Surely it was some one running, and it was none of the girls!
Standing erect, listening with her nerves as well as with her ears, Cora waited. That running or rustling through the leaves was very close by. Should she call the girls?
But before she could answer herself, she saw something dart across a big rock that was caressed by a great maple tree that grew over it.
"Oh!" she screamed involuntarily. Then she saw what it was. A man, a wild looking man, with long hair and a bushy beard.
He had stopped just long enough to look in the direction of Cora.
She saw him distinctly. Oh! if he should run toward Bess or Belle!
Hazel would not be so easily alarmed but surely this was a wild man
if ever there was such a creature.
"That is the ghost of Fern Island," Cora concluded. "I must get back to the girls."
She turned and hurried in the direction from which she had heard voices. "If they have not seen him," she reflected, "I will not say anything until we get back to camp."
"I have ten different kinds of ferns," suddenly called Belle, in a voice which plainly said that no wild man had crossed her path.
"I've got eight," said Hazel. "How many have you, Cora?"
Cora glanced at her empty hands. She had dropped her ferns.