"Hullo! what's wanted? Down, Tiger! Behave, Rose!"
The dogs instantly stopped their clamor. The light came through the open door and the glazed window of a little hut perched on a rock overlooking the road. The mules had halted just below this eminence, and Ruth saw that there was a winding path leading up to the door of the hovel. Down this path came the huge figure of a man, with the two dogs gamboling about him in the snow. The occupant of this cabin in the wilderness carried a rifle in one hand.
"Hullo!" he said again. "That's Sim Rogers's team—I know those mules. Are you there, Sim? What's happened ye?"
"Who is it?" whispered Ruth, again, still clinging to Fred's jacket.
"It's—it's the Rattlesnake Man," returned the boy, in a shaking voice.
"Who is he?" asked Ruth, in surprise.
"He lives here alone on the hill. He's a hermit. They say he's crazy. And I guess he is," added Fred, with a shudder.
"Why do you think he's crazy?"
But before Fred could reply—if he intended to—the hermit reached the road. He was an old but very vigorous-looking man, burly and stout, with a great mat of riotous gray hair under his fur cap, and a beard of the same color that
