Or would it be wiser to stay right where she was until her friends should find her? She knew perfectly well how desperately they were hunting for her. Her heart ached as she realized the agony they were suffering. She could see the wild distress on the features of Jack and the other boys, the tear-stained faces of Bess and Belle. She knew that by this time they would have raised a hue and cry that would set scores of people searching for her. Would they not have as good a chance of finding her where she was as anywhere else in the woods? In fact, would not some of the lumberjacks know of this lonely cabin in the forest, and think perhaps that she had sought refuge there?
To stay where she was meant inaction, the hardest thing in the world for her just then. She would have nothing to do but to think, and she would eat her heart out with anxiety.
On the other hand, she faced the perils of the woods if she left the shelter of the cabin. Bears and panthers roamed the forest in the daytime as well as at night. Lynxes and wildcats, too, though less dangerous, were not to be despised, and there was the ever-present danger of snakes.
While she was pondering the best plan to pursue, she heard the humming of a motor.
She jumped to her feet in wild delight. Could that be the motor of a car with people searching for her? It must be. What else could it be?
But the next instant she realized, with a sinking of the heart, that no car could possibly penetrate those tangled woods.
Still the strident buzz persisted. It was a motor. She was too familiar with the sound to be mistaken.
She sprang to her feet, and as she did so a branch caught in the veil that was wound round her hat. She reached up to disentangle it, and her eyes rested on a tiny spot in the sky that was not a cloud, and that was momentarily growing larger.
She ran to a more open spot where she could get a better view.
The aircraft was flying at a height of perhaps a thousand feet, and was moving at a high rate of speed. Nearer and nearer it came from out of the west, while Cora watched it with fascinated eyes.
Here was something that spoke of the great world that she seemed to have left behind. It was a link that brought her once more, if only for a moment, in contact with civilization.