“Roxbury!” exclaimed Cora.
“That’s where I had been employed,” went on Nina. “When I found myself lying in a gypsy van, with an old woman taking care of me, I did a lot of hard thinking. With the gypsies I was safe. Nobody would think of looking for me there. But anywhere else I was likely to be arrested at any minute. And I would rather have died than gone to jail.
“So I stayed on with them and learned to tell fortunes. I didn’t know what else to do, and gradually I got used to it. But I’ve never been really happy there. And I’ve watched everybody who came to the camp, for fear he might be an officer.”
Cora reached over and took the girl’s hand comfortingly in her own.
Quick tears evoked by the sympathetic action sprang to Nina’s eyes, but she brushed them away and went on:
“I never met anybody I really knew until yesterday. Then I saw a man whom I had known in Roxbury. That’s the reason you found me hiding in the woods. I was relieved when I went back to find that he had gone.
“But to-day he came upon me unawares, and he knew me through all my gypsy disguise. He threatened to expose me, to hand me over to the police. I was wild with fright. You had been kind to me and I thought of you. I waited to-night till the camp was asleep, and then I slipped out. And here I am.”
CHAPTER XXVI
COUNCIL OF WAR
The girl had told her story in such a simple and straightforward way that, combined with the candor in her eyes, it carried conviction to the sympathetic hearts of her hearers. And their eyes were moist as they listened to the pelting of the rain and thought of the fugitive making her way through the lonely woods, her footsteps dogged with terror.
She sat looking from the eyes of one to the other, and was comforted by what she saw there.