"Good days are over for me," moaned the old woman. "Begone, I say! Don't let me see or hear any that belongs to Black Basil, or it may be the worse for them."
("The tinker-mother whines very nastily," said Mrs. Hedgehog. "If I were the young woman, I should bite her."
"Hush!" I answered, "she is speaking.")
"Basil is in prison," said the gipsy girl hoarsely.
The old woman's eyes shone in their sockets, as she looked up at Sybil for a minute, as if to read the gipsy's sentence on her face; and then she chuckled,
"So they've taken the Terror of the Roads?"
Sybil's eyes had not moved from the fire, before which she was now standing with clasped hands.
"The Terror of the Roads?" she said. "Yes, they call him that,—but I could turn him round my finger, mother." Her voice had dropped, and she smoothed one of her black curls absently round her finger as she spoke.
"You couldn't keep him out of prison," taunted the old woman.
"I couldn't keep him out of mischief," said the girl, sadly; and then, with a sudden flash of anger, she clasped her hands above her head and cried, "A black curse on Jemmy and his gang!"