“Bessie, are you crazy?” gasped Dolly, as they came into the circle of light from the fire.  “My feet are all wet!  Whatever is the matter with you?  You nearly made me smash my camera!”

“I don’t care,” said Bessie, panting, but immensely relieved.  “Sit down here by the fire and take off your shoes and stockings; they’ll soon get dry.  I’m going to do it.”

She was as good as her word, and not until they had dried their feet and set the shoes and stockings to dry would she explain what had caused her wild dash from the scene of the trap they had laid for the deer, and which had so nearly proved to be a trap for them, instead.

“If you’d looked up when that powder went off you’d have run yourself, Dolly, without being made to do it,” she said, then.  “That wasn’t a deer we heard, Dolly.”

“What was it, a bear or some sort of a wild animal?”

“No, it was a man.”

Dolly’s face was pale, even in the ruddy glow of the fire.

“You don’t mean—­it wasn’t—­”

“The gypsy?  Yes, that’s just who it was, Dolly.  He’s found out somehow where we are, you see.  It’s just what I was afraid of, that he would manage to follow us over here.  But I’m not afraid now, as long as we know he’s around.  I don’t see how he can possibly do you any harm.”

“Oh, Bessie, what a lucky, lucky thing that we saw him!  If we hadn’t just happened to try to get that picture we would never have done it.  The nasty brute!  The idea of his daring to follow us over here.  Do you think he would have really tried to carry me back to his tribe, Bessie?”

“I don’t know, Dolly.  His face looked awful when I saw it in the glare.  But then, of course, he was terribly surprised.  He probably thought he was the only soul awake for miles and miles, and to have that thing go off in one’s face would startle anybody, and make them look pretty scary.”

“I should say so!  You have to pucker up your face and shut your eyes.  Do you think he saw us, Bessie?”

“I shouldn’t think it was very likely, Dolly.  You see, it’s just as you say.  The glare of a flashlight is blinding, when it goes off suddenly like that, right in front of you.  I don’t think you’re likely to see much of anything except the glare.  And, of course, he hadn’t the slightest reason to be expecting to see us.  I expect he’s more puzzled and frightened than we are; he’s certainly a good deal more puzzled.”

“Then maybe he’ll be so frightened that he’ll go back to his people and let me alone, Bessie.”

“I certainly hope so, Dolly.  It really doesn’t seem possible that he’d dare to carry you off, even if he could get hold of you.  He’d know that we’d be sure to suspect that he was the one who had done it, and even a gypsy ought to know what happens to people who do things like that.  I don’t see how he could hope to escape.”

“But, Bessie, I was thinking:  suppose he didn’t carry me to the place where the other gypsies are?  Suppose he took me right off into the woods somewhere, and hid?”