And the tears ran down the cheeks of the man.

“Uncle Pierre, you must give up your lonely life here,” said Giant, after a pause.  “You must come home with me.”

At this suggestion the hermit, for the man was nothing less, shook his head vigorously.  He was certainly queer—–­talking sometimes quite rationally and at others in a rambling fashion.  He told how he had come to make his home in the mountains, how he had once visited a large city and purchased three parrots and brought them to the wilderness, and how one parrot had died and another had been shot.

“The third is still with me,” he continued.  “But I am tired of him—–­he is driving me crazy.”

“He shall never bother you again—–­if only you will come home with me,” said Giant.  “You must come home—–­mother wants to see you.  All your books are there.  Don’t you remember how you used to love those books, Uncle Pierre?”

“Yes! yes!” The man’s eyes began to glisten.  “And so you want me to go home?  You look like a good boy, Guillaume.”

“Why does he call Giant Guillaume?” whispered Whopper to Snap.

“It’s the French for William,” answered the leader of, the club.  “Say, but doesn’t this beat the Dutch!”

“If giant can get this uncle of his to go home perhaps they’ll be able to get possession of that fortune of one hundred thousand francs,” was Shep’s comment.  “I hope they can get it, for Mrs. Caslette certainly deserves the money and needs it.”

Giant continued to talk to the hermit, and gradually the other boys joined in the conversation.  The young hunters soon saw that Pierre Dunrot’s mind was very hazy on some matters while clear on others.  Since running away from the Caslette home he had lived in the mountains near the lake and he had taken every precaution to keep other folks away from him.  He had taught his parrots to scare newcomers, and had played ghost by rubbing phosphorus and other shining substances on his clothing and cap.  He said he owned several canoes, hidden along the lake shore, and in these he sometimes went fishing, usually at night.

“Well, this solves the mystery of the ghost anyway,” said Snap.  “Won’t folks around Fairview be astonished when they hear of it?”

“I don’t believe we ought to let folks know all the details,” answered the doctor’s son.  “It would hurt Giant’s feelings and also his mother’s.  We can simply say we caught the ghost and he proved to be a harmless old man with a talking parrot, and that we shot the parrot and the man left the vicinity of the lake after his parrot was dead.”  And so it was agreed.  Of course the boys’ parents heard the real story, but that was as far as the tale circulated.

The boys went into the log hut and there saw how the hermit had been living in his primitive way.  In a corner he had a box filled with ammunition for his gun and also a large collection of hooks and lines.  He had a plate, a cup, and a kettle and pan, and that was all.  He ate from a block of wood and slept on a heap of cedar boughs.  His clothing was almost worn to rags.