They were in rather good spirits at first, for now that they were really on the way to doing something, though they were not quite sure what, they felt relieved and almost gay.

But as the distance shortened between them and their destination, a strange depression that they could neither explain nor brush away settled down over them.

Once, Grace, who sat beside the Little Captain in the roadster, sighed rather dolefully and Betty looked at her out of the corner of her eye.

“Do you feel that way too, Gracie?” the latter asked.

“What way?” asked Grace uncertainly.  “That sigh, do you mean?”

“Yes,” nodded Betty.  “You sounded rather mournful and that is exactly the way I feel.  What’s the matter with us, anyway?  Where are our spirits?”

“I suppose we couldn’t expect to feel joyful,” said Grace after a little pause.  “We aren’t going, so far as I can see, on a very happy errand, you know.”

“But I don’t think it is that alone,” said Betty, with a shake of her head.  “I feel as if we were going to see something perfectly dreadful—­”

“Betty,” Grace looked at her in sudden alarm, her eyes wide, “you don’t suppose that the professor could have done anything—­ anything rash, do you?”

“You mean——­” said Betty, hesitating before the ugly word.  “Oh, Grace, you don’t mean—­ suicide, do you?”

Grace nodded and tried hard not to look as frightened as she felt.

“No, I—­ I don’t think so,” said Betty, grasping the wheel with hands that somehow seemed suddenly weak.  “If I thought anything like that had happened I wouldn’t have the courage to go on.”

“Well, I don’t believe I have—­ the courage, I mean,” said Grace, irresolutely.  “Don’t you think we had better go back, Betty?  It’s so lonesome here and—­ and—­ everything——­”

Her voice was rising to something like a wail, and Betty, striving to throttle her own misgivings, spoke in a voice that was intended to be reassuring.

“We wouldn’t think very much of ourselves if we turned back now,” she said.  “And probably we are worrying a great deal about nothing.  He didn’t seem like the kind of man who would do a thing like that.”

Grace said no more about turning back, and they were silent for the rest of the way.  But instead of lightening, the cloud of depression became deeper and more foreboding until even the stout Little Captain began almost to wish that they had not come.

CHAPTER IX

 A visitor

When they came to the scene of what was so nearly a terrible accident a week or so before they found that the big tree which had extended clear across the road was gone and that the underbrush also had been cleared away.

They stopped the cars a little the other side of the path that led into the woods and slowly stepped down into the road.