“And each step is thick and rough as if it were hand-hewn with an axe. But who would hew planks by hand in this day of steam and great sawmills?”
“Let’s go up. We may be able to see something from the windows.”
Cautiously, on hands and knees, they made their way up the narrow stairway. The platform they reached and the window they looked through a moment later were quite as mysterious as the stairway. Everywhere was the mark of an axe. The window was narrow, a mere slit not over nine inches wide and quite devoid of glass.
Yet from this window they were to witness one of God’s greatest wonders, a storm at night upon the water.
The dark clouds had swung northward. They were now above the surface of the lake. Blackness vied with blackness as clouds loomed above the water. Like a great electric needle sewing together two curtains of purple velvet for a giant’s wardrobe, lightning darted from sky to sea and from sea to sky again.
“How—how marvelous! How terrible!” Petite Jeanne pressed her companion’s arm hard.
“And what a place of mystery!” Florence answered back.
“But what place is this?” Jeanne’s voice was filled with awe. “And where are we?”
“This,” Florence repeated, “is a place of mystery, and this is a night of adventure.
“Adventure and mystery,” she thought to herself, even as she said the words. Once more she thought of the cameo.