It was still very, very early in the morning, and the gipsy folk, tired from their march on the preceding day, slept. There stood the conical, queer-shaped tents, four in number; at a little distance off grazed the donkeys and a couple of rough mules; at the door of the tents lay stretched out in profound repose two or three dogs.
Annie dreaded the barking of the dogs, although she guessed that if they set up a noise, and a gipsy wife or man put out their heads in consequence, they would only desire the gipsy child to lie down and keep quiet.
She stood still for a moment—she was very anxious to prowl around the place and examine the ground while the gipsies still slept, but the watchful dogs deterred her. She stood perfectly quiet behind the hedge-row, thinking hard. Should she trust to a charm she knew she possessed, and venture into the encampment? Annie had almost as great a fascination over dogs and cats as she had over children. As a little child going to visit with her mother at strange houses, the watch-dogs never barked at her; on the contrary, they yielded to the charm which seemed to come from her little fingers as she patted their great heads. Slowly their tails would move backwards and forwards as she petted them, and even the most ferocious would look at her with affection.
Annie wondered if the gipsy dogs would now allow her to approach without barking. She felt that the chances were in her favour; she was dressed in gipsy garments, there would be nothing strange in her appearance, and if she could get near one of the dogs she knew that she could exercise the magic of her touch.
Her object, then, was to approach one of the tents very, very quietly—so softly that even the dog’s ears should not detect the light footfall. If she could approach close enough to put her hand on the dog’s neck all would be well. She pulled off the gipsy maid’s rough shoes, hid them in the grass where she could find them again, and came gingerly, step by step, nearer and nearer the principal tent. At its entrance lay a ferocious-looking half-bred bull-dog. Annie possessed that necessary accompaniment to courage—great outward calm; the greater the danger, the more cool and self-possessed did she become. She was within a step or two of the tent when she trod accidentally on a small twig: it cracked, giving her foot a sharp pain, and, very slight as the sound was, causing the bull-dog to awake. He raised his wicked face, saw the figure like his own people, and yet unlike, but a step or two away, and, uttering a low growl, sprang forward.
In the ordinary course of things this growl would have risen in volume and would have terminated in a volley of barking; but Annie was prepared: she went down on her knees, held out her arms, said, “Poor fellow!” in her own seductive voice, and the bull-dog fawned at her feet. He licked one of her hands while she patted him gently with the other.
“Come, poor fellow,” she said then in a gentle tone, and Annie and the dog began to perambulate round the tents.
The other dogs raised sleepy eyes, but seeing Tiger and the girl together, took no notice whatever, except by a thwack or two of their stumpy tails. Annie was now looking not only at the tents, but for something else which Zillah, her nurse, had told her might be found near to many gipsy encampments. This was a small subterranean passage, which generally led into a long-disused underground Danish fort. Zillah had told her what uses the gipsies liked to make of these underground passages, and how they often chose those which had two entrances. She told her that in this way they eluded the police, and were enabled successfully to hide the goods which they stole. She had also described to her their great ingenuity in hiding the entrances to these underground retreats.
Annie’s idea now was that little Nan was hidden in one of these vaults, and she determined first to make sure of its existence, and then to venture herself into this underground region in search of the lost child.
She had made a decided conquest in the person of Tiger, who followed her round and round the tents, and when the gipsies at last began to stir and Annie crept into the hedge-row, the dog crouched by her side. Tiger was the favourite dog of the camp, and presently one of the men called to him; he rose unwillingly, looked back with longing eyes at Annie, and trotted off, to return in the space of about five minutes with a great bunch of broken bread in his mouth. This was his breakfast, and he meant to share it with his new friend. Annie was too hungry to be fastidious, and she also knew the necessity of keeping up her strength. She crept still farther under the hedge, and the dog and girl shared the broken bread between them.