"A black curse on them as lets the innocent go to prison in their stead. They comes there themselves in the end, and long may it hold them!" was the reply.
Sybil moved swiftly to the old woman's side.
"I heard you was in trouble, mother, about Christian; but you don't think—"
"Think!" screamed the old woman, shaking her fists, whilst the girl interrupted her—
"Hush, mother, hush! tell me now, tell me all, but not so loud," and kneeling with her back to us, she said something more in a low voice, to which the old woman replied in a whine so much moderated, that though Mrs. Hedgehog and I strained our ears, and crept as near the group as we dared, we could not catch a word.
Only, after a while Sybil rose up and walked back slowly to the fire, twisting the long lock of her hair as before, and saying—"I turns him round my finger, mother, as far as that goes—"
"So you thinks," said the old crone. "But he never will—even if you would, Sybil Stanley! Oh Christian, my child, my child!"
The gipsy girl stood still, like a young poplar-tree in the dead calm before thunder; and there fell a silence, in which I dared not have moved myself, or allowed Mrs. Hedgehog to move, three steps through the softest grass, for fear of being heard.
Then Sybil said abruptly, "I've never rightly heard about Christian, mother. What was it made you think so much more of him than you thinks about the others?"