"Well," he said, the emotion within him making his voice sound stern and forbidding, "what is it you wish? It is not raining to-day as it was that other time." He gazed significantly up at the cloudless sky seen in little blue patches through the trees, and the girls flushed, partly from embarrassment and partly from anger. Somehow, they had not been prepared to have him take this attitude, and they resented it.
For a moment they stood miserably tongue-tied. Even their usually quick-witted Little Captain seemed suddenly to have been stricken speechless. They were just about to turn and run when Mollie saved the day for them.
Pushing forward through the group she confronted the man on the door step.
"Vous êtes Paul Loup, n'est-ce pas, monsieur?" she said in a clear voice, gazing up at him fearlessly.
While the girls gasped at her temerity a most astounding thing happened. The man dropped the frying pan and it clattered to the floor, its contents spilling out greasily. While they looked he seemed to crumple, shrivel, and his eyes stared at them glassily out of his white mask of a face.
"Mon Dieu!" he cried hoarsely, staggering back into the shack. "You have found me! But I swear to you I did not kill him. Mon Dieu, I could not kill my brother!"
CHAPTER XXI
A STARTLING TALE
Hardly able to believe that they were actually living this weird thing, the girls crowded into the shack after the stricken man and found that he had sunk upon a bench and covered his face with his hands.