“Master,” said Tim solemnly, “I’m ready to help you.  I said so to Diana, I did, as soon as ever I see’d what Mick was after, a-tempting you and missy with his nonsense about the bowl you wanted; there’s no bowls like what you wanted among the crocks.”

“Why didn’t you call out to us and tell us not to come?” said Duke.

“I dursn’t—­and Mick’d have told you it was all my lies.  And I never thought he was a-going to bring you right away neither.  I thought he’d get money out of you like he does whenever he’s a chance.  But, master, if you’re ever to get safe away you must do as I tell you, you must.”

This was all the comfort poor Duke could get.  In the meantime there was nothing to do but try to go to sleep and forget his troubles.  There was not very much time to do so in, for long before it was really dawn the gipsies were up and astir, and by noon the little brother and sister were farther from “home” than they had ever been since the day when their poor young mother arrived at Arbitt Lodge with her two starved-looking fledglings, now nearly six years ago.  For some miles from where they had spent the night Mick and his party joined a travelling caravan of their friends, all bound for the great fair of which Tim had spoken to Duke.  And now it would have been difficult for even Grandpapa or Grandmamma to recognise their dear children.  Their own clothes were taken from them, their white skin, like that of the princesses in the old fairy tales, was washed with something which, if not walnut juice, had the same effect, and they were dressed in coarse rough garments belonging to some of the gipsy children of the caravan.  Still, on the whole, they were not unkindly treated—­they had enough to eat of common food, and Diana, who took them a good deal under her charge, was kind to them in her rough sulky way.  But it was a dreadful change for the poor little things, and they would already have tried, at all risks, to run away, had it not been for Tim’s begging them to be patient and trust to him.

All day long—­it was now the third day since they had been stolen—­the two or three covered vans or waggons which contained the gipsies and their possessions jogged slowly along the roads and lanes.  Now and then they halted for a few hours if they came to any village or small town where it seemed likely that they could do a little business, either in selling their crockery or cheap cutlery, baskets, and suchlike, or perhaps in fortune-telling, and no doubt wherever they stopped the farm-yards and poultry-yards in the neighbourhood were none the better for it.  At such times Duke and Pamela were always hidden away deep in the recesses of one of the waggons, so there was nothing they dreaded more than when they saw signs of making a halt.  It was wretched to be huddled for hours together in a dark corner among all sorts of dirty packages, while the other children were allowed to run about the village street picking up any odd