“Home!” Florence spoke the word softly. Home had meant so much to her. Like a moving panorama she saw before her twilight scenes at home by the fireplace, bed time and prayer beside her bed with her mother bending over, joyous mornings and sunny afternoons. Home! Ah, yes, home! And perhaps this little girl was going home. Could she stop her? And yet, could she allow her to wander alone in the gathering darkness through those forbidding portals?
The answer came quickly. She dropped down into the path, turned toward the stone gateway, then marched steadily forward until both she and the child were lost to view beyond the rocky pillars.
Had Florence chanced to look behind she might have caught sight of a person following at a distance. A skulking figure it was that moved by quick starts and stops from shadow to shadow. And, had her backward glance been rightly timed, had it come as a sudden last feeble burst of sunlight illumined his face, she would have seen that this person was Bud Wax.
Had she seen him her heart would doubtless have been filled with misgivings and wild questions. Why was the boy following her? Was this a trap? What did he know about little Hallie? What of the land beyond the forbidden gateway?
Since she did not look behind her, but walked straight on, she asked herself no such questions. So the three passed into the mysterious beyond, the child as in a dream, the teacher sturdily on duty bound, the boy skulking from shadow to shadow. Hardly had they disappeared when sudden night came down to close the gate with a curtain of darkness.
CHAPTER X
A MYSTERIOUS PEOPLE
Have you ever stepped out into a night so dark that you could scarcely see your hand before you, and have you, after taking a few steps from your own doorstep, tried to imagine that you were alone in the dark in lands that were strange to you? If you have, then you can imagine the feeling of Florence as she moved forward into the unknown. Scarcely had the second hand on her watch ticked round three times than she found it necessary to follow the child by sound rather than by sight. Such is the darkness that at times fills rockbound mountain valleys.
So, tripping over rocks, splashing into spring fed pools, slipping on damp moss, she made her way forward. Always following the child, always followed by the skulking figure of the boy, she came at last to a sudden turn in the road, and there, just before her, shone a mellow square of yellow light.
“A home!” she breathed.
At that instant there came the baying challenge of a hound. He was joined by two others, and at once the hills were roaring with echoes of their clamor.