“Now who do you suppose she is?” broke from Bee, as the old woman disappeared.

“Ask me something easier,” shrugged Patsy. “She’s a regular old witch, isn’t she? Dad must know who she is. Funny he never said anything about her to us. Suppose we trot back to the house and watch for him. He promised, you know, at breakfast, to be back from Palm Beach in time for luncheon so as to take us down to the boathouse this afternoon. He had a business appointment with a man at the Beach. That’s why he hurried away so fast this morning.”

Suiting the action to the word, the Wayfarers started back through the orange groves, discussing with animation the little adventure with which they had recently met.

“That woman was Spanish, of course,” declared Beatrice. “Could you understand her, Mab, when she trailed off into Spanish, all of a sudden? She said ‘ingrata.’ I caught that much. What does it mean?”

“It means ‘the ungrateful one,’” Mabel answered. “I couldn’t understand much of what she said. I caught the words, ‘Camillo, Manuel, Eulalie,’ and something about a spirit torturing somebody—Eulalie, I suppose she meant. ‘Madre de Dios’ means ‘Mother of God,’ or ‘Holy Mother.’ It’s a very common form of expression among the Mexicans. I believe this woman is a Mexican.”

“We know who Eulalie is. By Manuel she must have meant the Manuel Fereda who died just a little while ago,” said Bee reflectively. “But who in the world is or was old Camillo? And what did he hide? What made her call us ‘white-faced thieves’? What is it that we’ll never find? Will somebody please answer these simple questions?”

“Answer them yourself,” challenged Patsy gaily. “We’ll be delighted to have you do it. You know you are fond of puzzling things out.”

“It sounds—well——” Bee laughed, hesitated, then added: “Mysterious.”

“Exactly,” warmly concurred Patsy. “We’ve actually stumbled upon something mysterious the very first thing. I knew, all the time, that we were going to find something queer about this old place.”

“I don’t think there’s anything very mysterious about a tousle-headed old crazy woman,” sniffed Mabel. “She certainly didn’t act like a sane person. Maybe she had delusions or something of the sort.”

“Perhaps her name is Camillo,” suggested Bee, her mind still occupied with trying to figure out to whom the name belonged.

“No.” Mabel shook her head. “Camillo is a man’s name, not a woman’s. She might have meant her husband or her brother. Goodness knows whom she meant. I tell you, she’s a lunatic and that’s all there is to it. If we hadn’t been armed with four big sticks she might have laid hands on us.”

“Well, Uncle Jemmy’s snake sticks were some protection, anyhow,” laughed Eleanor. “I’m going to keep mine and lug it around with me wherever I go. I may——”

A wild shriek from Mabel left the sentence unfinished. Walking a pace or two ahead of the others, Mabel had almost stumbled upon a huge black snake, coiled in a sunny spot between the trees. Quite as much startled as she, the big, harmless reptile uncoiled his shining black folds in a hurry and slid for cover.

“Oh!” she gasped. “Did you see him? He was a whopper! And I almost stepped on him! He might have bitten me.”

“Black snakes don’t bite, you goose,” reassured intrepid Patsy. “He was probably more scared at the yell you gave than you were to see him. He must be the same one Uncle Jemmy saw this morning.”

“Maybe he’s been raised a pet,” giggled Eleanor. “We may get to know him well enough to speak to when we fall over him coiled up on various parts of the estate. If you ever get really well acquainted with him, Mab, you can apologize to him for yelling in his ears.”

“First find his ears,” jeered Mabel, who had sufficiently recovered from the scare to retaliate.

“Our second adventure,” commented Beatrice. “Wonder what the next will be.”

“Nothing more weird or exciting than luncheon, I guess,” said Patsy. “There! We forgot to pick those oranges we were going to take to Auntie.”

“Let’s go back and get them,” proposed Eleanor.

“Oh, never mind. I dare say there are plenty of oranges at the house,” returned Patsy. “Auntie won’t mind. We’ll go down to the grove to-morrow and pick a whole basketful for her.”

By this time the Wayfarers were nearing the house. Rounding a corner of the building they spied Mr. Carroll some distance down the drive. He was sitting in his car engaged in conversation with a white man who stood beside it. Both men were too far away from the girls for them to be able to make out plainly the stranger’s features. They could tell little about him save that he was tall, slim, dark and roughly dressed.

“That must be the new man,” instantly surmised Patsy.

Pausing, she shaded her eyes with one hand, to shut out the glaring sunlight, and stared curiously at the stranger.

“Can’t tell much about him,” she remarked. “There; he’s started down the drive. Now we’ll find out from Dad who he is.”

The stranger, having turned away, Mr. Carroll had started the car and was coming slowly up the drive. Sighting the group of white-clad girls he waved to them.

“Hello, children!” he saluted, as he stopped the car within a few feet of them. “Where have you been spending the morning? Want to ride up to the house?”

“No, thank you,” was the answering chorus, as the girls gathered about the automobile.

“We’ve been exploring, Dad,” informed Patsy. “Is that the new man? I mean the one you were just talking to.”

“Yes. I met him at the gate. He had been up to the house looking for me. His name is Crespo; Carlos Crespo. He’s a Mexican. He tells me he used to work for old Fereda. That he was practically brought up on the estate.”

“Then he’s the very man we want!” exclaimed Beatrice eagerly. “He’ll be able to tell us about the Feredas.”

“I doubt your getting much information from him,” returned Mr. Carroll. “He seems to be a taciturn fellow. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t very favorably impressed by him. He acted sulky, it seemed to me. I’m going to give him a trial, because it’s so hard to get a white man for the job. I can’t afford to let this one slip without giving him a chance. If I find him balky, and ungracious to your aunt and you girls, I’ll let him go. He says he knows nothing about automobiles, but a great deal about horses.”

“Oh, well, we don’t want him as chauffeur, anyway,” declared Patsy. “You and I can do all the driving. He’ll be handy when we go on our trip into the jungle. He can attend to the horses. Very likely, when he gets used to us, he’ll be fairly amiable. He can’t be any more snippy and disobliging than John was last summer while we were at Wilderness Lodge. He was positively hateful to us. Of course, that was all on account of his loyalty to that horrid Rupert Grandin. If this Carlos man proves honest and dependable, we sha’n’t mind if he sulks at first. He’ll probably get over it as he comes to know us better. We had an adventure this morning, Dad.”

Patsy straightway left the subject of the new man and plunged into a colorful account of their meeting with the strange old woman.

“Do you know who she is, Mr. Carroll? Did you ever see her?” questioned Mabel eagerly.

“No.” Mr. Carroll shook his head. “She must be the woman one of my colored boys was trying to tell me about the other day. He described the cottage you’ve just mentioned and said a ‘voodoo’ woman lived there who was ‘a heap sight crazy.’ He claimed he saw her out in her yard late one night ‘making spells.’ I didn’t pay much attention to him, for these darkies are full of superstitions and weird yarns.”

“We’ll ask Carlos about her,” decided Patsy. “That makes two things we’re going to quiz him about; the ‘voodoo’ lady and the Feredas. When is he to begin working for you, Dad?”

“He’ll be back this afternoon. I’m going to set him to work at clearing up the stable. It’s a regular rubbish shack. I’ll give him a gang of black boys to help him. I’m anxious to have it put in trim as soon as possible. To-morrow I must go over to the stock farm and see about getting some horses for our use while here. I’ll take Carlos with me and then we’ll see how much he knows about horses.”

“We’d better be moving along. We promised Miss Martha to be back in plenty of time for luncheon,” reminded Mabel.

“I’ll see you girls at the house,” Mr. Carroll said. “I’m going to take the car to the garage. We’ll hardly need it this afternoon. The Wayfarers are such famous hikers, they’ll scorn riding to the beach,” he slyly added.

“Of course we are famous hikers. Certainly we intend to walk to the beach,” sturdily concurred Patsy.

“Scatter then, and give me the road,” playfully ordered her father.

Moving briskly out of the way of the big machine, the chums followed it up the drive at a leisurely pace.

“Well have to change our gowns before luncheon.”

Eleanor ruefully inspected her crumpled white linen skirt, plentifully stained with orange juice.

The others agreeing, they quickened their pace and reaching the house hurriedly ascended to their rooms to make the desired change. As usual Mabel and Eleanor were rooming together. Patsy and Bee shared a large airy room next to that occupied by the two Perry girls. Miss Martha roomed in lonely state in a huge, high-ceilinged chamber across the corridor from the rooms of her flock.

“I don’t care whether or not this Carlos man acts sulky,” confided Patsy to Bee when the two girls were by themselves in their own room. “I’m going to beam on him like a real Cheshire cat. He’ll be so impressed by my vast amiability that he’ll be telling me all about the Feredas before you can say Jack Robinson. I’m awfully interested in this queer family and I simply must satisfy my curiosity. Do you really believe, Bee, that there is a mystery about them?”

“I don’t know whether there’s any mystery about the Feredas themselves,” Bee said slowly. “That old woman may or may not be crazy. I was watching her closely all the time we stood there. At first she was just suspicious of us as being strangers. It was your saying that we were living at Las Golondrinas and that your father owned the property that made her so furious. She had some strong reason of her own for being so upset at hearing that.”

“Maybe she used to be a servant in the Fereda family and on that account can’t bear to see strangers living here in their place,” Patsy hazarded.

“I thought of that, too. It would account for her tirade against Eulalie. I believe there’s more to it than that, though, else why should she call us thieves and go on as she did?”

Bee reflectively repeated the question she had earlier propounded.

“That’s precisely what we are going to find out,” Patsy said with determination.

“But you know what your aunt said,” Bee dubiously reminded.

“Don’t you worry about Auntie,” smiled Patsy. “When we tell her at luncheon about our adventure she’ll probably say we had no business to trespass. You let me do the talking. I sha’n’t mention the word ‘mystery.’ I’ll just innocently ask her what she thinks the old witch woman could have meant. She’ll be interested, even if she pretends that she isn’t. Last summer, at Wilderness Lodge, she was as anxious as we for the missing will to be found. If there is truly a mystery about Las Golondrinas, Aunt Martha will soon be on the trail of it with the Wayfarers. Take my word for it.”