“What’ll we do now?” she asked in a discouraged voice. “I can’t even see the main road.”
“Listen!” Connie commanded suddenly.
Vevi stopped short. For a minute she thought her friend wanted her to listen to the wail of the fog horn. Then, she too heard the sound that Connie’s keen ears had detected—a crunch, crunch, crunch of gravel.
“Someone’s coming,” whispered Connie.
The girls huddled motionless by the trunk of a huge hard maple, peering into the mist. Gradually they made out a shadowy, moving figure.
“A man,” whispered Vevi, half afraid.
Through the mist, the figure appeared very large, almost a giant.
The man was very close to the little girls before he saw them. He pulled up quickly, exclaiming with a hearty laugh:
“Avast, there! Nearly ran you down in this pea-soup fog, didn’t I?”
The elderly man had such a friendly voice that Connie and Vevi lost all fear. He was tall, with broad, slightly stooped shoulders.