Conscious now that some disturbing sound had come to her in her sleep, she shook herself into further wakefulness.
“Strange,” she murmured. “Everything is so strange.”
Indeed it was. The bed on which she and Mary slept was hard, a mattress on the dock. About her, shielding her from the Arctic wind was a tent.
“Tomorrow,” she thought, “we start to the Promised Land.” This land was the Matamuska Valley in Alaska. “Not far now, only a short way by rail. And then—” A thrill ran through her being. They were to be pioneers, modern pioneers, she and Mary, Mark and her aunt. What would life in this new land be?
She had seen much of life, had Florence, city life, country life, the wild beauty of Isle Royale in Lake Superior, and the finished beauty of France were not new to her. But Alaska! How she had thrilled at thought of it! She was thinking of all this when, of a sudden, she raised herself on one elbow to listen. “What was that sound?” she whispered. It was faint, indistinct, disturbing.
Then Mary sleeping at her side, did a strange thing. Sitting bolt upright she said: “Don’t you want to kill him?”
For a space of seconds she appeared to listen for an answer. Then, with a sigh, she murmured, “Oh! All right. Some other time.” At that, she sank back in her place to draw the covers closely about her.
“Talking in her sleep,” the big girl thought. “Dreaming of the little man in black. She—”
There was that sound again, more distinct now. “A child crying in the night.” Florence listened intently.
“It’s such a low cry,” she thought wearily, creeping back among the blankets. “It can’t be anything very much. There has been so much crying.”