"I heard it chuggin' and I thought that lazy Tony had got a new way of wastin' his time. Tony is all right at writin' letters but he's a lazy bones else ways."
"Who's Tony?" asked Cora as if indifferently.
"He's Jim's side partner. Say, girl, I'll just tell you. I came up here a few weeks ago from a newspaper advertisement. I never knowed Jim Peters before, but if them two fellers think I'm goin' to cook in that hut and never go no place off this dock they're foolin' themselves. They don't know all about Kate Simpson."
Both girls were utterly surprised by her change of manner. Cora was quick to take advantage of it.
"You are quite right," she said. "This is no place for a lone woman, and some day when I have my brother along I will fetch my boat, and show you the big islands about here. It would do you good to get out in the clear—away from these dense woods."
"That it would, and I'm obliged to you miss," said the woman while Bess fairly gasped. "I want to go to one island—Fern Island they call it. Have you ever been there?"
"I know where it is," replied Cora, wondering what the woman's interest in that place might be. "I have been all around it."
"They say it's haunted," and the woman laughed. "It's a great game to put a haunt on a place to keep others off."
"Well, some day when you can leave your work, I'll take you over there," and Cora meant it, for she had not the slightest fear, either of the woman or her rough ways.
Besides, she felt instinctively that the woman's help would be valuable in the possible recovery of her ring and of the lost canoe.