Scarcely had she made this astonishing discovery when she rounded a curve in the stairway and came in sight of a square of light. This distant illumination, the natural light of day, coming from the outside, seemed to beckon her on.
Then of a sudden it all came to her. “A tunnel!” she exclaimed. “Not the entrance to a mine, but a tunnel, a tunnel through this narrow peak of the mountain. Oh, joy! I’ve found the way out!”
In her eagerness she plunged down the stone stairway at a rate which threatened to send her pitching headlong. But sure-footed athlete that she was, she kept her balance and in another moment, panting, quite out of breath, she threw herself upon a huge flat rock that, lighted by the last rays of the setting sun, seemed a nugget of pure gold.
The scene her eyes gazed upon was of matchless beauty. The crests of the mountains, still beamed upon by the setting sun, glowed like so many domes of fire, while farther down the lower hillsides and valleys were shrouded in impenetrable shadows broken only by the silver thread of a stream that idled down a valley.
Suddenly the girl sprang to her feet. The whole thing had come to her in a flash. Wishing to be left alone, the mysterious people at the head of Laurel Branch had cut a pass through the solid mountain peak at a narrow place. They alone knew of it. Through this pass they carried the produce from their rough little farms to the coal mines far, far below. There they bartered them for shoes, salt, calico, and whatever their meager existence demanded.
“And this,” she told herself, “is the way the missing peddler and the one-armed fiddler have gone. Being wanderers by profession, they have gone through this pass and never been seen again by the people at the mouth of Laurel Branch.
“And that,” she exclaimed, quite overcome by the thought, “that means that these people at the head of Laurel Branch are honest folks. They are not robbers and murderers. I had hoped it might be so. It did not seem possible that old Job could sit there by the fire, spelling out the words of his Bible, then lay the grand old Book aside to go out robbing and killing.”
Then the girl did a strange thing. Relighting her candle, she picked her way over the rocks back to the entrance to the tunnel, then slowly, with thoughtful mind and careful tread, began ascending the stone stairway. She was going back.
* * * * * * * *
In the meantime, down at the mouth of Laurel Branch, in the heart of the laurel thicket, the low murmur of voices increased in volume. They were coming—the clan was gathering. Gaunt old men with white beards were there, men who had fought in the Civil War; middle-aged men who had packed a gun in the Anson-Rankin feud of twenty years before; and beardless boys who had never fired a shot except at squirrel or possum. One name was on every tongue, that of Florence Ormsby.