"Yes. I'll stay around with him, but I'm going to put my shack on the map right under Blowing Rock. I've brought the plans to show you."
Martin took them from his pocket and sat down beside Doris, and while they became absorbed, Nancy was climbing her way up Thunder Trail.
Before she realized that she had come so far, she was in the open, the sunlight almost blinding her. She started back and screwed her eyes to make sure that she saw aright. Not only was she out of the woods but she was on the edge of a trim garden plot; there was a dilapidated cabin just beyond it, and an ancient creature standing in the doorway.
At first Nancy could not make out whether it was a man or a woman. She had never seen any one so old, and the eyes in the shrunken face were like burning holes—caverns with fire in them!
Nancy was too stunned to move or speak. Her knowledge of the hills forbade the usual fear, but a supernatural terror seized her and she waited for the old woman—she decided it was a woman—to make the first advance. This the woman presently did. She turned, and with trembling haste took up a rusty spade by the door; she shuffled toward a corner of the opening and began to dig at a mound that was covered with loose earth. Weakly, fearfully, the claw-like hands worked while Nancy stood fascinated and bewildered. Finally the old woman came toward her and there was a tragic pathos on the wrinkled face that tended to quiet the girl's rising fear. The cracked voice was pleading:
"How did yo' get out?" The words came anxiously and with difficulty, like the words of a deaf mute that had been taught to speak mechanically.
Nancy smiled weakly and looked silently at the speaker.
"Been tryin' to find hit?" the strained voice went on. "Yo' better lie still, Zalie—yo' larned enough, chile!"
And then, because the rigid girl did not speak, the old woman drew nearer.
Nancy, believing herself in the presence of a harmlessly insane creature, rallied her courage and sought to soothe, not excite, the woman.