Sybarina graciously accepted the money. Her eyes shone as she hobbled over to Harriet Burrell and exclaimed earnestly: “I said you were the true Romany. Now I know it. Did I not tell you the power to foretell both the past and future would come to you unbidden?”
“Yes,” laughed Harriet, “but I happened to know considerable about the Tramp Club’s affairs particularly since they visited a certain melon patch. Is there any danger of those boys returning to-night?”
Sybarina shook her head. “They have returned to their camp.”
“Where are they camping?”
“On yonder hillside. Even now you can catch the glow of their campfire. But you shall see them again and you shall make them red of face for the trick which they played on you and your friends, my Romany girls. You would outwit them?”
“We are trying to get home ahead of them.”
The old woman nodded.
“The way shall be made clear to you. Sybarina will tell the Romany girl how to defeat her rivals, to show them that the Romany tribes know the secret bypaths as the birds know the trail to the sunny land when the frost is in the air. Come, child. Come, sit by the fire, while Sybarina tells you that which shall make the way clear.”
CHAPTER XXI—HARRIET PLANS TO OUTWIT THE TRAMP CLUB
A long conversation was held between Harriet and the Gipsy queen, the latter drawing a map on the ground with a willow wand to show the girl the route that she was to travel after the Meadow-Brook Girls had gone on for another day.