“We are saving this island,” she fairly snapped. “If—if we get all the balsams out it won’t burn.”
“Say! That—that’s an idea!” His face brightened like a sky after a storm.
“I’ll cut. You drag ’em off,” he said shortly.
After that for a full hour it was cut and drag, cut and drag, a seemingly endless task. And the fire grew hotter every moment.
Not even the girl’s strenuous endeavors could keep her from wondering about that boy. Who was he? Where had he come from? Why was he here?
“He works like one who is defending his own home,” she told herself.
Strangely enough there was something vaguely familiar about his movements. “As if I had seen him before. But I can’t have.”
Then a strange and mystifying thing happened, as the boy bent over to pick up his ax which had slipped from his aching fingers, a small square of white fluttered from his pocket to the ground. He was quick in retrieving it but not quick enough. In one corner of this girl’s handkerchief Florence had read the initials, “J. E.”
“Jeanne’s handkerchief,” she whispered to herself with sudden shock. “Where did he get it and why does he keep it?” Strangely enough, at that moment, all unbidden, three words came into her mind, “The Gypsy’s warning.” Then the stern business of the moment claimed her entire attention.
The last, slim end of the island was closest to the fire. The heat became all but unbearable. Twice the boy’s cotton shirt began to smoke. At last he drew it off, and dipped it in water, to put it on again.