A great wave of loneliness swept over Florence as on the morrow’s chilly dawn she bade good-bye to her beloved boon companion and to Sandy, then saw them mount the steps of their plane and watched that plane soar away into the blue.
“Isle Royale is hundreds of miles away,” she thought to herself. “They will be back, I’m sure enough of that. Airplanes are safe enough. But when shall I see them again?”
It was not loneliness alone that depressed her. She was experiencing a feeling of dread. She had dug deeper into the lives and ways of some fortune tellers than they could have wished.
“They are wolves,” she told herself, “and wolves are cowards. They fight as cowards fight, in the dark.” She told them off on her fingers: the dark-faced gypsy woman was one, Madame Zaran a second, Marianna Cristophe, the voodoo priestess, a third. And there were others.
“And now,” she thought, “I am alone.”
Alone? No! Her spirits rose. There was still Frances Ward. “Good old gray-haired Frances Ward!” she whispered. “Everybody’s grandmother. May God bless her!”
It was Frances Ward who helped her over the first difficult hurdle of that day. Sandy was gone. She must write her own stories. This seemed easy enough, until she sat down to the typewriter. Then, all thoughts left her.
“My dear, try a pencil,” Frances Ward suggested after a time. “A pencil becomes almost human after you have used it long enough; a typewriter never. And why don’t you write the story of your little lost girl, June Travis? Use no names, but tell it so well that someone who knew her father will come to her aid.”
“I’ll try.” Florence was endowed with fresh hope.
With four large yellow pencils before her, she began to write. The first pencil broke. She threw it at the wall. The second broke. She threw it after the first. Then thoughts and pencils began flowing evenly.