Pamela’s foot was almost well.  She could walk and even run without it hurting her.  Diana had bound it up carefully, after putting on some ointment which certainly healed it very quickly.  For, with all their ignorance and brutality, the gipsies were really clever in some ways.  They had knowledge of herbs which had been handed down to them by their ancestors, and their fingers were skilful and nimble.  And for their own sakes Mick and the Missus were anxious that their two pretty prisoners should not fall ill.  So that, though dirty and uncared-for as far as appearance went, the little pair had not really suffered in health by their misfortunes.

It was partly, perhaps, owing to their innocent hopefulness, which kept up their spirits when, had they been wiser and older, they would have lost heart and grown ill with fear and anxiety.

They were now far enough from Sandlingham for Mick to feel pretty sure they would not be tracked.  The actual distance they had travelled was not great, but a few miles in those days were really more than a hundred at the present time.  For there were, of course, no railways; in many parts of the country the cross-roads were so bad that it was necessary and really quicker to make long rounds rather than leave “the king’s highway.”  And—­still more important, perhaps, in such a case—­there were no telegraphs!  No possibility for poor Grandpapa and Grandmamma—­as there would be nowadays, could such a thing happen as the theft of little children—­to send word in the space of an hour or two to the police all over the country.  Indeed, compared with what it is in our times, the police hardly existed.

And everything was in the gipsies’ favour.  No one had seen them in the neighbourhood of Arbitt Lodge.  They had not been on the Sandlingham high-road before meeting the children, and had avoided it on purpose after that.  So, among the many explanations that were offered to the poor old gentleman and lady of their grandchildren’s disappearance, though “stolen by gipsies” was suggested, it was not seriously taken up.

“There have been no gipsies about here for months past,” said Grandpapa.  “Besides, the children were in our own grounds—­gipsies could not have got in without being seen—­it is not as if they had been straying about the lanes.”

Everything that could be done had been done.  All the ponds in the neighbourhood had been dragged; the only dangerous place anywhere near—­a sort of overhanging cliff over some unused quarries—­had been at once visited; the quarries themselves searched in every corner—­even though they were very meek-and-mild, inoffensive quarries, where it would have been difficult to hide even a little dog like Toby.  And all, as we of course know, had been in vain!  There really seemed by the end of this same seventh day nothing left to do.  And Grandpapa sat with bowed gray head, his newspaper unopened on the table beside him, broken down, brave