“Florence,” she said, springing to her feet, “our work here is done. Doctor Prince has told us that our assistance is no longer needed. As for the phan—phantom, Percy O’Hara, we have no right to pry into his affairs. I—I’d like to go down to the camping ground by Duncan’s Bay.” She seemed ready to weep.
“Tonight?” Florence rose slowly to her feet.
“Tonight.”
“All right.” The big girl began stuffing things into her bag. “We’ll be away in a jiffy.”
A half hour later two dark figures, guided only by a flashlight, made their way over the long moose trail leading along the ridge, thence down to the shores of a dark and silent bay. And all the time Greta was thinking of Percy O’Hara, who had charmed thousands upon thousands with his matchless music, hiding away there on the ridge. Once she whispered, “Green eyes, a hundred pairs of green eyes.”
As they neared the shores of the bay, however, her thoughts returned to her good friend Jeanne and their home, the wreck of the old Pilgrim. Once she whispered low, “A barrel of gold.”
Had you chanced to look down upon that narrow stretch of level land on the shores of Duncan’s Bay later that night, you might have spied, hidden away in a shadowy corner, a small tent. Beneath that tent two girls slept, Florence and Greta. For them Greenstone Ridge had become a memory.
They were up at dawn. Their boat, hidden deep among some scrub spruce trees, awaited them. So did a bright and shimmering lake. And beyond this, dark and silent, was their home, the wreck.
“Perhaps Jeanne has come back,” said Florence. “We will row over at once.”
They had covered half the distance to the wreck and were watching eagerly for some sign of life on its sloping decks, when Greta, whose gaze had strayed away to the left, cried out quite suddenly, “Look, Florence! What is that over there?”