“And now it has come to this,” Florence said to herself as she stirred upon the rustling corn husks of her bed in the deserted cabin which formed her temporary hiding place.
Once more her mind went back to the broken sequence of events. It had been agreed that she should cross over the mountains and stay with a friend of Mrs. McAlpin who lived at the back of Pine Mountain.
“And I will keep you posted by means of the Silent Alarm!” Marion had exclaimed.
Until now the Silent Alarm had been little more than a plaything. Now it was to be of some real use. Florence’s older brother, who had been in the great war, had told her how, by the use of signal lamps, flashlights and the Continental code he and his comrades had been able to signal to one another even across a point of the enemy’s trenches. He had explained the matter to her in detail, had also taught her the code. Often at night, from some distant hillside, with a flashlight and the barrel of a dismantled shotgun, Florence had signalled to Marion at the cabin. And Marion, with some similar simple apparatus, had signalled back.
The simple-minded, superstitious mountain folks, having seen these strange stars blinking away against the mountain, had whispered weird tales of witch light and of seeing old women riding a cloud at night. All this had greatly amused the girls and they kept their secret well.
“Now,” Marion had said to Florence when she started on her mission, “when you get to your destination back there, I’ll climb this side of the mountain to the crest and we’ll get in touch with one another by signal fires. After that, when the big news comes, I’ll climb the mountain again. If it comes in the daytime I will use a heliograph; if by night, some form of tube and a flashlight.”
As you have already seen, by the aid of Marion’s beacon fire on the mountain’s crest, they had established communications. But under what unexpected conditions this was done! Florence had been the prisoner of strange men whose motives in holding her were unknown. This she had flashed back to Marion. She had added a warning not to try to come to her.
Bearing this startling news, Marion had retraced her steps to Mrs. McAlpin’s cabin.
“And here I am a fugitive,” Florence sighed as she sat up among the corn husks. “A fugitive from whom? And why? The message will come and I will not be able to deliver it. The coal tract will be lost to the Inland Coal and Coke Company and our hopes for a schoolhouse will be blighted.
“But no!” she clinched her fist. “It must not be! There is yet a way!”