"Oh, yes, I will be! Oh I how glad I am that some one is with me—that you are here!"
Cora felt the other's frail body trembling as she put her own strong arms around the shrinking girl. Then Cora peered from the door of the hut. Still that stealthy footstep till the approach of that unknown. Cora felt as if she must scream, yet she held her fears in check—not so much for her own sake as for the other.
Suddenly there was a crash in the underbrush, the crackling of brushes, the breaking of twigs.
"He—he's fallen!" gasped Laurel.
"Tripped over something," added Cora. "Oh, maybe he will turn back now."
Them was silence for a moment and then, to the relief of the girls, they heard footsteps in retreat. Their unwelcome visitor was going away.
"Oh, he's gone! He's gone!" gasped Laurel in delight.
"Maybe it wasn't a man at all," suggested the practical Cora. "It might have been a bear—or—er some animal."
"There are no bears on this island," replied her companion with a wan smile—"no animals bigger than coons, and they couldn't make so much a noise. Besides, I heard him grunt, or moan, as he fell. So it must have been a man."
"Well, he's gone," rejoined Cora, "and, now that he's left us alone I'm going to hope that he didn't hurt himself. He interrupted our supper and now it's time we finished it," and in the dim light of the lantern they ate the coarse food and waited—waited for what would happen next.