recious packing-case safe into the railway
station." Oscar took it seriously. "Are there any robbers in this
neighborhood?" he asked. "Lord love you, sir!" said the driver, "robbers
would starve in these parts; we have got nothing worth thieving here."
Jicks--still watching the proceedings with an interest which allowed no
detail to escape unnoticed--assumed the responsibility of starting the
men on their journey. The odd child waved her chubby hand imperiously to
her friend the driver, and cried in her loudest voice, "Away!" The driver
touched his hat with comic respect. "All right, miss--time's money, aint
it?" He cracked his whip, and the cart rolled off noiselessly over the
thick close turf of the South Downs.

It was time for me to go back to the rectory, and to restore the
wandering Jicks, for the time being, to the protection of home. I
returned to Oscar, to say good-bye.

"I wish I was going back with you," he said.

"You will be as free as I am to come and to go at the rectory," I
answered, "when they know what has passed this morning between you and
me. In your own interests, I am determined to tell them who you are. You
have nothing to fear, and everything to gain, by my speaking out. Clear
your mind of fancies and suspicions that are unworthy of you. By
to-morrow we shall be good neighbors; by the end of the week we shall be
good friends. For the present, as we say in France, _au revoir!_"

I turned to take Jicks by the hand. While I had been speaking to Oscar
the child had slipped away from me. Not a sign of her was to be seen.

Before we could stir a step to search for our lost Gipsy, her voice
reached our ears, raised shrill and angry in the regions behind us, at
the side of the house.

"Go away!" we heard the child cry out impatiently. "Ugly men, go away!"

We turned the corner, and discovered two shabby strangers, resting
themselves against the side wall of the house. Their cadaverous faces,
their brutish expressions, and their frowzy clothes, proclaimed them, to
my eye, as belonging to the vilest blackguard type that the civilized
earth has yet produced--the blackguard of London growth. There they
lounged, with their hands in their pockets and their backs against the
wall, as if they were airing themselves on the outer side of a
public-house--and there stood Jicks, with her legs planted wide apart on
the turf, asserting the rights of property (even at that early age!) and
ordering the rascals of