The morning had been chilly. A cold wind swept in from black waters. But now the sun was up. Gentle breezes, like fairies’ wings, brushed her cheeks. On a level space beneath her, thimbleberry blossoms lay like a blanket of snow. Away to the right a rocky slope flamed all golden with wild tiger lilies.
“It—it’s like a fire,” she told herself, gazing into her own half burned out campfire.
There was something about an open fire that takes us back and back to days we have never truly known at all, the days of our pioneer ancestors.
To this slender girl on this particular morning the crackle of the fire seemed a call from some long-forgotten past.
Their camp lay within the shadow of a great rock. The fire whispered of good fellowship and cheer. The day before had been a long one. Her muscles were still stiff from that long tramp. As she sat there gazing into the narrow fiery chasm made by half burned logs, she fell into a state of mind that might be called a trance or half a dream.
As her eyes narrowed it seemed to her that the fiery chasm expanded until at last it was so high she might step inside if she willed to do so.
“So warm! So bright! So cheery!” she whispered. “One might—”
But what was this? With a startled scream she sprang to her feet.
“Florence! It was Florence!” she cried aloud.
Then, coming into full possession of her faculties, she stood and stared.