Chapter XV: Another Clue

Neale O'Neil's early morning visit to the Gypsy camp had been very disappointing. The camp had been fully aroused, and there were plenty of children about; but none of these were Tess and Dot.

"But say!" Sammy Pinkney whispered to Neale in an awestruck voice, "you know how the Gypsies do when they steal kids, don't you? They stain 'em with walnut juice and you can't tell 'em then from their own kids."

"Well, I guess we should know Tess and Dot, if they were stained as black as Petunia Blossom's pickaninnies," snorted Neale. "The little girls aren't in this bunch, for sure!"

Meanwhile the constable had shown his star to King David Stanley and explained the errand they were here upon. The chief Gypsy vigorously denied having seen the lost children--as indeed he had not at that time--but he promised to look for them and have the tribe look in that vicinity immediately after breakfast.

"And if we find them you shall learn of it at once, young sir," the big Gypsy assured Neale. "I will myself bring you word at the village where you are stopping."

He spoke very good English, did the king, and seemed to be really sympathetic. But Neale O'Neil turned the automobile about, and with anxious heart drove back to Arbutusville.

They made him go to bed, once he arrived at the lodging where the older girls and Mrs. Heard were staying. Neale was completely worn out, and even Agnes refrained from letting him see how troubled and distraught they all were because of his non-success in finding Tess and Dot. Therefore, Neale was sound asleep when a man wearing brown velveteen and with gold rings in his ears rattled into town in a ramshackle old buggy, but behind a high-stepping horse. It was King David Stanley, and he hunted out Constable Munro at once and told him that the two lost children had been found and had been brought into the Gypsy camp.

Not being entirely sure that Tess and Dot were the two in which the automobile party were interested, the chief of the Romany tribe had judged it better to bring the news rather than the children.

"You know how our people are sometimes looked upon by the Gentiles," he said gravely. "If I had taken the little girls away from the camp, and their friends had appeared there, asking for them, my act in removing them would look suspicious."

"You're an all-right feller, if ye be a Gyp.," declared Mr. Munro, and he took King David over to the lodging where the automobile party was staying.

By this time the girls and Mrs. Heard were in the lowest depths of despair. Ruth was even seriously discussing sending a telegram to Mr. Howbridge.

"Though what he could do more than we are doing ourselves, I don't see," Mrs. Heard sighed.

"We are not doing anything!" cried Agnes, beginning to cry again. "I believe if they'd have let me go with them into the woods last night, I could have found poor, precious little Dot and Tessie. What _shall_ we do----"

"I'll go with you, too, Aggie," declared Sammy, having hard work to keep back the tears himself. "I bet you and I can find 'em."

"It is the easiest thing in the world to be a critic," Ruth said quietly. "But we should first know how better to do a thing before finding fault with the person who has done it. I think----"

And just then Constable Munro and the big Gypsy appeared in their sitting-room, and immediately their despair was changed to joy. Neale came stumbling out of the bedroom, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, and led the cheering. For a few moments the automobile tourists certainly were quite beside themselves.

Nothing would do but all must run out to the encampment to get the lost little girls. And although King David started before them, the motor car passed him and his swift pacer on the road and arrived at the Gypsy encampment a good fifteen minutes before he appeared.

Tess and Dot, by this time, had become rather lachrymose. They dared not ask Mira again about their lost friends; and even the lapful of kittens palled at last on Dot. With the coming of the automobile, however, all this was changed. At once both Tess and Dot could see nothing but good in their friends, the Gypsies. Ruth and Agnes, with Sammy, had to be led all about the encampment, to see the pets and to learn how the Gypsies lived in their wagons and tents, and otherwise to be shown the wonders of the place. Mrs. Heard and Ruth ransacked their purses for pennies to distribute to the bare-legged children attached to the camp.

"And _we_ were wild girls, too--for a little while," said Dot. "Weren't we, Tess?"

"Too bad you were so wild that I didn't find you when I was over this way early this morning," grumbled Neale O'Neil. "Anyway, if I hadn't insisted on coming we wouldn't have found the kids yet."

"My! aren't you smart?" scoffed Agnes, who felt happy enough to bicker with him now. "Well! somebody, I suppose, must blow a horn for you--why not yourself?"

"Oh, I don't make a practice of parading my virtues," began Neale, when Agnes stopped him with:

"I should say you didn't, Neale O'Neil. Let me tell you it takes quite a number to make a _parade_."

"Got me there! Got me there!" admitted the boy, grinning. He did not mind the tartness of his girl chum's tongue, now that the little ones were found. Everybody was joyful over the reunion.

The king of the Gypsies had been examining the automobile most curiously during this time.

"Fine car," he said to Neale. "I'm thinking some of getting one myself. Only trouble is, sure to frighten the horses, and if we didn't have horses to trade they wouldn't believe we were Gypsies," and he smiled with a wonderful flash of strong, white teeth.

Neale laughed. "I suppose pretty soon all up-to-date Gypsies will go about the country in auto-vans instead of those green and yellow painted wagons," he suggested.

"Mebbe," said the man. "We had a couple of men here one night not long ago with a car. They came from Milton. At least, I heard one of them say so."

Agnes was beside Neale. Suddenly she seized his arm and squeezed it tightly.

"Oh, Neale!" she gasped.

The boy had noted the significance of King David's speech too. He nodded to the girl and asked the big Gypsy at the same time:

"What sort of car did those fellows have?"

"Oh, it was a small car. A runabout--Maybrouke make. Good car, but not like this."

"Mr. Collinger's runabout," whispered Agnes. "That was his make."

"When were these fellows here?" asked Neale. Then he explained: "We're very much interested. One of our friends lost a car like the one you describe. Can you remember just when it was?"

"Oh, yes, young sir. It is fixed in my memory," and the Gypsy mentioned a date immediately following the day on which the car of the county surveyor had been taken away from the Milton court house.

"It was those men!" cried Agnes decidedly.

King David looked at her curiously. "They tried to sell the car to me," he said. "I was not sure they came by it honestly. So many people try to foist stolen goods on us because we are Gypsies."

This was a new light on that subject; yet Neale O'Neil thought it might be quite true. "Give a dog a bad name and hang him" is not only a trite saying, but a true one.

"What did the fellows look like?" he asked the chief, and quickly described in particular the fellow they knew as Saleratus Joe.

"No mistaking him, young sir," said the chief Gypsy. "He was one. The other was an older man."

"I don't know him so well," admitted Neale. "But I am sure it is lucky you did not buy the car. There would have been trouble. Do you know where they went from here?"

"No. They remained over night with us because a storm came up. I sheltered the car in one of our tents. But about a week ago I saw them and the car again," he added.

"No!" cried Neale, in surprise.

"Yes. I drove over into what they call the Fixville district--it's beyond Parmenter Lake--to look at a horse. There is a big farm over there that isn't being worked this year--owned by a man named Higgins. They're only getting the hay off it. You see, last winter the house burned to the ground and Mr. Higgins, who is an old man, was badly burned and isn't able yet to take up his work again. He is with friends somewhere. Well," went on the Gypsy, "the outbuildings and barns were saved. As I drove by the place I saw this freckled chap and that other backing the car into one of the big hay barns. It was just at nightfall. Of course, I don't know that they stayed there more than one night."

Neale and Agnes were greatly excited by this story. It seemed as though it were the clearest clue yet discovered regarding the stealing of Mr. Collinger's runabout. From the Gypsy Neale obtained a very clear and particular account of the place where the suspected men and car had last been seen, and how to get there.

"We'll just go around that way after we leave the hotel at Parmenter Lake," declared Agnes. "Why! maybe we'll find the car right there."

"It's too late for _May_ bees," grinned Neale. "This is July."

But he had some little hope of tracing the lost car himself, in spite of his fun. However, as Mrs. Heard declared with decision, first of all the party would run on to the hotel at Parmenter Lake where they had rooms and their trunks awaiting them, and there recuperate.

"So much excitement is not good for me, I declare," said the lady. "I feel it in my legs."

That puzzled Dot Kenway immensely. Yet she was too polite to ask Mrs. Heard how it could be. Nevertheless, she whispered to Tess:

"How do you suppose she could feel _our_ being lost in _her_ legs? We did the walking."

Tess failed to give a satisfactory reply.

They arrived not long after mid-afternoon at the resort on Parmenter Lake, which was, indeed, a very popular inland summer place. Mrs. Heard felt the need of quietness, and Ruth spent most of her time watching the children; but Agnes felt no necessity for "recuperation."

She had a delightful time the two days and evenings they spent at the hotel. There was a dance each night, and she danced more than she ever had before in her life in forty-eight successive hours.

There were so many young people of about her age at the hotel and in neighboring cottages, that Agnes was sure to have her fill of enjoyment. Neale, meanwhile, overhauled the motor car and made all shipshape for their continued tour.

Tess and Dot lived in a sort of Land of Romance because of their recent adventure. They were much sought after by other little girls because they had been lost, had stayed in the woods all night, and had joined (if for only a brief time) a band of Gypsies.

Master Sammy was tipped out of a boat on the lake and came near drowning. Then he led a newly formed crew of "fresh water pirates" in a raid on an orchard and was caught and well spanked by the owner. He certainly was a trial; but he was growing strong and healthy looking. This outing was doing Sammy Pinkney a world of good, whether the older members of the touring party benefited or not.

When they finally left the Parmenter Lake hotel the motor car was in fine fettle and so were all the young people in it. And Mrs. Heard declared that her nerves had recovered from the shock they had suffered when Tess and Dot were lost.

Agnes and Neale, one may be sure, had not forgotten what King David Stanley had told them about Saleratus Joe and the missing runabout. They had heard nothing further about the stolen car, although both had asked.

Neale had looked up the roads in the guide book and they now sped directly over the nearest route for the abandoned farm where Joe and the car had last been observed by the Gypsy chief.

Mrs. Heard was quite as eager as Agnes and Neale to learn if trace of her nephew's car could be found in this neighborhood. She had written one letter to Mr. Collinger regarding their suspicions of Joe Dawson and his appearance with a runabout in this part of the State.

They ran on beyond the end of the lake and thence into a much more scantily populated country than that through which they had previously traveled.

They struck into the road at last on which King David had said the site of the burned farmhouse was. Not another dwelling was on this cross highway, and the road map gave its length as twelve miles.

Save for the cleared acres of the Higgins farm, on both sides thick woods bordered the road. Of course, they could not mistake the farm itself when they came to it. The fire had left nothing of the great house but the cellar walls.

However, there were several good outbuildings, especially the hay barns. The Gypsy had told Neale clearly into which of the two barns he had seen the men running the automobile.

"I'm going to have a squint, anyway," said Neale, stopping the car and promptly getting out.

"Be careful," urged Mrs. Heard. "Don't get into trouble," though how he could do that in this forsaken place it was not easy to guess.

There was not a soul around the place as far as the touring party could see.