The two girls kept up their rapid walk until within a few hundred feet of the drive that led from the main road to the cottage occupied by the Grahams. Then they slowed up a little as they saw an automobile approaching ahead of them. The machine also slowed up somewhat as it neared the drive. Suddenly Hazel exclaimed, half under her breath:
“It’s going to stop. I wonder what for?”
“Yes, and there’s something familiar in that man’s appearance,” Katherine said slowly. “Why——”
She did not finish the sentence, for the automobile was so near she was afraid the driver would hear her. But there was no need for her to say what she had in her mind to say. Hazel recognized the man as soon as she did.
“Be careful,” Katherine warned. “Don’t let him see that we know him. Just pass him as you would a perfect stranger.”
But they did not pass the automobile as expected. Although slowing up, the machine did not stop, and for the first time the girls realized the probable nature of the man’s visit to Stony Point.
“O Hazel!” Katherine whispered; “he’s turning in at the Graham place.”
“I bet he’s come here to warn them against us,” Hazel returned.
“It must be something of the kind,” Katherine agreed, and then the near approach to the automobile rendered unwise any further conversation on the subject.
The girls were within 100 feet of the machine as it turned in on the Graham drive and found that they had all they could do to preserve a calm and unperturbed demeanor as they met the keen searching gaze of the squint eyes of Pierce Langford, the lawyer from Fairberry.