* * * * * * * *
Strangely enough, at that moment in a little cabin at Chippewa Harbor, Vincent Stearns, the young newspaper photographer who had given Greta the white flares, lay on his cot looking away at the moon and wondering in a vague sort of way what was happening to his dark-eyed friend up there on Greenstone Ridge.
“Hope she finds some rare greenstones,” he said to the moon. “Hope she is finding adventure, happy adventure.
“Happy adventure.” He repeated the words softly. “Guess that’s what we all hope to have in life. But so few adventures are happy ones.
“And if that little girl’s adventures are not happy ones, there will come the white flare in the night.
“The white flare.” He found himself wishing against the will of his better self that he might catch the gleam of that white light against the skyline. “What an adventure!” he murmured. “Racing away to Lake Ritchie, paddling like mad, then struggling up the ridge in the night to find—”
Well, what would he find? What did he expect to find? He did not know. Yet something seemed to tell him that perhaps at some unearthly hour the flare would stand out against the sky.
* * * * * * * *
Adventure. Having given up thoughts of sleep, Florence was going over in her mind the events of that day.
“The hydroplane,” she whispered. “Who can be coming up here to hide away on the shore of that narrow lake? And why?