CHAPTER XVI
THE MAN AND THE UMBRELLA
For a moment the man stood in the doorway of the cabin, staring at Ruth and Alice standing there in the drenching rain. They had recognized him at once as the man whom they had seen run out of the old barn—the limping man who had fled down the moonlit road when he espied them on the bridge.
Whether or not he knew the girls, they did not stop to consider. Certainly they were dressed differently than on either of the occasions they had encountered him; but that might not obviate recognition.
"Come—come on back to the woods," whispered Ruth. "We—we don't want to meet him, Alice."
"No, I suppose not," agreed Alice, "and yet," and she seemed to shiver, "we ought not to stand out in this storm when shelter is so near, no matter who that man is."
"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.