A PROPHECY FULFILLED
This queer youth interested Ruth Fielding and her friends, the Cameron
twins, very much. Roberto was not naturally talkative, it seemed, for he
soon dropped into silence and it was hard to get aught out of him but
"Yes" and "No." At first, however, he had been excited, and he told them
a great deal of his life with the tribe and along the pleasant country
roads.
The cities Roberto could not bear. "There is no breath left in them--it
is used up by so many," he explained. He did not eschew work because he
was lazy, it seemed; but he saw no use in it.
Clothing? Money? Rich food? Other things that people strive for in the
main? They were nothing to Roberto. He could sleep under a haystack,
crunch a crust of bread, and wear his garments until they fell off him
in rags.
But he knew the woods and fields as nobody but a wild boy could. Every
whistle and note of every bird was as familiar to him as his own
Tzigane speech; and he could imitate them with exactness.
He delighted his new friends, as the car rumbled along. He soon stopped
talking much, as I have said, but he answered their multitude of
questions, and did not seem to mind being cross-questioned about the
life of the Gypsies.
The auto party stopped soon after noon to lunch. It was Roberto who
pointed out the spring of clear, cold water for which they searched. He
had been over this road before and, it seemed, once along a trail was
enough for the young Gypsy. He never forgot.
He went away down the little stream, and made himself very clean before
appearing for his share of the food. To the surprise of Ruth and Helen
he ate daintily and showed breeding of a kind. Nor was he enamored of
the cakes and other dainties that Babette, the Camerons' cook, had put
into the lunch hamper, but enjoyed, instead, the more simple viands.
Roberto grew restless of riding in the car soon after luncheon. He
thanked them for giving him the lift, but explained that there were
paths through the woods leading to the present camp of his tribe that he
preferred to follow.
"It is a mark of kindness for you to have brought me this way," he said,
softly, bending over Ruth's hand, for he insisted upon considering her
his hostess. He realized that, had it not been for her, the Camerons
would have been chary of taking him aboard.
"If you are ever near the Red Mill again," Ruth told him, "be sure to
come and speak with Uncle Jabez. He will not forget you, I am sure."
"Of that--pooh!" exclaimed the Gypsy. "I do not want pay for such an
act. Do you?"
And that set Ruth Fielding to thinking a bit. Perhaps she _had_ expected
payment--of a kind--for her action in helping Uncle Jabez in the river.
She had hoped he would more freely respond to her affection than he did.
Ah! it is hard to do a good act and not secretly hope for some small
return. "Virtue is its own reward" is a moral hard to understand!
After Roberto had left them, the trio of friends were occupied in
exchanging views regarding the Gypsy boy, and in discussing their
several opinions as to what kind of people his folk really were.
"It must be loads of fun to jog along the roads in those caravans, and
camp where you please, and all that," said Helen, reflectively. "I
believe I'd like it."
"About twenty miles on a fast day, eh?" chuckled Tom, with scorn. "Not
for me! When Gypsies get to riding in autos--and six-cylinder,
up-to-date ones, too--I'll join the first tribe that comes along."
"I declare, Tommy!" laughed his sister, "you are getting to be a 'speed
fiend.' Ruth and I will be scared to drive with you."
"It's great to go fast," exclaimed Master Tom. "Here's a straight piece
of road ahead, girls. Hold on!"
As he spoke, he manipulated the levers and the car leaped ahead. Ruth's
startled "Oh!" was left a quarter of a mile behind. The girls clung to
the hand-holds, and Tom crouched behind the windshield and "let her
out."
It was a straight piece of road, as he had said. But before they reached
the first turn there was another house beside the road--a small
farmhouse. Beyond it was a field, with a stone wall, and it chanced that
just as the Camerons' car roared down the road, clearing at least thirty
miles an hour, the leader of a flock of sheep in that pasture, butted
through a place in the stone-fence and started to cross the highway.
One sheep would not have made much trouble; it would have been easy to
dodge just one object. But here came a string of the woolly
creatures--and greater fools than sheep have not been discovered in the
animal world!
The old black-faced ram trotted across the road and through a gap in a
fence on the river side. After him crowded the ewes and youngsters.
The roaring auto frightened the creatures, but they would not give way
before it. They knew no better than to follow that old ram through the
gap, one after the other.
Tom had shut off the engine and applied the brakes, as the girls
shrieked. But he had been going too fast to stop short of the place
where the sheep were passing. At the end of the flock came a lamb,
bleating and trying to keep up with its mother.
"Oh, the lamb!" shrieked Helen.
"Look out, Tom!" added Ruth.
The lamb did not get across the road. The car struck it, and with a
pitiful "baa-a-a!" it was knocked a dozen feet.
In a moment the car stopped. It had scarcely run its entire length past
the spot where the lamb was struck. The poor creature lay panting,
"baa-aing" feebly, beside the road.
Ruth was out of the tonneau and kneeling beside the creature almost
before the wheels ceased to roll. The mother ewe had crowded through the
fence. Now she put her foolish face out, and called to the lamb to
follow.
"He can't!" almost sobbed Ruth. "He has a broken leg. Oh! what a foolish
mother you were to lead him right into danger."
Tom was silent and looked pretty solemn, while Helen was scolding him
nervously--although she knew that he was not really at fault.
"If you hadn't been speeding, this wouldn't have happened, Tom Cameron!"
she said. "I told you so."
"Oh, all right. You're a fine prophetess," grunted her brother. "Keep on
rubbing it in."
The lamb had tried to scramble up, but one of its forelegs certainly was
broken. It tumbled over on its side again, and Ruth held it down
tenderly and tried to soothe its fear.
"Oh, dear! whatever shall we do?" she murmured. "The poor, poor little
thing."
"Guess we'll know pretty soon what we'll do," quoth Master Tom, standing
beside the machine and looking back along the road. "Here comes the man
that owns him."
"Oh, dear me!" whispered Helen. "Doesn't he look savage?"
"Worse than the old ram there," agreed her brother, for the black-faced
leader of the flock was eyeing them through the fence.