She felt keenly alive, standing there in the snow and silence. She knew she was in much better health than that morning when she had first awakened in the little cabin, but it was not alone that. She had learned things during her stay with Antoinette and her brother in their humble home. Subconsciously her mind had stored the value of the simple life they led, of the freshness and cleanness of the life here. Once more standing there she tried to bring the dark past into the light. But it was no use, it only baffled her and gave her that depressed, hopeless feeling. Slowly she turned and made her way from the clump of trees back to the little cabin.
Half way across the clearing a humming noise broke the stillness of the night. She raised her eyes to the stars. An airplane was winging its way across the path of the moon. Gale gave the flying thing no name. She merely stood and watched until it had faded into the west.
For a moment she almost grasped the remembrance of her flight with Brent. Then the memory was gone and she could not recall it. The clouds had seemed ready to break when she looked at the airplane but now her mind was darker than before.
She returned slowly to the cabin and to bed but she could not sleep. All night long she thought of the sense of familiarity she had experienced as she watched the airplane. It must be a key to her past, part of the puzzle of her memory, if only she could fit it into the right place! Along toward dawn she fell into a light sleep but she was up at the first sound from Antoinette and all day she tried to connect an airplane with her thoughts. If only she could remember!
She helped Antoinette with the little housework there was to do, sewed two buttons on her jacket and romped with Toto before luncheon.
After the midday meal Antoinette proposed that she and Gale walk in to the little town where they could replenish the supply of flour and canned goods that was dwindling rapidly. François was at first reluctant to let his sister make the trip, but she finally coaxed forth his permission.
In her coat, the same woolly one that had kept her warm in Brent’s airplane, and one of Antoinette’s close-fitting caps over her curls, Gale started out walking briskly between Antoinette and the leaping, frolicking Toto. The two girls talked gayly, Antoinette learning more and more about this girl who had come so strangely into their life.
It was a good hour’s walk to the little French village where Antoinette and her brother purchased their supplies. There while Antoinette greeted friend after friend and entered little stores to procure their provisions, Gale, with Toto at her heels, went through the little crooked, cobbled stone streets, both of them keenly delighted with the sights. Toto delighted because there were so many little nooks and crannies for him to explore and Gale because every street warranted her a pleasant surprise.
Chapter XIII
UNKNOWN
Brent made many more trips from Marchton to Canada and back again, and each time he had no good news to bring the people waiting so eagerly for a word of encouragement. Gale had disappeared as neatly as if the earth had opened and swallowed her. The wreckage of his plane had been removed from the spot where he had crashed and there remained now only a few trees whose bark had been scraped off by the falling plane to mark the spot. He had visited every nearby farmhouse and personally inquired for news of Gale. To all his efforts he had received the same result—nothing. But Brent was nothing if not dauntless. Not for nothing had he flown thousands of miles, in sun and storm. He had gained a courage and determination scarcely to be equalled. Now he could put his determination to good use. He needed it all to keep him from giving up the search. Give up? He could not! He meant to find Gale. How or where he did not know, but he would find her. He had to. He had learned a lot of things since that night by the hangar when he and Gale had exchanged confidences. He certainly could not give up now when he did not know what had happened to her. Day after day he visited the French towns and farms in the surrounding country.