The girls did breathe a little more freely when the door was locked, but they found themselves wishing even more ardently that the boys would come back.
The window against which the horribly distorted face had been pressed seemed to hold a peculiar fascination for the Outdoor Girls and they found themselves unable to turn their eyes away from it.
"Oh, I wish the boys would come back," moaned Amy, after a few moments more had passed in strained silence. "If anything should happen to them I'm sure I would die."
"Nonsense, Amy," snapped Mollie. "What could one little mad old man do to three big husky soldier boys?"
The words had hardly been spoken when the sound of voices could be heard coming toward the house, and a moment later the boys themselves stamped up on the porch.
"Not a sign of him," said Will in response to the girls' eager questions. "I don't see how he could have disappeared so completely in such a short time."
"We all took different directions, too," said Roy, taking a seat on the couch again and staring fascinatedly at the window. "If all the rest of you hadn't seen it too, I should certainly think I had been mistaken."
"You weren't mistaken," Mollie assured him grimly. "I can vouch for that."
"Didn't one of you girls call out something about Professor Dempsey?" asked Frank, abruptly.
"Yes," said Betty, going over to him and putting an excited hand on his shoulder. "That's the thing that startled us so, Frank. We are sure it was Professor Dempsey's face. But, still, it was so wild and distorted that we really wouldn't feel like contradicting any one who told us it wasn't he," she added slowly. "Do you understand what I mean?"