“No, no!” said Eve. “It is trained. And the man has it in leash——”
“Hush! here they are!” warned Laura, and the girls hid themselves behind the fringe of bushes.
The dog gave tongue just as it came in sight, and the sound sent a shiver over the watchers. The baying of a bloodhound is a very terrifying sound indeed.
With the dogs were three men—one of them the same the girls of Central High had seen before. The other two were fully as rough-looking.
“I hope they don’t find her!” exclaimed Bobby.
“They’ll find you if you don’t keep still,” warned Jess.
But it appeared to the girls that the Gypsies were having considerable difficulty in following the trail of the girl who had fled along the top of the old stone wall. The dog searched from side to side of the road. He leaped the wall, dragging one of the men after him, and ran about the lower field. That she had traversed the stone fence, like a fox, never seemed to enter the men’s minds, nor the dog’s either.
For some time the party of hunters were in sight; but finally they went off in an easterly direction along the road, passing over the brook in which the strange girl had left her “water trail,” and the girls of Central High believed that the fugitive was safe—for the time being, at least.
“I wish we knew where she was going,” said Nellie. “I’d help her, for one.”
“Me, too,” agreed Bobby Hargrew.