Just as if in answer to her worrying problem, the fog lifted, revealing before her in startling clearness the natural gateway that led to the horseshoe valley at the head of Laurel Branch.
“The gate,” she breathed. “The gateway to that mysterious valley where strange people live without visiting the outside world, the valley from which men do not return!” Her heart was all a-tremble. Her shaking knees obliged her to drop suddenly upon an inviting rock.
At once her keen mind was at work. She had come farther than she thought and she should turn back at once. Then, too, that gateway held for her an irresistible fascination. Did she hope from this point of vantage to catch some glimpse of the life of those strange beings who lived beyond the gate? Was some good angel whispering to her soul some of the hidden things of the future? Who can say? Enough that she sat there alone while the dull shadows deepened.
It did not seem strange to her that her thoughts at this moment should turn to the little girl, Hallie, who had been so mysteriously thrust into the life that centered in the old whipsawed house. Indeed, she had often enough associated her with this same stone gateway and had wondered if after all she had been brought through this very portal to the outside world.
Wherever she may have come from, Hallie had grown to be the life of that old brown cabin. She had come to them dressed in a water-soaked scarlet dress and a mud smeared tam that shone bright even in their terrible disarray. The bright colors had suited her so well that they had dressed her so ever since. Closing her eyes, Florence could see her now.
“Like a scarlet bird fluttering from branch to branch of an old tree,” she mused as she saw her moving from room to room. “How we’d miss her if someone came for her!”
Imagine her surprise when upon opening her eyes she saw, not twenty yards before her, down the creek, the very person of whom she had been thinking.
Suppressing a cry of surprise, she waited and watched. Walking slowly, as if in a trance, Hallie passed within four feet of her without seeing her, then marched straight on toward the rocky gateway that lay between her and the hidden valley.
At once Florence’s mind was in a whirl. Her lips parted to call the child back, but no sound came forth.
What should she do? Evidently something had happened to the child. She was in a daze again. Perhaps the old fever that had wiped out her memory had returned. Had memory accompanied it? Was she now groping her way back to her own home?