"It's a man!"
Dora Lockwood said it so tragically that Bobby was highly amused.
"My goodness me!" she chortled. "You said that with all the horrified
emphasis of a spinster lady."
"It _is_ a man--isn't it?" whispered the other twin.
"I--I guess so," Laura Belding said, slowly.
"It is," declared Jess. "And he's a tough looking character."
"And he is acting quite as oddly as the girl did," remarked Bobby. "What
do you suppose it means?"
"He's a Gypsy, too, I believe," put in Eve Sitz, suddenly.
"Say! this is getting melodramatic," laughed Laura Belding.
"Just like 'The Gypsy's Warning,' or something quite as hair-raising,
eh?" agreed Bobby.
"There! he's coming out," gasped Jess.
The man appeared for half a minute in the clearer space of the open
road. He was staring all about, up and down the road, along the edge of
the woods, and even into the air. The seven girls were behind the fringe
of bushes that edged the huge rock, and he could not see them.
"What an evil-faced fellow he is!" whispered Dora Lockwood.
"And see the big gold rings in his ears," added her twin, Dorothy.
"Do you suppose he is really after that girl?" observed Laura,
thoughtfully.
"Whether he is, or not, it's none of our business, I suppose," returned
Jess, who was Mother Wit's closest chum.
"I'm not so sure of that."
"My goodness! if they're Gypsies, we don't want to have anything to do
with them," exclaimed Dorothy.
"Oh, the Romany people aren't so bad," said Eve Sitz, easily. "They have
customs of their own, and live a different life from we folk----"
"Or 'us folk?'" suggested Nellie, smiling.
"From other folk, anyway!" returned the big girl, cheerfully. "They come
through this section every Spring--and sometimes later in the year, too.
We have often had them at the house," she added, for Eve's father had a
large farm, and from that farm the seven girls had started on this long
walk early in the morning.
It was the Easter vacation at Central High and these friends were all
members of the junior class. Centerport, the spires and tall buildings
of which they could now see in the distance, was a wealthy and lively
city of some hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, situated on the
southern shore of Lake Luna, a body of water of considerable size.
At either end of the lake was another large town--namely Lumberport and
Keyport. In each of these latter cities was a well conducted high
school, and in Centerport there were three--the East and West Highs, and
Central High, the newest and largest.
For a year now the girls of all these five high schools had been deeply
interested in athletics, including the games usually played upon the
Girls' Branch Athletic League grounds--canoeing, rowing, ski running,
and lastly, but not least in value according to the estimation of their
instructors, walking. Usually the physical instructor of Central High,
Mrs. Case, accompanied her pupils on their walking tours; but this
vacation the seven friends who now stood upon the summit of this big,
gray rock, had determined to indulge in a long walk by themselves, and
they had come over to Eve Sitz's house the night before so as to get an
early start on the mountain road to Fielding, twenty miles away. From
that place they would take the train back to Centerport, and Eve was to
remain all night with Laura at the Belding home.
These girls, although of strongly marked and contrasting characters,
were intimate friends. They had been enthusiastic members of the girls'
athletic association from its establishment; and they had, individually
and together, taken an important part in the athletic activities of
Central High.
For instance, in the first volume of this series, entitled, "The Girls
of Central High; Or, Rivals for All Honors," Laura Belding was able to
interest one of the wealthiest men of Centerport, Colonel Richard
Swayne, in the girls' athletic association, then newly formed, so that
he gave a large sum of money toward a proper athletic field and
gymnasium building for their sole use.
In "The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna; Or, the Crew That Won," the
second story of the series, the girls were mainly centering their
attention upon aquatic sports; and the Lockwood twins--Dora and
Dorothy--were particularly active in this branch of athletics. They won
honorable mention if not the prize in the canoe event, and were likewise
members of the Central High girls' crew that won the cup in the contest
of eight-oared shells.
The third volume of the series, named "The Girls of Central High at
Basketball; Or, The Great Gymnasium Mystery," particularly related the
fortunes of the representative basketball team of Central High, and of
which each girl now gathered here on the ridge was a member.
Not long previous to this day in the Spring vacation when the seven were
tramping toward Fielding, Jess Morse had made a great hit with her
school friends and instructors, as well. She had written a play, which
was performed by members of the girls' secret society of the school and
some of their boy friends, and so good was it that it not only won a
prize of two hundred dollars for which many of the girls of Central High
had competed, but it attracted the attention of a professional
theatrical producer, who had made a contract with Mrs. Morse, Jess's
mother, for the use of the play in a revised form upon the professional
stage. The details of all this are to be found in the fourth volume of
the series, entitled, "The Girls of Central High on the Stage; Or, The
Play That Took the Prize."
"There! the fellow's going back," said Jess Morse, suddenly calling
attention to the dark man on the road below.
"If he was after the girl he has given up the chase. I am glad of that,"
added her chum.
"But where did the girl go?" demanded Bobby Hargrew, craning her neck to
peer toward the bushes on the easterly side of the rock.
"There she is!" ejaculated Dora Lockwood, grabbing Bobby by the arm.
She pointed down the side of the ridge, where the rough pasture land
dropped to the verge of the brook. The other girls came running and
gazed in the direction she pointed out.
The green skirt and the yellow scarf appeared. The girl was wading in
the stream, and she passed swiftly along, seen by the spectators at
every opening in the fringe of trees and brush that bordered the brook.
"In the water at this time of the year!" gasped Jess.
"And in her shoes and stockings! She wouldn't have had time to stop to
take them off and get so far up stream," declared Bobby, almost dancing
up and down in her eagerness.
"What do you suppose it means?" cried Nellie.
"She is running away from the man, I guess," admitted Laura, slowly.
"And trying to hide her trail," added Eve.
"Hide her trail! Is this the Indian country? Are the Gypsies savages?"
demanded Nellie. "Has she got to run along the top of a stone fence and
then take to a running stream to throw off pursuit?"
"That is her hope, I expect," Laura said.
"But _why?_" cried Bobby. "You can't tell me that even Gypsies are as
keen on a trail as all that----"
"Hark!" commanded Laura. "Listen."
"It's dogs," spoke Bobby, in a moment.
"O--o--o--o! sounds like a wolf," shuddered Dora.
"It is worse," said Eve Sitz, her face flushing. "That is the bay of a
bloodhound. I remember that we saw one of the great, lop-eared animals
in leash when that party of Romanys went past our place last week."
"You don't mean that, Eve?" Jess cried. "A bloodhound?"
"And they have put him on the trail of that girl--sure as you live!"
declared the farmer's daughter, with decision.