DANGEROUS VISITORS
"Gypsies?" Betty echoed. "Where?"
"Can't you see?" returned Amy. "They are fording just as that old man
said they could. Oh, what are we going to do?"
The boys had been gazing with interest toward the little group of
wanderers, but at Amy's cry they were aroused to sudden action.
"Get to a place where we can see, and not be seen," said Frank. "I'd
like to watch this thing through."
"They are coming right this way, too," said Grace, delightfully afraid.
"Oh, what have they got on their backs?"
"Looks like loot of some sort," Will volunteered, peering forth from his
tree trunk. "Say, this promises to be a lark, fellows."
"We'd better get back a little farther, if we don't want them to run
right into us," Roy suggested. "They are headed this way."
The watchers retreated still farther into the woods until they came to
a dense overgrowth of foliage which effectually screened them from
prying eyes.
"This is just the thing," Roy exulted. "I tell you we are running in
luck to-day."
"I am glad you think so," said Amy. "If one of those gypsies discovered
us, I am afraid we wouldn't live long."
"Well, they are not going to," said Roy, overhearing the last remark.
"Don't be a wet blanket, Amy. Anyway, just because they are gypsies they
needn't be murderers."
"I'm not a----" Amy was beginning, when Allen hissed a sharp warning.
"Keep still, everybody," he said. "They are not a hundred yards away!"
After that silence reigned, broken only occasionally by a nervous
whisper from one of the girls as they watched the approach of the
enemy--or so they regarded them--with breathless interest.
There were about twenty in the group, of which the majority were men. As
they came nearer, the girls and boys could see how greatly their ages
varied. Some were old men with white hair and flowing beards, while
others were young striplings scarcely out of boyhood. Their clothes were
many hued and picturesque, while each one carried on his back a huge
bundle. They traveled along the bank, speaking in a low mellow tone, a
language which the Outdoor Girls and the boys had never heard before.
Grace crowded close to Betty, and the Little Captain squeezed her arm
reassuringly. "I kind of like them," she whispered. "They look so
interesting. They look like bandits or----"
Frank's hand closed abruptly over her mouth--for low as her tone had
been the gypsies were near enough now to hear the slightest whisper.
On, on came the little procession so near that the girls, by stretching
out their hands, could almost have touched them. They scarcely dared to
breathe.
The gypsies moved on for a short distance, then gathered about something
the nature of which the girls and boys could not discern. In his
curiosity, Allen forgot caution and rising from the protection of the
bushes he tip-toed over to a more advantageous lookout. In a moment he
was back again on his knees beside the crouching group crying in an
excited manner: "It's our cave--the cave Betty and I discovered--they
are going into it. Say, I wish we had gone in when we had the chance!"
"I don't," said Mollie, "they might have found you there and knifed you
in the back or something."
"Especially something," mocked Roy. But Mollie was too excited to hear
him.
"Look!" Grace cried. "Now that they are all inside, you wouldn't know
that there was any opening there at all."
"It _is_ tough to have to sit outside and look at nothing," Roy began.
"Don't look at me when you say that," complained Mollie, with a little
grimace.
"When we ought to be in there capturing the thieves--if that is what
they are," he finished.
"I'd bet on it," said Frank. "All gypsies are born robbers. Just the
same, I wouldn't mind having some of their loot."
"Frank!" Grace exclaimed, in a shocked voice. "You know you wouldn't
like anything of the sort."
"Why not?" he said, his eyes twinkling, for teasing Grace was one of his
greatest delights. "I wouldn't go in anybody's house and deliberately
steal anything, but if somebody is kind enough to do it for me----"
"It will do you as much good as it will them, eh, Frank?" finished Will,
companion in crime.
"I think you are just talking to hear yourselves talk," Grace commented,
and Betty heartily approved. "That's the most sensible thing I ever
heard you say, Grace."
"I'm getting stiff sitting on my heels," Mollie complained. "I wish
those old gypsies would go home where they belong, and let us get up."
"Seventh inning," said Frank. "All get up and stretch."
Willingly they followed his example, but no sooner had they risen to
their feet than they were sent scuttling back again like rabbits into a
burrow. The bushes were pushed aside and an aged gypsy stepped forth
from the opening. With a little gasp of excitement the girls realized
that he was without his heavy pack. Whatever it was they had brought
evidently had been left behind in the cave. One by one they emerged
until their number was complete. The last of the little band, a lad
apparently no more than sixteen years old, replaced the screening bushes
very carefully across the mouth of their hiding place. Then they turned,
and retraced their steps, still speaking that strange melodious tongue
of theirs, until they had reached the shore and departed the way they
had come. It was not till then that the watchers ventured to speak above
a whisper.
"Now for the cave and what it contains!" cried Will, and started for the
spot the gypsies had so lately occupied.
The girls and boys followed him, the former excited yet half fearful.
"Do you think we had better?" asked Amy, as Will pushed aside the
curtain of foliage and peered inside. "It's getting dark, and besides
the gypsies might come back. Please don't, Will."
"Do you mean to say that you girls want us to go home without seeing
what is in there?" asked Frank incredulously. "It can't be done, Amy."
Nevertheless, the boys hesitated before the entrance to this mysterious
hole. After all, it was getting dark and the very blackness of the place
was forbidding.
"If we only had some matches," said Roy uncertainly. "It wouldn't do us
much good to go stumbling around in the dark."
"And I presume Mrs. Irving is back and will be terribly worried," Mollie
added, seizing upon the most effective argument she could think of. "She
told us to be home before dark."
"Yes, and we can come here to-morrow, anyway," Amy added. "What do you
think about it, Betty?"
"Well, I am just crazy to see what the gypsies left there," the Little
Captain answered, "but I do think it's a little late now to begin
exploring. It isn't as if this were our last day on the island."
"I think Betty is right, fellows." It was Roy who spoke. "Mrs. Irving
left the girls in our care and she won't do it again in a hurry if we
don't get them home pretty soon."
"That's so, of course," Allen admitted reluctantly. "Just the same, it's
a crime to leave a discovery like this without getting to the bottom of
it."
"But we can come to-morrow," Betty pleaded. "It isn't as if----"
"Oh, I know all about that," he interrupted. "But we probably can't find
the place to-morrow."
"Well, we will have to take our chances on that," cried Mollie, tapping
her foot impatiently. "The rest of you may stay here all night if you
want to, but I'm going back to 'The Shadows.'"
"Hold on a minute, Mollie, can't you?" said Will. "I wish it weren't so
late, but since it is, I suppose we shall have to act accordingly. Who's
got the lunch basket?"
"Frank had, the last time I saw it," said Amy, looking about her at the
gathering shadows uneasily. "Oh, please let's hurry."
"I forgot all about the basket," Frank confessed. "I think I left it
over there behind the bushes."
Allen went with him to find it, while the girls stood huddled together,
wishing themselves back at the bungalow. Mystery is wonderful in the
glaring sun of noon-day, but in the chill dusk of evening, with a damp
mist rising and touching all the land with clammy fingers--at such a
time it is not so alluring. All they wanted was home and a fire and a
chance to talk things over.
Allen and Frank, carrying the basket between them, soon rejoined those
who were waiting at the cave, and they started along the shores of the
lake, keeping a sharp lookout for anything that looked like a gypsy.
However, they reached home at last without encountering anything more
formidable than their own shadows.
"But I _would_ like to know what they had in those bags," sighed Betty,
as the boys took leave of them. "Can we go back the first thing in the
morning, Allen?"
"We can't go too soon to suit me," Allen agreed. "But aren't you going
to let us fellows come over to-night to talk things over?"
"Of course," said Mollie, "and we'll have a fire."
"That sounds good," said Roy. "We won't keep you waiting."
Then the girls went in to relieve Mrs. Irving's anxiety and to tell her
the wonders they had witnessed that afternoon.