“What on earth are you two girls doing here?” he asked in amazement.
“We are lost,” stammered Lois, beginning to cry again, now that she felt she was safe once more.
“Who are you?” asked the man.
The girls told him.
“And we want to get back to father,” moaned Lois.
“Well,” said the man, “you can’t get back to-night. You have come farther than you realize. My name is Thompson, and I have a shack nearby. You shall both spend the night with us. Mrs. Thompson will make you at home.”
In spite of repeated requests by both girls that they be set on the road home and assurances that they were not afraid to go alone, Thompson shook his head negatively.
“You’ll do as I say,” he said. “I wouldn’t allow a daughter of mine to go prowling through the woods at this time of night. Come with me.”
The girls were forced to obey, for they had no desire to be left in the woods alone.
Mrs. Thompson made the girls comfortable, and showed them a bed in a room at the rear of the house, on the ground floor.