girls hadcome off victorious. Now there were two new teachers in their place whowere as different from the Dill Pickles as night is from day. All thegirls loved them, especially a Miss Arbuckle who had succeeded Miss CoraDill in presiding over the dining hall.
So it was to this that Laura had referred when she said, "Thank goodnessthe Dill Pickles are gone!"
After they had eaten all they could possibly contain, the girls retiredto their dormitories, where they changed their clothes, still damp fromtheir adventure, for comfortable, warm night gowns, and held court, allthe girls gathering in their
dormitory to hear of their adventures, fornearly an hour.
At the end of that time the bell for "lights-out" rang, and the chumsfound to their surprise that for once they were not sorry. What with theadventure itself and the number of questions they had answered, they weretired out and longed for the comfort of their beds.
"But do you suppose," said Connie Danvers as she rose to go into herdormitory, which was across the hall, "that the man was really a littleout of his head?"
"I think he was more than a little," said Laura decidedly, as she dippedher face into a bowl of cold water. "I think he was just plain crazy."
Connie Danvers was a very good friend of the chums, and one of the mostpopular girls in Three Towers Hall. Just now she looked a little worried.
"Goodness! first we have the Codfish," she said, "and then you girls goand rake up a crazy man. We'll be having a menagerie next!"
Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island; Or, The Mystery of the Wreck Page 4
