"Hum!" murmured the gypsy. "I never knew there was a way into the cave from there. I must see about that. It wasn't open before. Well, now you're here I've got to make up my mind what I'll do with you," he went on, as he motioned for Flossie and her brother to walk back in front of him. He held the lantern so they could see where to step, but the earthen floor of the cave was smooth, and the children did not stumble.
"Will you take us back to Twin Camp, where we live?" asked Freddie. "We're the Bobbseys you know, and we didn't mean to run away again, though I guess we're lost. My mamma and my papa will be looking for us, and if you'll take us to the camp——"
"Well, maybe I will after a bit, but not now," said the gypsy, shaking his head so that his earrings jiggled. "You'll have to stay here with us awhile. If you went out now, and told your folks you had found us here we'd all be sent to jail, most likely. I'll see what the others say."
Flossie and Freddie wondered what others he meant, but he did not tell them. He kept walking close behind them, and there was nothing for them to do but to keep on.
Suddenly they turned a sort of corner of the cave, and then the children saw something that surprised them. Seated around a table, on which some candles, stuck in bottles, were burning, were a number of men. They were all gypsies, like the man who had met the children farther back in the cave, and as he walked forward, behind Flossie and Freddie, the other gypsies looked up.
"Who was calling?" asked one of the dark men at the table.
"These two," said the first man, pointing to the little Bobbsey twins. "They answered my call and I found them. They fell down a hole at the far end of the cave, near the sand. I never knew it was there."
"It is an old entrance," put in a gypsy who was eating some bread and tomato, cutting first a slice of one and then of the other with a big knife. "That entrance was overgrown with grass long ago," he added.
"Well, these two stumbled on it," grumbled the man who had found Flossie and Freddie. "We'd better stop it up. And now what's to be done with 'em?"
"We'll have to keep 'em here for a while," said two or three at once, and hearing this the hearts of Flossie and Freddie were sad.