“You leave that to me,” said the guide who was to be in charge of the party.  “If they get away from us, Andrew, they’ll be slicker than anyone I ever heard tell of, anywhere.  We won’t hurt them none, but they’ll walk a chalk line, right in front of us, or I’ll know the reason why.”

“All right,” said Andrew.  “Better be getting started, then.  Don’t want to make it too late when you get into town with them.  Let the girl rest once in a while; she looks purty tired to me.”

Bessie and Dolly and the other girls watched the little procession start off on the trail, and Bessie, for one, felt sorry for Lolla, who looked utterly disconsolate and hopeless.

“We couldn’t let them go free, I suppose,” said Eleanor, regretfully.  “But I do feel sorry for that poor girl.  I don’t think she liked the idea from the very first, but she couldn’t help herself.  She had to do what the men told her.  Women don’t rank very high among the gypsies; they have to do what the men tell them, and they’re expected to do all the work and take all the hard knocks beside.”

“You’re right; there’s nothing else to do, ma’am,” said old Andrew.  “Well, guess the rest of us guides had better be gettin’ back to work.  Ain’t nothin’ else we can do fer you, is there, ma’am?”

“I don’t think so.  I don’t suppose we need be afraid of the other gypsies, Andrew?  Are they likely to try to get revenge for what has happened to their companions?”

“Pshaw!  They’ll be as quiet as lambs for a long time now.  They was a breakin’ up camp over there by Loon Pond when the boys come away last time.  Truth is, I reckon they’re madder at John and his pals for gettin’ the whole camp into trouble than they are at us.

“You see, they know they needn’t show their noses around here fer a long time now; not until this here shindy’s had a chance to blow over an’ be forgotten.  And there ain’t many places where they’ve been as welcome as over to the pond.”

“I shouldn’t think they’d be very popular here in the woods.”

“They ain’t, ma’am; they ain’t, fer a fact.  More’n once we’ve tried to make the hotel folks chase them away, but they sort of tickled the summer boarders over there, and so the hotel folks made out as they weren’t as bad as they were painted, and was entitled to a chance to make camp around there as long as they behaved themselves.”

“I suppose they never stole any stuff from the hotel?”

“That’s jest it.  They knew enough to keep on the right side of them people, you see, an’ they did their poachin’ in our woods.  Any time they’ve been around it’s always meant more work for us, and hard work, too.”

“Well, I should think that after this experience the people at the hotel would see that the gypsies aren’t very good neighbors, after all.”

“That’s what we’re counting on, ma’am.  Seems to me, from what I just happened to pick up, that there was some special reason, like, for this varmint to have acted that way today, or last night, maybe it was.  Some feller in the city as was back of him.”