At this man’s heels came a crouching figure that seemed half human and half beast. It had a short, thick body and long arms that nearly reached the floor. Its face was pale as marble, save for a red scar that ran down the left cheek to the corner of the mouth. The eyes were set near together, and they glistened with a savage, cruel light.
Frank stepped between the intruders and the bed, but the boy had seen them, and he sat up, uttering a wild scream of fear, then fell back on the pillow.
“Who are you? and what do you want?” demanded Merriwell, boldly confronting the man and the creature at his heels.
“Never mind who we are; we want that boy, and we will have him!” declared the man. “He can’t escape us this time!”
Frank glanced at the figure on the bed, and then turned back, crying with great impressiveness:
“He can and has escaped you, Bernard Belmont; but he will stand face to face with you at the great bar of justice in the day of judgment!”
“What!” hoarsely cried the man, starting back and staring at the ghastly face of the boy on the bed; “he is dead!”
[CHAPTER XII.—AT LAKE TAHOE.]
Poised like a sparkling gem in a grand and glorious setting of mountain peaks, lies Lake Tahoe, the highest body of water on the American continent.
The sun was shining from a clear sky when Frank Merriwell and Harry Rattleton reached a point where they could look down upon the bosom of the lake, from which the sunlight was reflected as from the surface of a mirror.