Page:Anderson--Isle of seven moons.djvu/355

Rh the spot in the verdure where the furrows left the sand. There was no trace of the murderers nor of the missing treasure, except one trail that led into a tangle of vines, then stopped short. And the chest was pretty heavy for the shoulders of even five stout-muscled men. The figure of Pierre the boatman, in trousers and jumper of coarse stained duck, appeared in the opening of the old pathway.

"Are you ready, Linda?" the Frenchman asked. "Pierre will bring the launch from the harbour here. We will not risk a meeting with those kindly gentlemen on the yacht."

"No, Monsieur, I am not going, after all"

"But you must, it is death if you stay." "Every day it will be death if I go. To see you again—never? No, no," she shook her head with a flash of the old coquetry, the more pathetic because so bravely assumed, "I could not stand that."

Her eyes were quite calm, but her hands played nervously with the gay ribbon at her waist, one of the few weapons which she had brought in that small bundle of hers, and into which she had thrust, not without design, a flower, a many-rayed thing of orange splendour.

"When one is away, it is easy to forget, Linda. The life of love—poof! No longer than the flight of a snowflake from the sky to the wave." But the eyes belied the light voice.

From the bright ribbon one hand rose to her heart.

"Snowflakes! There are none here. Brrr!" She shivered. "You think of the love of the North." One beau-