With a little gasp the girl closed the small door. Ten seconds later, by peering through a crack, she saw a man cross the small clearing. It was her guard.
“Thanks, little rabbits,” she whispered. “You did me a good turn that time.”
A moment later the man returned across the patch of short grass and once more the girl set herself to listening and watching.
“When the little gray fellows come back to play, I’ll risk it,” she told herself.
As she sat there waiting, feeling the cool caress of the mountain night air upon her cheek, listening, watching, she allowed her eyes to wander away to the half dozen little peaks that formed the crest of Pine Mountain.
“How dark and mysterious they seem in the night,” she thought to herself. “How—”
Her meditations were suddenly cut short. Her eyes had caught a yellow gleam that had suddenly appeared on the very crest of the highest peak of the mountain.
“Wha—what can it mean?” she whispered. “It can’t be—but it is!”
Even as she looked, the yellow gleam blinked out for a second, glowed again, only to vanish, then to glow steadily once more.
The girl’s heart grew warm, her cheeks flushed. Whereas only the moment before she had felt herself utterly alone in an unknown and hostile world, now she knew that on the crest of yonder mountain there stood a friend, her very best friend, Marion Norton. Between her and that peak lay many a long and tangled trail. What of that? That golden glow spoke warmly of friendship.