“Goodness me!” gasped Cologne.

But Dorothy, who was the only one near the thing, simply dropped the rake and stood aghast—­too dumbfounded to utter a syllable!

“What is it?” begged Cologne.

“A WINDOW BRUSH!” she gasped, at the same moment stooping to pick up the beast—­the thing with the straight, long black hair that stood up in fierce bristles!

[Illustration:  “A WINDOW BRUSH!” SHE GASPED. Dorothy Dale’s Camping Days Page 84]

“But the eyes!” asked Tavia.  “I saw terrible eyes!”

“Might have been imported fire flies,” answered Dorothy.  “I believe Jack has a penchant for odd bugs!”

“Oh, isn’t that too mean!”

“And Jack’s good cartridges!”

“But the brush is all right,” declared Cologne.  “We just needed a window brush to make the camp outfit complete.  But don’t let’s tell the boys,” she pleaded hastily.

“Oh, no!” chimed Tavia and Dorothy.  Then all three in turn took the rope route down to the lower floor.

CHAPTER IX

A STRANGE MEETING

For several days after the “hunt” the girls kept up the joke on themselves.  Time after time they threatened to let Jack, and his friend Percy, guess the truth, but Tavia, the most to be feared, did manage to keep the laugh purely feminine.

Dorothy and Cologne were gathering berries this morning, while Tavia ran off to a spot where she declared she could get the better kind of fruit, better than any they had yet secured.  She turned in back of the big barn, then ran over behind the ice-house, and then she smelled apples, ripe apples.

“There are harvest apples around here, somewhere,” she told herself.  “I simply must find them.”

From tree to tree she scampered along until she was out in the lane that ran into the next estate.

“That’s a road,” she was thinking.  “And there’s a man.”

Glancing around to see if she could discern Dorothy or Cologne, Tavia had a sudden thrill of terror.

“I didn’t know I had gone so far,” she thought, “and that man is coming this way.”

Something familiar about the manner in which the stranger advanced toward her attracted her attention.

“Looks like that man!  It is he!  The fellow who stopped the hay-wagon runaway!”

She was still frightened, but a trifle more at ease, since she recognized the man in the big slouch hat.  “Whatever could have brought him here?” she asked herself.  The next moment she was glad—­glad that Cologne and Dorothy were out of reach.

“Oh, I’m not afraid of him,” she thought.  “Perhaps he knows I’m here——­”

He was almost up to her.  Yes, it was he—­the same queer smile lurked about his face, and he had that indefinable air—­was it attractive, or only different?

“Good morning, Maud Muller,” he said doffing that unlimited hat.  “I’m so glad to see you alone.”