Nancy could not keep from trembling slightly as she heard the car panting at a little distance and realized that perhaps a moment of real danger was near, in spite of their joking. Elinor, too, felt very much like giving away to a few tremors, but she reproached herself for such weak behavior and held her body as rigid as a stone image while she said sternly in her mind:

“My knees are not at all weak. It’s only the position I am lying in that makes them feel queer.”

A sound as though a heavy foot had been placed on the step outside was heard and then a voice which Billie recognized as that of the one-eyed man said:

“Well, young lady, I suppose you have had about enough of this? We have kept our word, you see, which I judge you found on the paper, as you are still here.”

There was a short silence. Evidently Charlie nodded assent to the supposition and the motion gave full satisfaction, for the voice went on, “Has any one been around, miss? You didn’t hear the sound of any voices, did you, while we were gone? We saw some people in the field as we left. Did they come this way? Speak up, miss.”

Not a heart on the attic floor but thumped as the one-eyed man asked these questions. They had never thought of Charlie’s voice, which was about as deep as a full grown man’s!

A perfectly death-like stillness reigned for a moment. It was plain that Charlie was not going to trust his voice.

“Do not be frightened, SeÑorita,” put in the thin man. “You may speak without fear. Do not weep. Perhaps she did see something. It was not the ghost of the dead man who hanged himself in here, was it?” he added in a low voice.

“Hold your tongue,” said the other man. “Speak up, young woman. Have you no voice left? You’ll not have strength enough to run the car if you go on like this.”

A deep sob reached the ears of the listeners overhead.

Then the alarming thought came to Ben: How was Charlie to run the motor car in case the men insisted on his leaving first? Plainly, it was necessary to get rid of these men somehow. Then they would all make a dash, and he would crank up while Billie jumped in and started the car.

“I’ll have to hear the sound of your voice before I go,” insisted the one-eyed man. “I want to hear you give me your sacred word of honor to keep this little loan of your car a secret. If we find that you have told, and we’ll know it if you have, you and your family will regret it, that’s all. We know how to take our revenge, don’t we, Pedro? So speak up, young woman, and say the words. I promise——”

Another deep sob.

“Come, come. Hold up your head and let me see your face. Say, Pedro, look here; it doesn’t seem quite the same as it did half an hour ago, somehow. Strike a light!”

There was great but noiseless commotion in the attic! What if the men should lift Charlie’s veil!

Since Mary had mentioned “The Musicians of Bremen” an idea had been forming in Ben’s mind and he now hastily communicated it in a low whisper to his neighbor who passed it quickly down the line.

Just as the thin man outside exclaimed in a high sharp tone, “Why, it’s a boy!” Ben whispered, “Ready!”

Immediately the attic was filled with a pandemonium of noise,—the barking of a dog, cries, and screams! It was a truly terrifying combination, Mary’s shrill shriek rising weirdly above the other sounds as though from one in mortal agony.

The two men outside were startled in spite of themselves and dashed away on an uncontrollable impulse, the thin man shouting, “The ghost of the dead man! His evil spirit haunts us!”

“Good work, Ben,” called Charlie softly, after a moment. “Come out, quick! They’ve gone around back of the house. You can come this way, but hurry!”

The adventure had been so exciting and was so quickly over that the girls hardly realized where they were when they found themselves in front of the house, standing in a half-bewildered group in the deepening twilight.

“Nobody shall take any more chances for my motor car,” whispered Billie. “You have all risked your lives enough as it is, and I’m deeply grateful. The men may be around there by the machine, so let’s make a break for the fields and go straight home.”

“No,” replied Ben stoutly; “it would be best for you girls to get away, but Charlie and I will finish the job. Those fellows are cowards, any way, and——”

“But you can’t run the car,” said Billie, rapidly putting on her things, which Charlie had discarded with a sigh of relief. “I’ll have to stay. The other girls must go, though.”

The discussion, however, was ended by Charlie, who had skipped off to reconnoiter and now appeared running at full speed around the side of the house.

“Come on, let’s all go,” he said. “They’ve gone, but they might come back.”

Without a word, the others followed him and jumped into the car, while Ben, who knew a little about motors, began to crank up the machine. Suddenly a voice spoke out of the darkness:

“This looks like a nice little party. Get out of that car, every one of you, or I’ll shoot,” and the sinister looking one-armed man, who appeared to have sprung up from the earth, stood at the side of the automobile with his pistol pointed straight at Billie. “Did you imagine,” he continued, “that a parcel of children could fool a man like me?”

There was no reply to the question. Mary and Nancy were so limp with fear they could not have lifted a little finger if there had been a dozen pistols pointing at them. Elinor might have slipped a ramrod down her back, so stiffly and proudly did she hold herself in that fearful moment. Billie had turned white as a sheet, but she still had strength enough left to make a move to get out when Ben, whose stubborn nature would not even now give up the fight, raised his overgrown, boyish figure from the ground where he had been kneeling, and with a quick motion pressed a piece of glittering steel to the man’s forehead.

“Drop that pistol, or you’re a dead man,” he said in the deepest chest tones he could produce. His voice was still in the tenor stage.

Not even a gentleman of fortune who had lost an eye and an arm in past dangerous adventures could quite keep from shrinking at this extremely unpleasant sensation produced by cold steel against his face, and without a word of protest he dropped the pistol in the road.

“Now, back off,” said Ben, “and don’t stop until you get as far as that tree over there.”

The man retreated, cursing under his breath, and in another instant they were off in the dark.

“We forgot to pick up his pistol,” exclaimed Charlie, as three shots rang out in quick succession.

“But Ben has one,” said Billie, feeling somehow that she had known these nice brave boys for a long time, instead of three-quarters of an hour.

“That was only a monkey wrench,” answered Charlie, laughing.

And Billie was moved with admiration and respect for the slow-speaking, quiet boy, who had twice in so short a time outwitted two very dangerous and experienced adventurers.

It was a splendid ride in the darkness. The fresh salt air swept their faces and set their blood to tingling with a new enjoyment. They had just been through a most dangerous and exciting experience, these young people, and Nancy and Mary were not ashamed to admit that they at least had been very much frightened. But people who have lived always by the sea are used to looking danger calmly in the face.

Half a mile beyond the quiet little harbor of West Haven a lighthouse stood on a small, rocky promontory, and from the shore on a calm day could be seen rows of sharp-pointed rocks thrust out of the water like great black teeth waiting to devour any chance ship which might be blown against them. In bad weather the water about the Black Reefs, as they were called, was lashed and churned into fury and sometimes after a great storm groups of people might be seen hurrying up the cliff path to the life-saving station, while out in the ocean, stuck fast to the teeth of the Black Reefs was a pretty three-masted schooner, perhaps, or a stained and scarred old freight ship, looking very small and helpless in its terrible plight.

Billie, herself, was the only person in the motor car who had not seen a shipwreck on the Black Reefs. She had never even seen one of the September storms when the sea rolled itself into mountainous waves and dashed against the cliffs of West Haven.

As they neared the town, Billie slowed down the motor and turned to speak to her new friends.

“I can’t even try to thank all of you for what you have done for me, but I want to tell you that I think you are the bravest, nicest boys and girls in the whole world, and it was just to be with you that I came back to West Haven to go to school. I was very unhappy to-day because I was afraid that Nancy and Mary and Elinor had forgotten me and the splendid times we had together one summer when I was a little girl——”

“Oh, Billie, we hadn’t forgotten you,” broke in Nancy. “We thought when you joined Belle Rogers’ crowd that you——”

“But I didn’t join them,” Billie interrupted, laughing. “They kidnapped me and never let me out of their sight the whole time. I had almost made up my mind to write to papa to let me go to boarding school, after all. I wanted to know some real girls. I have never had a chance before, you know, and when I talked it over with papa, we decided that all of you were the nicest real girls we had ever known, and I just thought I would spend the winter with Cousin Helen and meet you again, while papa was in Russia.”

The three girls blushed with pleasure at this gratifying compliment.

“We were just as glad to see you, too, Billie,” said Elinor. “It was all a foolish mistake. But we shall be friends now, and you must join the Blue Birds. It’s the Sophomore Club, and we have lots of fun.”

“Thank you, I’d love to,” answered Billie, as gratefully and modestly as if she had been paid the highest honor in the land. “I’ve been thinking,” she added, “that we’d better keep all this business about these men secret. You know Cousin Helen; if she hears about it, we’ll probably have to store the motor car. She’ll never let me out of her sight again.”

“We’ll keep it secret,” cried the others in a chorus.

So this very sensational adventure, which would certainly have spread like wildfire through the town of West Haven once it got out, remained a profound secret.

Some good came of it, however, since it served to unite four old friends. But we have not seen the last of the mysterious individuals who borrowed Billie’s motor car.