A PROPHECY FULFILLED
This queer youth interested Ruth Fielding and her friends, the Cameron twins, very much. Roberto was not naturally talkative, it seemed, for he soon dropped into silence and it was hard to get aught out of him but "Yes" and "No." At first, however, he had been excited, and he told them a great deal of his life with the tribe and along the pleasant country roads.
The cities Roberto could not bear. "There is no breath left in them—it is used up by so many," he explained. He did not eschew work because he was lazy, it seemed; but he saw no use in it.
Clothing? Money? Rich food? Other things that people strive for in the main? They were nothing to Roberto. He could sleep under a haystack, crunch a crust of bread, and wear his garments until they fell off him in rags.
But he knew the woods and fields as nobody but a wild boy could. Every whistle and note of every bird was as familiar to him as his own Tzigane speech; and he could imitate them with exactness.
He delighted his new friends, as the car rumbled along. He soon stopped talking much, as I have said, but he answered their multitude of questions, and did not seem to mind being cross-questioned about the life of the Gypsies.
The auto party stopped soon after noon to lunch. It was Roberto who pointed out the spring of clear, cold water for which they searched. He had been over this road before and, it seemed, once along a trail was enough for the young Gypsy. He never forgot.
He went away down the little stream, and made himself very clean before appearing for his share of the food. To the surprise of Ruth and Helen he ate daintily and showed breeding of a kind. Nor was he enamored of the cakes and other dainties that Babette, the Camerons' cook, had put into the lunch hamper, but enjoyed, instead, the more simple viands.
Roberto grew restless of riding in the car soon after luncheon. He thanked them for giving him the lift, but explained that there were paths through the woods leading to the present camp of his tribe that he preferred to follow.
"It is a mark of kindness for you to have brought me this way," he said, softly, bending over Ruth's hand, for he insisted upon considering her his hostess. He realized that, had it not been for her, the Camerons would have been chary of taking him aboard.
"If you are ever near the Red Mill again," Ruth told him, "be sure to come and speak with Uncle Jabez. He will not forget you, I am sure."
"Of that—pooh!" exclaimed the Gypsy. "I do not want pay for such an act. Do you?"
And that set Ruth Fielding to thinking a bit. Perhaps she had expected payment—of a kind—for her action in helping Uncle Jabez in the river. She had hoped he would more freely respond to her affection than he did. Ah! it is hard to do a good act and not secretly hope for some small return. "Virtue is its own reward" is a moral hard to understand!
After Roberto had left them, the trio of friends were occupied in exchanging views regarding the Gypsy boy, and in discussing their several opinions as to what kind of people his folk really were.
"It must be loads of fun to jog along the roads in those caravans, and camp where you please, and all that," said Helen, reflectively. "I believe I'd like it."
"About twenty miles on a fast day, eh?" chuckled Tom, with scorn. "Not for me! When Gypsies get to riding in autos—and six-cylinder, up-to-date ones, too—I'll join the first tribe that comes along."
"I declare, Tommy!" laughed his sister, "you are getting to be a 'speed fiend.' Ruth and I will be scared to drive with you."
"It's great to go fast," exclaimed Master Tom. "Here's a straight piece of road ahead, girls. Hold on!"
As he spoke, he manipulated the levers and the car leaped ahead. Ruth's startled "Oh!" was left a quarter of a mile behind. The girls clung to the hand-holds, and Tom crouched behind the windshield and "let her out."
It was a straight piece of road, as he had said. But before they reached the first turn there was another house beside the road—a small farmhouse. Beyond it was a field, with a stone wall, and it chanced that just as the Camerons' car roared down the road, clearing at least thirty miles an hour, the leader of a flock of sheep in that pasture, butted through a place in the stone-fence and started to cross the highway.
One sheep would not have made much trouble; it would have been easy to dodge just one object. But here came a string of the woolly creatures—and greater fools than sheep have not been discovered in the animal world!
The old black-faced ram trotted across the road and through a gap in a fence on the river side. After him crowded the ewes and youngsters.
The roaring auto frightened the creatures, but they would not give way before it. They knew no better than to follow that old ram through the gap, one after the other.
Tom had shut off the engine and applied the brakes, as the girls shrieked. But he had been going too fast to stop short of the place where the sheep were passing. At the end of the flock came a lamb, bleating and trying to keep up with its mother.
"Oh, the lamb!" shrieked Helen.
"Look out, Tom!" added Ruth.
The lamb did not get across the road. The car struck it, and with a pitiful "baa-a-a!" it was knocked a dozen feet.
In a moment the car stopped. It had scarcely run its entire length past the spot where the lamb was struck. The poor creature lay panting, "baa-aing" feebly, beside the road.
Ruth was out of the tonneau and kneeling beside the creature almost before the wheels ceased to roll. The mother ewe had crowded through the fence. Now she put her foolish face out, and called to the lamb to follow.
"He can't!" almost sobbed Ruth. "He has a broken leg. Oh! what a foolish mother you were to lead him right into danger."
Tom was silent and looked pretty solemn, while Helen was scolding him nervously—although she knew that he was not really at fault.
"If you hadn't been speeding, this wouldn't have happened, Tom Cameron!" she said. "I told you so."
"Oh, all right. You're a fine prophetess," grunted her brother. "Keep on rubbing it in."
The lamb had tried to scramble up, but one of its forelegs certainly was broken. It tumbled over on its side again, and Ruth held it down tenderly and tried to soothe its fear.
"Oh, dear! whatever shall we do?" she murmured. "The poor, poor little thing."
"Guess we'll know pretty soon what we'll do," quoth Master Tom, standing beside the machine and looking back along the road. "Here comes the man that owns him."
"Oh, dear me!" whispered Helen. "Doesn't he look savage?"
"Worse than the old ram there," agreed her brother, for the black-faced leader of the flock was eyeing them through the fence.