"Mr. French!" he repeated. "He's incapable of setting a mountain on fire and he is as gentle and courteous as possible." There was another laugh. This time it came from within the house and Billie and the doctor recognized the voice of Mr. Lupo. "You're a friend of Lupo, I see," remarked the doctor looking very hard at the man. "I guess that's none of your affair," answered the other angrily. "And nothin' agin' him nor me either, for the matter o' that." The doctor lifted his eyebrows. "I'd like to hire two or three guides. Are there any about?" "There ain't no guides connected with this here establishment goin' to go huntin' for crazy Frenchy," announced the man roughly, "if that's what you're wantin' with them. Most of 'em is fightin' the flames anyhow." The doctor sat silently for a moment looking at the mountaineer, whose eyes shifted uneasily under his steady gaze. "I would advise you and your friend, Lupo, not to meddle too much in this affair," he said, as the inn keeper with a snarling laugh shuffled back into the house. Billy turned the automobile and they went slowly down the street. "If we were in the Kentucky or the Virginia mountains, I should call this a feud," remarked the doctor, "but up here there is something more than a revenge for a quarrel two generations old that creates a situation of this kind. That man has got some ugly reason for withholding his guides. He's a sinister looking wretch, and no man with a shifting pair of eyes can be trusted around the corner." "But what are we to do?" asked Billie. "If we can't get guides,--we'll just go alone," answered Dr. Hume. "I think we'll have to find your Mr. French, Miss Billie, seeing that a lot of cut-throats are trying to keep us from doing it." CHAPTER XIV. CHANCE NEWS. Billie and the doctor were indeed in something of a quandary as to what to do about Phoebe's father. It was evident from further inquiry that the tide of general opinion had been turned against Crazy Frenchy; not one soul could be interested in the search for him, not even after an offer of liberal pay. "He ain't no good anyhow," one man said. "He and his daughter holds themselves above common people even when they don't have enough to keep body and soul together. They lives on property that ain't theirs by rights, and they don't belong in this section of the country. The father's crazy and the neighborhood will be glad to git rid of him." "An' I'd jes' like to mention," added another man, "the people as takes up for 'em ain't goin' to find it no ways a easy proposition." Certainly Lupo had enlisted the sympathies of the entire village in his own behalf.