For a moment she looked around her, dazed. Then, as she realized where she was, she sprang from the rope mattress to the floor. All the events of the previous day rushed over her mind like a flood.
She was greatly rested and refreshed, although her muscles ached from contact with the rude mattress on which she had slept.
A sickening sense of her position sought to take possession of her, but she resolutely thrust it back. She would not begin this new day by being a coward.
She looked at her watch, but in the excitement of the day before she had forgotten to wind it, and it had stopped. She set it at a guess, and held it up to her ear a moment before she returned it to its place. Its lively ticking seemed to say: “Cheer up! cheer up! cheer up!”
She threw open the door and stepped outside. The sun had risen and was flooding the wilderness with glory. The cool morning air was delicious with the odor of the pines. She drank it in in great draughts, and it put new life and hope into her.
There was no sign of a stream anywhere near, and her ablutions had to be scanty. She found a little pool of water in a slight depression, and was able to wash her face and hands. She did not dare to drink of the standing water, but its external use refreshed her. Then she thought of breakfast.
It seemed a grim joke to call it that, when her whole food supply consisted of a soup cube and a chocolate tablet. But she hunted around in the vicinity of the cabin, and found some blackberry bushes that were fairly well laden. She picked the berries with great care, for she knew how fond snakes were of such localities, and she had a lively memory of the encounter with the rattlesnake the day before.
The berries and the chocolate tablet furnished her morning meal. It was not a substantial or satisfying one, and it required considerable self-control not to supplement it with the remaining soup cube. But after looking at it longingly, she put it back in her pocket. A time might come when it would be worth a king’s ransom to her.
And now that she had eaten, Cora bent all her thoughts on the problem of escape.
What ought she to do? Ought she to leave the cabin that had proved an ark of safety and try once more to find her way through the trackless woods? Suppose night came on again, and she still found herself not only in the woods but far from the cabin.