“Oh!” murmured Tess, again, “I—I believe she must be a Gypsy woman, Dot Kenway.”
Had the two little Corner House girls not been so much excited at just this minute they must have heard the passing of an automobile on the road, now out of their sight. Or, if Neale O’Neil had chanced to blow the horn just then Tess and Dot would surely have been attracted by the sound.
To the older Corner House girls and to Mrs. Heard that night had certainly been one of extreme anxiety. Neale had found lodgings for them in the squalid little village which the post-office authorities recognized as “Arbutusville,” but which was still “Frog Holler” in the minds of the older inhabitants.
Neale found, too, a number of kind-hearted persons who were easily interested in the fate of Tess and Dot Kenway. There was a constable, and with that official at their head a dozen men started abroad at nine o’clock, with lanterns and a pack of “’coon dogs,” to beat up the woods all about the place where the automobilists had camped.
Neale went with them; but despite Agnes’ determination to attend she was refused the privilege. And Sammy, of course, remained with the women—they needing the protection of some manly spirit—and fell asleep in two minutes.
Neale O’Neil dragged back about dawn. The search had been resultless—save that the dogs had started a raccoon—and the party had swept woods, fields, and swamps for miles as well as it could be done at night. They had shouted. They had roused every householder. Nobody had heard of the lost children or seen them.
But Neale had heard one thing that greatly troubled him; and yet which offered a possible clue to the little girls’ disappearance.
On the way back to the village somebody in the crowd of searchers had told him that one of the aroused householders had mentioned the fact that there was a Gypsy encampment not many miles away.
The boy was instantly excited. He learned from his informant just where the camp was, and immediately put the idea before the constable.
“Why, that’s too fur away, bub,” said Constable Munro. “It’s five mile beyond where you an’ your folks stopped to eat—and on another road.”