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If I stay now I'm afraid they'll catch me, too, and then no one would know where you were. They can't get you away from here, so you're sure to be safe soon." Dolly nodded to show that she understood, and Bessie moved silently away. But, as she turned down the trail that would take her back to the spot where she had left Lolla, she had a new cause for fright.
He's a bad man, that Peter. I think if John and he were not so friendly John would not have done this. He is kind, and brave, and he always tried to stop anyone who wanted to steal children. He would steal a horse, or a deer, but never a child; that was cowardly, he said." "He didn't hurt you, did he, Lolla?" The gypsy girl laughed. "Oh, no. He tried to hit me, but I got away from him too quickly.
"How can I? He blames me. He says if I and Peter hadn't been such cowards all would have been well. He is angry at me; he will not forgive me." "Oh, yes, he will, Lolla. I am sure he loves you, and that he did this wicked thing because he wanted to have much money to spend buying nice things for you; pretty dresses, and a fine wagon, with good horses.
It was plain that he did not feel secure; that he thought his pursuers might, even thus early, have tracked him down, and, in the moment before he had recognized Lolla, Bessie saw him quail, while his face whitened, so that Bessie knew he was afraid. That knowledge, somehow, comforted her vastly.
She remembered that just a little while before she had come to the place where she had first seen Lolla, a side path had crossed the trail on which she had followed Dolly and her captor, and it seemed likely to her that that path would also cross the trail she was now on. If it did she could work back to a spot she knew, and so find her bearings, at least.
Even if it is some of your friends they would not suspect me; they would think I was just out for a walk." So Bessie waited for perhaps ten minutes, while Lolla crept forward alone. But the gypsy was back soon, smiling. "All is safe now," she said. "Come quickly, though, so we shall get behind them and be able to get near the camp.
"I thought that was what would happen, Lolla, but I wasn't quite sure." "Did you hear me shouting when Peter came along? I hoped you would understand and bide yourself some way, so that he wouldn't find you. What I was most afraid of was that you would be in the woods with your friend, and that you wouldn't hear us."
John stared at her angrily. "I am going now to the camp," he said. "If. they come looking for news of the girl, they will find me there, and plenty to swear that I have been there all this night, and so could not have done what they charge. My tribe will help me; it is my right to call upon it for help." "You forget me," said Lolla, dangerously.
When my man comes you will find that he is not a coward, like Peter, to be frightened with your knife. He will take it away from you and beat you, too, for trying to frighten Peter with it." "Yes, he is brave, Lolla. We saw that when he ran away from the fire that he saw last night near the lake." Bessie was taking a chance when she said that.
Dolly, terribly cast down by this sudden upsetting of all the hopes of rescue that the coming of Bessie and her release from the cords that bound her had raised, was close beside her, shivering with fright and despair. And Bessie, with a sudden cry of anger, seized the knife Lolla had given her, which had been lying at her feet. Furiously she brandished it.
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