now took the lead and led them over tangled underbrush, stones and
foot-bruising rocks, to his strange little dwelling.

"It's a house, it's a house!" cried Grace thankfully, as they hurried
after the little man. "I guess somebody will have to wring me out when we
get inside. I'm soaked through!"

"Goodness, why don't you tell us something we don't know?" grumbled
Mollie, but nobody was listening to her. They had reached the house and
the man had swung the door open hospitably.

"Step inside, step inside, do," he urged with a nervous gesture that
reminded the girls once more of the proverbial hen. "You will find it dry
at least, and I will have a fire for you in a hurry. Just a moment till I
get some wood--just a moment--"

And while he rambled on, suiting his words with quick nervous action, the
girls crowded inside the cottage and looked about them curiously.

The room they had entered was large and scrupulously neat. At first glance
it seemed a queer combination of hunting lodge and museum of natural
history. The rough clapboards and beams of the ceiling and walls had never
been plastered, and this very crudity seemed somehow to give the room an
air of warmth and home-likeness that was very inviting.

Hung on the walls were several fairly large skins of animals, a gun or
two, and over the huge open fireplace, which very nearly covered one end
of the room, hung the magnificent head of a buck.

On the wall opposite the fireplace was a set of rudely-erected shelves,