Florence and Jeanne had found this trail difficult in broad daylight. Yet her guide, with a sense of direction quite uncanny, led the way through the dark without a single audible swish of brush or crack of twig until, with breath coming quick and fast, Florence parted the branches of a low growing fir tree and found herself looking upon a scene of wild, bewitching beauty.
Round a glowing campfire were grouped a dozen people.
“Gypsies,” she told herself. “All French gypsies!” Her heart sank. Here was bad news indeed.
Or was it bad? “Perhaps,” she said to herself, “they are Jeanne’s friends.”
Whether the scene boded good or ill, it enthralled her. Two beautiful gypsies, garbed in scant attire, but waving colorful shawls about them as they whirled, were dancing before the fire. Two banjos and a mandolin kept time to the wild beating of their nimble feet.
Old men, women, and children hovered in the shadows. Florence had no difficulty in locating the child of the trail who had played with the chipmunk. She was now fast asleep in her mother’s arms.
Florence’s reaction to all this was definite, immediate. She disliked the immodest young dancers and the musicians. The children and the older ones appealed to her.
“They have hard faces, those dancers,” she told herself. “They would stop at nothing.”
Of a sudden a mad notion seized her. These were water gypsies who had deserted the caravan for a speed boat. They had seen Jeanne, had recognized her, and it had been their speed boat that had overturned the rowboat.
“But that,” she told herself instantly, “is impossible. Such a speed boat costs two or three thousand dollars. How can a band of gypsies hope to own one?”