"Do you think we had all better go?" asked Grace nervously. "Perhaps the four of us would frighten him--" "No, we will all go together," said Betty decidedly. "There is nothing to be gained by standing here talking about it. Come on, girls." She started across the cleared space and the girls followed slowly. The little cottage looked deserted and forlorn and the dreary aspect of it served to increase the girls' uneasy sense of disaster. Betty knocked gently on the door which had, upon that other occasion not so very long ago, been hospitably opened to them. But, though they waited breathlessly for a response, none came--the house was as silent as a tomb. "Do it again, Betty. He might be asleep or something." suggested Mollie, with a glance over her shoulder at the quiet woodland. "Knock harder this time." Betty obeyed, but with no better success than the first time. Everything was as silent as before. "Isn't there a bell, I wonder?" suggested Amy, wishing ardently that they were back on the road once more. "Perhaps your knock isn't loud enough for him to hear." "We might tap on the window," suggested Grace. "If I use my ring on the window pane he surely ought to hear that." She started to suit her action to the words when an exclamation from Betty made her pause. The latter had tried the door and found to her surprise that it gave to her touch. "The door is unlocked," she said. "I don't believe the professor is in here at all and if he has gone into the woods to hunt his butterflies and beetles I am sure he wouldn't mind our going inside. What do you think?" She was about to push the door open, but Grace detained her with a nervous hand on her arm. "Oh, I don't think we had better go in, Betty!" she cried. "You know what we were speaking of in the car. Suppose we should find that he has--that he has--" "That he has what?" asked Amy, her eyes wide. "For goodness' sake, what do you mean, Grace?" Betty tried to stop her, but Grace hurried on heedlessly. "He may have committed suicide," she cried, adding, in response to Mollie's and Amy's cry of horror: "You know he must have been desperate enough to do anything, poor old man, out here all alone." At the conviction in Grace's tone, Betty felt her own nerve slipping. She did not want to go into that silent house any more than the other girls did. Every instinct in her commanded that she run from the place to the commonplace safety of the road. She was afraid of what she might find on the other side of that unlocked door. And yet-- "I'm going in," she cried, and, suiting the action to the word, pushed the door quickly open and stepped over the threshold. Emboldened by her example, the other girls followed and stopped short with a cry of dismay. They had not found what they feared--but something almost as bad.