“Positive,” Laura replied. “She caught me with her questions. She knows I saw the girl. I told her nothing else.”
The queen came to the opening of the tent and beckoned to Bobby. She seemed to know instinctively which girl was anxious to try her arts.
“Oh, Bobby,” whispered Dorothy. “Maybe you’d better not—as Laura says.”
“I want to see for myself,” said the other girl, doggedly.
And she moved toward the Gypsy’s tent. Laura gathered the other girls about her. One of the women was so near that she could overhear anything said louder than a whisper.
“I want to get away from here at once,” said Laura, quietly. “Let us buy any little things they may have for sale, and go on our way. We can get away better now when there are only two men in the camp than we can when those other three—and the bloodhound—get back.”
“Oh, mercy me!” gasped Jess. “I had forgotten about the bloodhound.”
“Hush!” murmured Laura. “Don’t let that woman hear you.”
But it was evident that the Gypsy woman had heard. She uttered a sentence or two in Romany and the two men whom the girls had seen before at the camp appeared. They did not come near, but sat by the roadside that passed through the hollow, and filled their pipes and smoked. It was quite evident that they were on guard.
“We are prisoners!” whispered Nellie, seizing Eve’s arm.