Part 23 (1/2)

”Yes, go ahead. Run about as much as you please, but don't get hurt.

There isn't any fancy furniture here to break.”

This was true, for everything in the cabin at Crystal Lake was heavy and strongly made to stand rough handling. So the children could do no harm racing about the cabin.

Soon a merry game was in progress, even Trouble taking part, though he could hardly be said to play it right. His idea was to hide and keep on yelling for some one to come and find him, his voice easily telling where he was. The only thing to be done in his case was to pretend not to know where he was, even if one saw him. This always made Trouble scream with delight, and he would say, over and over again:

”You couldn't find me, could you?”

And of course they always said they couldn't, though they could if they had wished.

So the game went on, Trouble taking his part in it. Finally came the turn of Mary to ”blind,” and as she covered her face and began to count slowly, the others tiptoed into the different rooms to hide. The cabin was built on the bungalow style, with a number of rooms on the first floor, and there were many fine hiding places.

Janet went into a room at the far end of the cabin, a room that no one, so far during the evening, had entered. It was where Uncle Toby was going to sleep.

”No one will find me here,” thought Janet, as she crouched down behind a chair near one of the windows. She looked through the gla.s.s, and dimly saw the dark forest all around the cabin. ”No one will think of coming here,” said Janet to herself.

She cuddled herself into as small a nook as possible down behind the chair, in a place where she could look out through the other rooms and could see the lamplight and firelight in the big living apartment.

It was in this living apartment that Mary was counting with her eyes shut and soon she would call: ”Ready or not I'm coming!” Then she would walk around and try to find the hiding ones.

”But she won't find me,” thought Janet, ”and I can get in home free.”

From the distance Janet heard Mary say she was coming, and then suddenly the little girl was startled by a tapping on the window just back of the chair behind which she was hiding.

At first Janet thought it was the brus.h.i.+ng of some tree branch against the gla.s.s that had made the tapping sound. But when it came again, several times, and very regular, the little girl knew some hand must be doing it.

”Maybe Tom or Ted has gone outside and is trying to scare me,” thought Janet. ”I'll take a peep and see.”

Slowly she raised herself up from her crouching position behind the chair. And then the tapping sound on the gla.s.s came again. Janet looked out and gave a scream as, looking in through the window, she saw the face of a man on which the moon faintly shone.

CHAPTER XV

ON THE SLIPPERY HILL

Janet Martin had only a glimpse of the face of the man looking in through the window at her after he had tapped on the gla.s.s. As soon as he saw some one peering out at him, and as soon as he heard Janet scream--as he must have heard--the man sprang away.

He was soon lost to sight in the woods around the cabin. The moon shone faintly--had it not been for this Jan would never have seen the man's face--but it was not bright enough in the forest to see him after he leaped away from the cabin.

”Oh! Oh! Oh!” screamed Janet. Her voice rang out in the empty room and was heard by Uncle Toby, Aunt Sallie and the children playing hide and go seek.

”What's the matter? What's the matter?” asked Uncle Toby, who was putting wood in the fireplace.

”Oh, it's a man! A man!” cried Janet, running out from Uncle Toby's bedroom into the living apartment where they were now all gathered. ”A man looked in the window at me and he tapped on the gla.s.s!”

”Who was he?” asked Uncle Toby, grasping a heavy stick of wood. Tom, Ted and Harry at once began to think they had better take some sticks, too, in case there might be a fight. ”Was it Jim Nelson?” went on Uncle Toby.

”Sometimes he taps on my window when he comes around by the side path.”

”I--I couldn't see who it was--except that he was a man,” stammered Janet. ”As soon as he saw me looking at him he ran away.”