Then she fled across the ridge to the grazing quarters of the two seedy-looking steeds.
“Margot! Margot! Come back! Where are you going?” screamed her hostess after her.
But there was no recalling Margot, now. Having armed herself with the leather girdle she proceeded, first of all, to untether the horses with practised fingers, and then, emitting surprising yells, to whip the pair of them into a canter which led away across the moor. Possibly, as she herself hoped, the horses understood that she had no ill-feeling whatever towards them, and that her banshee-like cries were not meant to terrify them, but their masters, who had recently returned into the tent. The said owners, whether attracted by the sound of galloping hoofs or by the startling yells, were certainly not long before they issued pell-mell and post-haste through the tent flap.
“Oh!” the amazed Stella gasped. “Oh! Isn’t she frightful! Oh, I suppose I’ll simply have to hurry up and go in before they get back.”
But Margot, true to her word, had certainly arranged that her companion should have ample time for her part of the rescue, as well as the easiest share of the enterprise. By this time the horses had been urged into a gallop, and their owners’ voices were sounding but faintly over the moor. Stella, though shaking in every limb, approached the flap of the tent.
As she entered, the cries sounded louder than ever. There was certainly a child in trouble there.
A little child, too; scarcely more than a baby, as its would-be rescuer could faintly see. Stella prepared to perform her share of the act of bravery as expeditiously as she could.
“Here, come along. Stop crying, do!” she remarked, picking up the baby from the bed on which it lay, “or they’ll be back. You’re all right now; they won’t hurt you any more. Or, at least, I suppose you are. I do hope and trust you really are a stolen baby, because, if not——”
Her remarks, as she held the child in her arms and proceeded to retrace her steps through the semi-gloom to the entrance of the tent, were suddenly interrupted.
Not by the arrival of a panting Margot, however, but by the entry of a hastening gipsy woman.