A shadow passed over her brow as she thought of the head hunter. “Terrible man! Where can he be now?”
She thought of the strange black schooner with a deep-sea diver on board. “Some treasure on that old ship. When I’m back I’ll try diving to see what’s there. Might be more important than the wreckers, who stripped the ship, knew.
“All we need,” she whispered dreamily as the drugging odor of balsam and the silence of night crept over her, “all we need is a barrel of gold. One barrel of—”
She did not finish. She had fallen asleep.
CHAPTER XXI
A SONG FROM THE TREE TOPS
Greta Clara Bronson was by nature a musician, an artist, a person of temperament. The dawn of another day found her in no mood for seeking adventure. The troubles of others, if indeed there were troubled ones in these hills, seemed far away.
Having made sure that her companion’s sprained ankle was not a matter of serious consequence, she found herself ready for a day of rest and thought; not serious thought, but the dreamy sort that leads one’s mind, like a drifting cobweb, into unknown lands.
All the long forenoon she lay upon a bed of moss in the sun. At times she dreamed of her home and mother. This seemed very far away. Would she return to it all? Surely, “‘When the frost is on the pumpkin,’” she whispered. Looking up at the sun, she smiled.
For an hour she dreamed of the wreck and of the shady shores of Duncan’s Bay. “Dizzy,” she whispered, “I wonder where he is?” Before leaving the wreck, they had set their pet loon free. He seemed quite able to care for himself. “Probably he’s gone ashore and has laughed his head off at some crazy loon that looks just like him,” she chuckled.
“But Jeanne?” Greta asked herself. “Is she truly happy with those queer gypsy people? How strange it seems!”