Once more she paused to stare at the fire.
“Do you know,” she said at last, “that the finest impulses in life often lead to ruin? Take that one desire for change, for risking something we hold dear for some other thing that lies beyond us. If it is not properly directed, it may ruin us.
“No habit ever formed is so hard to break as the habit of gambling; not even the habit of excessive drinking. Go ask some man who has battled both habits after each has become his master. He will tell you.
“And yet, in our cities to-day, boys and girls, some of them in their early teens, are frequenting the worst type of gambling houses and risking all: money, jewels, their very honor, on the turn of a wheel, the flip of a card.
“Strangest of all, they allow some crooked scoundrel to spin the wheel or flip the card.
“There was a girl,” she stared hard at the fire, “a very beautiful girl, from a rich and cultured family, who gambled once and lost. To-day, in her own sight at least, she stands disgraced.
“And because I know her, because she is kind and good in spite of her father’s wealth, I am striving to help her. For, after all, what matters most in life is our own estimation of ourselves. If you feel that your life is ruined, that you face everlasting disgrace, what does it matter that the world bows, or even applauds? It is the judgment handed down from the throne of one’s own soul that counts most of all.
“This girl—she is hardly sixteen, a mere slip of a thing with wistful blue eyes—as I said, belongs to a rich family. They have a cottage up here on this very bay, I am told, and she is here now. Yet I have not seen her. She does not know I am pulling for her, that I have resolved to retrieve that priceless trinket and return it to her.
“Life is often that way. While we work, or play, even as we sleep, there are those in the world who are thinking of us, striving to help us, acting the part of fairy godmothers to us. Is it not wonderful?”
“But these rubies?” Florence asked in a puzzled tone. “If those people are so very rich, cannot they forgive the loss of one valuable plaything? And did it not belong to the girl, after all?”
“No,” replied Miss Weightman, “it did not belong to the girl. There’s the rub. And you misjudge rich people if you think they do not prize their least possessions. Perhaps they prize them more than do the poor or the moderately rich. That is why they are rich. Their bump of ownership is well developed. Their hands and hearts were shaped to grasp and hold. At times this grows into selfish greed and thousands of poor people suffer for it.
“The three rubies, set in the strangest manner, were part of a rare collection gathered from the corners of the earth only after years of search. It is little wonder that the owner was indignant when it was broken into.
“The collection was in the girl’s home. She had access to it. In a moment of bravado, at her chum’s suggestion, she slipped about her neck a chain, to which the jewels were attached by a sort of pendant.
“Some other fancy seized her and she promptly forgot the jewels still gleaming at her throat. A telephone rang. She answered it, consented to join a party of her school friends, and was whirled away into one of those wild nights that too often end in disaster.
“The gambling place they entered was Oriental. At least those who appeared to run it were Japanese men. Back of them was an American, a professional gambler.”
She paused.
“Last night I saw that man.”
“On—on that island!” Florence stared.
“I am sure he is the man. But I want him less than the jewels. I am not on duty. This is my vacation. I am doing this on my own time.”
“Why?”
“Desire for a professional triumph, perhaps. Besides, as I said, I like the girl.”
“Getting back to that night,” the lady cop went on after a pause, “the place that girl and her friends entered was one of those that are quite typical in some big cities. Secret passages, peculiar knock, and all that. And then bright lights, whirling wheels, gleaming balls. All dazzling, and dangerous.
“The little girl gambled with the rest. She won. The narrow eyes of an Oriental had spied that priceless pendant. He knew its value; resolved to play for it.
“For a long time the girl won. Her pockets bulged with money. Her companions applauded. She would break the bank. Her eyes shone. Her cheeks were flushed. Her hands trembled as she placed her wagers.
“But she didn’t break the bank.” The lady cop sighed as she stared at the dying fire. “They never do, except in cheap fiction. Instead, she began to lose. She lost rapidly. Soon all her money was gone. Still the mad gambling craze was upon her. She borrowed and lost again. She offered her I.O.U. It was accepted. Once more she lost.
“At last she gave up in despair. Then the Oriental’s eyes became mere slits as he demanded:
“‘Pay.’
“‘But how am I to pay?’ she asked in despair.
“His slim brown finger pointed to the three rubies that gleamed like three red eyes at her throat.
“It was the first time she had thought of them for hours. Scarcely knowing what she did, she unhooked the chain and left the rubies as a pledge.
“There were other places to visit. There was dancing far into the night.
“She awoke at ten o’clock the next morning with a sense of guilt and fear. She thought of the pendant.
“In horror, she phoned her friends. They promised to go to the place and redeem the pledge.
“There was no longer such a place. In the night the gamblers had folded their tents like the Arabs and silently stolen away. They were in possession of a priceless bauble. They would make the most of it.
“That,” she concluded, “was the last seen of the three rubies in their Oriental setting. Where are they now? A reward was offered for their return. No answer. The police and highly paid private detectives have been on the trail. They have found nothing. Only last night I saw the man I suspect. I must make the most of a great opportunity. I must return the jewels. Then I will get that man!”
Those words sounded strange, coming as they did from a woman’s lips. Yet, as Florence looked into those flaming eyes she did not doubt that the lady cop would make good.
“But how?” she asked herself. “How?” She was destined to ask that question many times in the days that were to come.
Miss Weightman threw fresh fuel on the fire and hung a pot of water over it to boil. Soon they were sipping tea and munching strangely delicious biscuits.
As they sat listening to the steady beat of the rain on the skylight of that mysterious cabin, Florence allowed her eyes to wander from corner to corner of the place as she speculated upon the possible motives that might induce one to erect such a home.
“May belong to old Indian days,” she told herself. “Or, since we are near the border, it may have been a smuggler’s cabin.”
Neither of these solutions satisfied her. She was about to ask the lady cop what she knew concerning its history, when she heard the sound of a voice, rising above the storm.
“Rollin’ along. Just rollin’ along.” It was the voice of a girl. “Just rollin’ along. Just singin’ a song.”
“That,” said Florence, “is Sun-Tan Tillie.”
“And who is Sun-Tan Tillie?” asked her hostess with evident interest.
“She is Turkey Trot’s sister.”
“And who is Turkey Trot?” The young lady seemed amused.
“They are native people here—run a tourist camp; rent boats; catch minnows, and all that. Tillie’s a dear.”
“What is she doing in the rain?”
“I’ll ask her.” Springing to the door, she threw it open.
“Yoo-hoo!” she shouted. “Yoo-hoo! Tillie! What are you doing?”
“Just rollin’ along,” Tillie came back with a laugh.
That expressed it. She was out rowing in the rain. To her inevitable bathing suit had been added a yellow slicker and a black rubber hat.
“Tell her to come in and get warm,” said Miss Weightman, joining Florence at the door.
Florence obeyed instructions. Tillie acquiesced readily, so the three of them might soon have been seen sitting before the fire.
They had not talked long before Florence discovered the motive behind the lady cop’s interest in Tillie.
Tillie had lived here all her life. She knew every nook and cranny of the islands, points and bays. More than that, she knew a great deal about the inhabitants of Gamblers’ Island and Erie Point. It was plain to see that this information was given out freely enough, and would prove of great service to the lady cop in her future movements.
But Miss Weightman was not, as you may have learned, a totally selfish person. A friendship to her was never one-sided.
There was born in that strange cabin, on that rainy afternoon, a loyal little club of three friends: the lady cop, Florence and Tillie, which was to lead to many a secret meeting, for the most part in this very cabin, and many an undertaking which in the end was to result in benefit to all.
For Florence, the days that followed were filled with glorious adventure. The wind, the sun, the forest and the water of that north country have moods for every hour. Florence, the strong, healthy, joyous child of nature, had a mood to match each change.
There were days when sky and water were gray, and the forest full of shadows. At such times Florence wandered far into the forest’s depths to sit and wonder about many things. What was this world she lived in? Who had created it? What were these creatures called human beings that had been allowed to wander for a time upon its surface? Why were they not like horses and dogs and monkeys? Or were they very different from these, after all?
“Yes, yes!” she would cry out to the trees that appeared to ask the questions. “They are different! They think! Think! Do you think, you trees? Do you think?” she would demand of a whisking chipmunk. The answer never came except in that still small voice that was never far away. That voice whispered, “Only men think.”
When the sky cleared and the waters sparkled, she was another person. No problems came to her then. Enough that she was alive; that all the world lay spread out before her. Then all her being called for action.
And to Florence, as long as water was near, action meant oars and a boat. To her the very touch of an oar, the lift and fall of a tossing wave, imparted a magic charm. Her splendid muscles responded to the touch of water on the tips of her oars as the robin responds to the first beam of the morning sun.
Oars, a boat, and away. Sometimes they entered little land-locked bays where spotted perch lay fanning the water among the pike weed. Again, they sought out a great submerged rock, beneath whose shadows the black bass lurked.
Often, too, they left rod and reel untouched to watch a mother duck and her young busy themselves at the task of gathering the day’s supply of young frogs, bugs and snails.
There were wild, windy days, too, that seemed to shout at the wanton spirit of youth that was hers. This seemed always a challenge. Leaving Petite Jeanne to sit by the fire and dream of her beloved France, she would push her frail craft off from the shore to battle winds, waves and foam for hours on end.
As the wind rose and screamed at her, she would turn her face to it, let her hair fly wildly out, and scream back in wild defiance.
At such times as these, it seemed to her that she must have lived before, that for years on end she had battled winds and waves.
There are those who believe that we live our lives many times; that in some new form we return to earth to face life’s problems anew. Florence knew of this belief. As she battled the elements, it pleased her to assume the role of a Norseman’s bride. In fancy, riding at the head of some sturdy crew, she faced the battling waves of the fierce Atlantic and entered dark caves at night, to sit by a great roaring fire munching hard bread and venison roasted over the coals.
Florence Huyler’s love of nature amounted almost to a religion. And who will say that she might not have found a less desirable subject for devotion?
What is sweeter and finer than the heart of the forest, what purer than the soul of a crested wave?
For Petite Jeanne, too, woods and water held a great charm. Only her manner of responding to it differed. She lay for hours on the warm, sandy beach beneath a great umbrella, half asleep, dreaming. She, too, wandered in the forest. From these wanderings she returned in a pensive mood. These trees, these winding paths, reminded her of the forests of France. They whispered all too loudly of many happy days spent on the edge of those forests with the gypsies.
On a certain day Florence learned in a forceful manner just what the little French girl’s feelings were toward the strange people of her adoption. They were rowing past the end of a private dock which extended some distance into the waters of the bay, when Petite Jeanne suddenly cried out:
“Oh look! Look! Stop! Let me read it!”
Florence looked in the direction indicated, then stared at her in astonishment. She saw before her only a large post, part of the dock, which rose some three feet above the water. On the post was no note, sign or any other manner of writing that might be read.
Yet Petite Jeanne seized an oar to turn them about and bring their boat up close to the post.
Then for the first time Florence saw what had attracted her companion’s attention—three twigs pinned together by a small nail and fastened securely to the post.
To the uninitiated this would have seemed the work of a playful child. To Jeanne it spoke volumes. Even Florence understood enough of its meaning to cause her worry.
“Now she will know,” she whispered to herself.
The three sticks were a gypsy “patteran,” a part of the sign language left by these wandering people at every crossroad.
“See!” exclaimed Jeanne. “There are gypsies about. And oh! they are French gypsies!” She clapped her hands. “Only in France do they make a patteran like that.
“See! I will read it. They say they are three; a man, a woman and a little girl. They have gone up the bay and will stay to-night at a small island.”
Florence marveled that so much could be told by three crossed sticks. Still, she did not doubt the French girl’s reading.
Yet more astonishing was Jeanne’s attitude toward the whole matter. She appeared bubbling over with joy. Such a smile illumined her face as had not been there for weeks.
“But, Jeanne,” said Florence, “do you not fear the gypsies? Once you were kidnapped and nearly killed by them.”
“Oh—” Jeanne spread her hands, then pretended to blow a feather from her fingers. “That is all long ago. In spirit I am still a gypsy. And the gypsies live, not for the past, not for to-morrow, but for this day only. This day is quite enough.
“Besides,” she added after a moment, “I do not know fear as many do. Gypsies are not afraid. They love life so much that danger, even death itself, is forgotten. See! I must tell you a story; then you will understand.”
“In France, at one time,” Jeanne began, as she settled back in her place and Florence rested on her oars, “the gypsies were treated as outlaws. They were hunted from province to province. Many were hanged on trees. Perhaps—” She shrugged her shoulders. “Perhaps this was their own fault. They may have behaved badly.
“All this did not rob them of their love for life. They danced and sang all the same.
“Sometimes they had rifles and bullets. One time they had none. A company of soldiers were stealing upon them through the forest. They were expected at midnight, when a young man, Bratu Vaicu, who was in love with the old chief’s daughter, said to him:
“‘This is the time Tinka promised to marry me.’
“‘Spoken like a brave gypsy!’ exclaimed the chief. ‘Let the wedding go on.’
“Danger meant nothing to these gypsies when a bridal feast and a dance were at hand. They kindled fires. The women prepared the feast.
“Stan and Marga decided to be married, too. Two other couples joined them. Four couples, four weddings in all. What a night of joy for a gypsy camp!
“They cleared a space among the trees. Old Radu took down his fiddle. He began to sing. They all started dancing, doing the tarantella, the most beautiful dance in the world.”
“Yes, the most beautiful,” Florence agreed.
“Shots sounded in the distance,” Jeanne went on, in a tone that was musical, dramatic. “The shots did not disturb the gypsies. Bullets meant death. But what was death? Were they not living now as they had never lived before?
“The dance grew wilder. Shots came closer. Bullets whizzed by. Still they danced.
“A soldier peered through the branches. He expected to see grim faces and muzzles of rifles. Instead, he saw laughing eyes and flashing heels. What did it mean? He did not understand.
“He was joined by another, another, and yet another. A beautiful gypsy girl saw them. She seized one soldier and drew him into the dance. Others followed. Soon all the soldiers were dancing.
“Morning found the soldiers without swords or rifles. Who cared? They had found true happiness. They would join the gypsies. And they did.
“So you see,” Jeanne ended with a sigh, “by their very love of life, their disregard for danger and death, they won more abundant life. But surely you can see, too, that gypsies are not really afraid.
“Neither am I. If there are gypsies from France in these forests, I wish to see them, to speak their language, to hear them speak my own beloved tongue. In this strange land we have a bond of brotherhood.”
“So that is the way she feels about it!” Florence thought in some surprise. “Then I must find her some gypsies.”
She did find them, and that very soon—the same three who had left their patteran on the dock post. She lost them, too, only to be found by them long weeks afterward under the most unusual circumstances.
In the meantime, there was the rowboat and water that was like glass. She rowed on and on down the bay until the cottages, the store, the ancient sawmill, the dock, were all but specks in the distance. Then, with a fir tree on a point as her guide, she rowed straight for their cabin.
They ate their lunch on the beach that evening. Then Jeanne went for a stroll along the shore.
Florence pushed her boat out into the bay and rowed toward the open lake. She loved this spot. No small lake could have so won her affection. Here in this land-locked bay she was always safe from storms. Yet, just beyond, through the gap between two points of land, she could see Lake Huron. “Makes you feel that you are part of something tremendous,” she had said to Tillie, once. And Tillie had understood.
Now she dropped her oars and sat there alone, watching the light fade from the sky while “some artist Saint spilled his paint adown the western sky.”
She was glad to be alone. She wished to think. Jeanne had a disturbing way of reading one’s thoughts, or very nearly reading them, that was uncanny. It was of Jeanne, in part, that she wished to think.
“It is positively weird,” she told herself, “the way exciting happenings keep bobbing up in this quiet place. Just when I think those gypsies have left these parts and Jeanne is free from any harm they might do her, she discovers that patteran and gets excited about it.”
She had not expected Jeanne to be so anxious to see the gypsies. Now she was in a quandary. Should she attempt to find the gypsies and bring them to Jeanne? She did not doubt that this could be done.
“Their camp is just over there,” she told herself, nodding toward the little island that lay across the bay. “But if I find them; if they meet Jeanne face to face, what then?”
Who could answer this question? Certainly it was beyond her. There were times when she felt certain that this gypsy band had come to America for the purpose of revenge; that they had somehow secured possession of a speed boat, had perhaps stolen it, and that it had been they who tipped over the rowboat and had come near drowning Jeanne on that other night.
Just now she was not so sure of this. “If they stole a speed boat they would not dare remain so long in one place,” she thought. “But, after all, what other motive can they have for remaining in this vicinity?” What, indeed? They were not to be seen at the village, nor along the shore selling baskets and telling fortunes as gypsies are accustomed to do. Yet they did not go away.
“If they did not run us down, who did?” she asked herself for the hundredth time. She all but hated herself for clinging so tenaciously to this question.
She thought of the rich people who lived on Erie Point. At first she had blamed them for the near catastrophe—had thought of it as a cruel prank. The lady cop’s opinion of rich young people had cast a deep shadow upon this theory. Still she had not wholly abandoned it.
Then, of course, there were the people on Gamblers’ Island. The lady cop had said she believed someone had mistaken their boat for hers. “That would mean that they know she is after them, and they wish to destroy her,” she reasoned. “And yet she hides from them as if they knew nothing about her. It’s all very puzzling.”
She recalled her latest visit to the lady cop’s cabin. They had been seated by the lady cop’s fire when Tillie said, “O-oo! How thrilling to be the friend of a lady detective!”
“It may be thrilling,” Miss Weightman had replied, “but you must not forget that it is dangerous, too.”
“Dangerous!” Tillie had stared.
“The crook, the lawbreaker is sought by the detective,” the lady cop had continued soberly. “Too often the tables are turned. The detective is hunted by the crook. There is an age-long war between the law and the breakers of the law.”
“Such peril,” Florence assured herself now, “should be welcomed by every right-minded person. If being a friend to justice and to those who uphold the arm of the law puts one in danger, then welcome, oh you danger!”
All the while she was thinking these problems through, she was conscious of a drumming sound beating in upon her senses. Now it suddenly grew into a roar.
“Another speed boat. And I am alone, far out at sea,” she thought to herself in sudden consternation as, gripping the sides of her boat, she braced herself for a sudden shock.
The shock did not come. Instead the put-put-put of a motor ceased and, ten seconds later, the strangest craft Florence had ever seen glided up beside her boat. She stared at it in amazement. The thing was not one quarter the size of her rowboat; yet it boasted an outboard motor capable of handling a twenty foot boat. It had no keel. The prow was flat as a surfboard. There was one seat, large enough for a single person. In that seat reposed a grinning boy of some eighteen summers.
“What is it?” The question escaped her lips unbidden.
“Name’s ‘Spank Me Again.’” The boy’s grin broadened.
“But what is it?” she persisted.
“Guess.”
“I can’t.” She was beginning to feel amused. “It makes a noise like an airplane. But it has no wings. Looks like a surfboat. But surfboats don’t have their own power. It can’t be a boat because it has no keel. I guess it’s a what’s-it.”
“Correct,” laughed the boy. “And I’m a who’s-it. I’m Bradford Erie. My dad’s frightfully rich, so I have to have this thing to advertise.”
“Advertise?” Florence was puzzled.
“To advertise the fact that I’m just like everybody else. People think rich folks are not. But they are. How could they be different, even if they wanted to? They eat and sleep, drink, fish, play, fight and go to school if they are boys. And what does anyone else do? Exactly the same.”
“I think I could like that boy,” Florence thought to herself.
She said to him in a mocking tone, “It must be truly dreadful to be rich.”
“Oh! it is!
“Want a tow back?” He changed the subject.
“That might be thrilling, and perhaps a trifle dangerous.”
“I won’t dump you out. I’m no rotter. Give me a try.”
She gave him a try. It was indeed a thrilling ride. His boat cut the foam as it leaped from side to side. She got some spray in her face, and was home before she knew it.
“With that boy at the wheel,” she told herself, after thanking him and bidding him good-night, “no speed boat would run down a humbler craft. But then, perhaps he only mans the ‘Spank Me Again.’
“That thing will be the death of him,” she said, as she finished telling Jeanne of this little adventure. “It will turn over when it’s going at full speed. The motor will take it to the bottom, and him with it.” Little she knew how nearly a true prophetess she was.
That evening Florence sat for some time before the fire. She was trying to read the future by the pictures in the flames. The pictures were dim and distorted. She read little there. But often the smiling face of the “poor little rich boy,” who found it necessary to advertise the fact that he was just like other folks, danced and faded in the flames.
“He’s a real sport,” she told herself. “I hope we meet again.”
Strangely enough, with this wish came the conviction that they would meet again, that his life and her life, the life of Tillie, of Jeanne, and of the lady cop, were inseparably linked together.
“But after all,” she told herself skeptically, “this, too, may be but a dream of the passing flames.”
“Do you want to catch some fish, some real big black bass?” Tillie’s face shone, as she shouted this to Florence.
Did she? The supreme thrill of a born fisherman, that which comes from seeing one’s line shoot out sweet and clean, telling of a bass on the hook, had come to her but three times in all her young life.
“Do I!” She seized Tillie and gave her an impulsive hug. “Lead on!”
“It’s a long way out. Two miles; maybe more.”
“What’s two miles?” Florence tightened the muscles of her right arm till they were hard as stone.
“We’ll go,” said Tillie. “I saw them yesterday; three big black bass. And were they black! And big! Long as your arm. Anyway, half. They all marched out to see my minnie, like three churchmen in black robes. They looked, then turned up their noses and marched right back into the weeds.
“But now!” Her eyes shone in triumph. “I got crawdads (soft-shell crawfish). Five of them. And do they like ’em! You’ll see!”
Half an hour later, in Florence’s clinker-built rowboat, their two pairs of bronzed arms flashing in perfect unison as they plied four stout ash oars, they glided down the bay toward Gull Rock Point.
A second half hour had not elapsed before they were silently drifting toward the edge of a weed bed that ran along a narrow point.
“It’s right there before us,” Tillie said in a low tone. “You can see the bullrushes. You can’t see the pikeweed, only a top sticking up here and there. The pikeweed’s got wide leaves and stands thick on the bottom like a forest. Fish hide there just as wolves and bears do in the woods.
“Here’s the spot.” She dropped her anchor without the slightest splash.
“You catch ’em by the back,” she whispered, seizing a crawfish. “So they can’t pinch you, you hook ’em through the tail. Then you spit on ’em. That’s for luck.”
When she had performed all these ceremonies, she tossed her crawfish far out toward the edge of the weed bed.
“Now for yours.” She adjusted Florence’s struggling crab, then sent him off at another angle from the boat.
After that she jammed her boy’s cap down over one eye, squinted at the water with the other, and sat quietly down to wait.
A moment passed into eternity; another, and yet another. Five minutes, ten, fifteen. The water lapped and gurgled about the boat. A slight breeze set the bullrushes murmuring. A great, green dragon fly came bobbing along over the water. A sea gull soared aloft, but uttered never a sound. From his point of vantage, what did he see? Two girls fishing. Quite true. But what of the fish? Were those three bass lying among the weeds? Had they seen the crawfish?
It was Tillie who first knew the answer. The rattler was off her reel. The reel spun round with no effort and no sound. Suddenly it stopped.
Tillie placed a thumb on the spool, then counted in a whisper. “One, two, three, four, five.”
The tip of her pole executed a whip-like motion. The fish was hooked, the battle begun.
She gave him line. She reeled him in. He saw the boat and ran. He leaped a full foot from the water. He came down with a splash. The line slackened. Was he off? No. One more wild tug.
And after that a slow, relentless battle in which the girl won.
The fish lay flopping in the boat, a fine three pounder. Tillie bent over him, exultant, when with startling suddenness a voice sounded in her ear.
“Hey, you kids! Beat it! This is our fishing hole.” The tone was cold and gruff.
Tillie looked up in amazement. Then she scowled. A trim sailboat, manned by two boys and a girl, all in their late teens, had glided silently up to them and dropped anchor.
Tillie fixed her keen blue eyes upon the trio. All were dressed in silk pajamas and were smoking cigarettes.
“Since when?” she demanded, as her hands moved toward an oar.
“Since then!” The older of the two boys seized a short pike pole from the deck and struck her across the back.
To Florence, who looked on, it seemed that Tillie’s red hair stood on end, as she seized her oar and, using it as a spear, gave the intruder a sharp thrust in the stomach that doubled him up and sent him reeling off the narrow deck into the water.
“Hey, you little devil!” The other youth turned purple with rage.
All to no purpose. Tillie’s oar mowed him down. He, too, went into the water.
“That for all your robbin’, gamblin’ lot!” Tillie screamed.
Then in quite another tone, “Up anchor and away. There’s a storm brewing.”
They were away before the first of their adversaries had reached the side of the sailboat.
The shore was not far away. Tillie headed straight for it.
“Got to defend our ship,” she breathed. “But we lack ammunition.”
Gull Rock Point is a finger of land three rods wide, a quarter of a mile long, extending straight out into the bay. Its shores are moderately steep and composed entirely of small rocks.
They bumped the shore, threw off their anchor, caught at overhanging branches, and climbed to land.
They looked about. The two boys were on board the sailboat now. They were lifting anchor and setting sail.
“They’ll come after us,” said Tillie, in the calmly assured tone of a great commander. “Load up.” She set the example by piling her left arm with rocks the size of a baseball.
“Don’t shoot till you see the whites of their eyes,” she murmured. “Make every shot count. We can retreat if we must. They’d never find us in the brush. But don’t give up the ship.”
Silence once more hung over the bay as the sailboat glided forward. The rushes whispered, the dragon fly bobbed and the water winked in the sun.
The sailboat was a beautiful thing. Highly varnished it was, and all trimmed in brass.
“Must have cost a small fortune,” was Florence’s mental comment. “They’re rich. How does Tillie dare?”
In all this there was no thought of disloyalty to Tillie. She was ready to fight the affair through at her side.
“Come on,” shouted Tillie, as the boat drew near. “Come on, and I will give thy flesh unto the fowls of the air and to the beasts of the field.”
The answer was a contemptuous laugh.
This angered Tillie still more. “Come on!” she screamed, “come on, you crooks, you tin horn gamblers, you—!”
The names Tillie called her adversaries belong only to the land of the north. Florence heard them that day for the first time. We shall not repeat them here, but utter a little prayer that Tillie may be forgiven in Heaven.
She punctuated her last remark with a wild swing of the arm. Not so wild as it seemed, however, for a stone, crashing against the side of the highly polished craft, cut a jagged line of white for fully two feet.
“Come on!” she screamed. “We’ll make your pretty boat look like a tin can the day after Fourth of July!” A second swing, a second streak of white down the shiny surface of brown.
Suddenly, the younger of the two boys took command. He veered the boat sharply about, then went sailing away.
“We win!”
For the first time Florence saw that Tillie’s face had gone white. She slumped down among the rocks to hide her face in her hands.
“I forgot!” she moaned at last. “I got mad, and I forgot. Now they’ll ruin us. Dad told me not to do it. But I done it all the same.”
After that, for a long time the bay belonged to the rushes, the ripples and the dragon flies alone.
Rising at last, Tillie seized the anchor line, drew the rowboat close in, climbed aboard, motioned to Florence to do the same, seized the oars and began to row.
They fished no more that day. Not a word was spoken until the boat bumped at Tillie’s dock.
Then Tillie, dangling the fine black bass from the end of a string, said,
“Here! You take it. I couldn’t eat a bite of it. It’d choke me.”
“Thanks.”
“It’s all right. You’re a brick.”
“So are you.”
“Good-bye.”
“Good-bye.”
Tillie was gone.
That evening, while the sky was still pink and the water changing from blue to purple and then to gold, Florence went for a row alone. She wanted to think. The events of that day had stirred her to the very depths. She had not believed that there were such persons in the world as those three young people who had attempted to drive them from Tillie’s fishing hole.
“Rich, that’s it,” she told herself. Yet, in the depths of her heart she knew that this was not all.
“Tillie called them crooks, gamblers,” she told herself. “A professional gambler must have a cold heart. He takes money in an unfair way from men who have earned it and need it. How can one expect to find a warm heart in the breast of a gambler’s son?”
As she asked herself this question, she rounded a small island that lay a little way out from the point upon which the palatial summer home of Erie, the millionaire, had been erected.
She barely missed bumping into a canoe that lay motionless in the water. The canoe held a solitary occupant, a girl of sixteen.
Instinctively Florence knew that this was the millionaire’s daughter, she who had lost the three priceless rubies in a gambling den.
Instantly her heart warmed. The girl was beautiful. She was rich. Yet, on her face was a look of loneliness and sadness such as Florence had seldom seen on any face.
“It’s not so much the disgrace of losing the rubies,” she told herself. “This girl is young. She is just launching out into life. She has found it strange and rather terrible. She doesn’t understand.”
Her first impulse was to pause close beside the girl, to tell her that she had heard much about her; that she longed to aid her; that she and the lady cop would help her; that if she would but allow it they would explain life to her; that in the end they would restore the rubies to their proper place.
“But she is rich,” thought Florence, with a quick intake of breath. “I am poor. Her family is in society. I will never be.”
Ah, yes, “society,” that mysterious something to which people have given this name. She did not understand it. There was a barrier. She must not speak. So she passed on. And the twilight deepened into night.
She was just turning the prow of her boat toward the lights of home when a speed boat came roaring by. Just as they were opposite her, the searchlight from a larger boat played for an instant on the faces of those in the speed boat. She recognized them instantly.
“Green Eyes, Jensie Jameson, and that boy who sometimes rides in the ‘Spank Me Again’!” she exclaimed beneath her breath. “So she is truly here. Could it have been they who ran us down that night?
“Green Eyes, perhaps. But not that boy. I’d trust him anywhere.”
Yet, even as she thought this, she was tempted to question her judgment.
“Surely,” she told herself, “I have placed every confidence in other persons, and in the end have found them unworthy. Why not this boy?”
She rowed silently and rather sadly back to their little dock. Surely this was a puzzling world. Perhaps, after all, she understood it as little as the “poor little rich girl,” back there in the canoe.