"You are quite right," she said. "This is no place for a lone
woman, and some day when I have my brother along I will fetch my
boat, and show you the big islands about here. It would do you good
to get out in the clear--away from these dense woods."
"That it would, and I'm obliged to you miss," said the woman while
Bess fairly gasped. "I want to go to one island--Fern Island they
call it. Have you ever been there?"
"I know where it is," replied Cora, wondering what the woman's
interest in that place might be. "I have been all around it."
"They say it's haunted," and the woman laughed. "It's a great game
to put a haunt on a place to keep others off."
"Well, some day when you can leave your work, I'll take you over
there," and Cora meant it, for she had not the slightest fear,
either of the woman or her rough ways.
Besides, she felt instinctively that the woman's help would be
valuable in the possible recovery of her ring and of the lost canoe.
"I'll be goin' back to the shackt fer if Jim comes along held raise
a row fer me talkin' to strangers. You'd think I was looney the way
he watches me."
"And is he a stranger to you?"
"Well, to tell the truth my mother and Jim's was cousins, but I
never knowed him to be such a poor character as he is, or I'd never
have come up here. But I don't have to stay all summer,"' she
finished significantly.
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