CHAPTER VIII
MYSTERIOUS YOUTH
Early next day, Florence and Jeanne rowed across the bay to a small dock marked, “Monument Rock Trail.”
After tying up their boat they took up the trail that, now winding beneath sweet smelling cedar and balsam, and now passing over a swamp spanned by shaky logs, at last brought them to the foot of a ridge. Here they started climbing toward the crest.
Some half-way up they made an abrupt turn, to find themselves facing a mass of towering rock that, like the tall chimney of some burned building, rose to the very tree tops.
“Monument Rock,” Jeanne whispered. Something of that spell cast over her by the “Dean of the Island” recurred now. “It’s like a headless man, that rock,” she said in awed voice. “A man with hands folded across his knees.”
“That’s just like the legend!” Florence exclaimed.
“Oh, do you know it?” Jeanne was pleased.
“It goes like this,” Florence began. “In the early days Indians seldom came to live here. It was, they said, the home of all island gods. If men came here to live they would meet with disaster.”
“Did any of them ever try it?” Jeanne asked.
“Yes,” Florence smiled and nodded. “This one! ‘Sitting Cloud’ they called him. He’s still sitting, you see.”