“Oh,” she breathed, dropping a hand gently on his arm, “I’m glad! Because I—I believe in God. I hope He outwits evil men. And I—I’ve sort of felt that He saw that those men were going to carry us off, you and me, so He sort of winked, don’t you know, like the man in the moon seems to do, and He said: ‘I’ll have those kidnapers take that boy and girl to the island where the girl has spent her summers as long as she can remember.’ And so, don’t you see? Here we are.”
“That,” said Red with conviction, “that’s great!”
Reaching for a large spruce log, he threw it on the fire. When the shower of sparks had subsided, he turned to her eagerly.
“What place is this? Tell me about it, all you can. We—we may be parted at any moment. And I—I need to know a lot. In the end they may get us, at least one of us, and the other must be able to make his way out, in the end, to see that justice is done.”
At the thought of the kidnapers he strode to the door and opened it a crack.
“Safe enough for the present.” His tension relaxed. “It’s snowing, snowing hard. They’ll never find us here in a snowstorm.”
“You are right,” she replied quietly. Her eyes closed. They remained closed so long that Red thought her asleep. But again they opened. “You are right, they will not find us in the snow. You should know about this place. I will tell you all I can. And then—then we must rest, for long, hard hours are before us. It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to escape from this place in November. But we must try.”
“What place is this?” the boy asked once more.
“What? You don’t know our island?” The girl’s eyes opened wide. “This,” her tone became impressive, “this is Isle Royale!”
“She expects me to be greatly surprised,” Red said to himself. Out of respect for her desire he did his best to show great astonishment. The truth was that the part of social science that deals with the world we live in had interested him very little. He was all for chemistry, physics, mathematics. He had no more notion where Isle Royale was than the Little Diomede Island, or King William’s Land. He had never heard of it. “But she evidently thinks it a great place,” he told himself, “so great it shall be.”