with them, and he'll b-b-b-bark at us surely. Maybe he'll bite us!"

They could see a woman moving about through the Camp. She had a fire
with a kettle hanging over it. There were two or three other people
about, and some starved-looking horses. The dog was lying beside the
fire, and there was a baby rolling about on the ground. A little pig
was tied by one hind leg to a thorn-bush.

"If the dog comes after us," said Larry, "I'd drop a stone on him, out
of a tree, just the way the good son did in the story, and kill him
dead."

"But there's never a tree anywhere about," said Eileen. "Sure, that is
no plan at all."

"That's a true word," said Larry, when he had looked all about for a
tree, and found none. "We'll have to think of something else."

Then he thought and thought. "We might go back to Grannie's," he said
after a while.

"That would be no better," Eileen whispered, "for, surely, our Mother
would go crazy with worrying if we didn't come home, at all, and we
already so late."

"Well, then," Larry answered, "we must just bide here until it's dark,
and creep by, the best way we can. Anyway, I've the piece of coal in my
pocket, and Grannie said no harm would come to us at all, and we having
it."

Just then the man, who had been coming up the road, reached the Camp.
The dog ran out to meet him, barking joyfully. The man came near the
fire and threw the bundle off his shoulder. It was two fat geese, with
their legs tied together!

"The Saints preserve us," whispered Eileen, "if those aren't our own two
geese! Do you see those black feathers in their wings?"

"He's the thief of the world," said Larry.

He forgot to be frightened because he was so angry, and he spoke right
out loud! He stood up and shook his fist at the Tinker. His head
showed over the top of the wall. Eileen jerked him down.

"Whist now, Larry darling," she begged. "If the dog sees you once he'll
tear you to pieces."

Larry dropped behind the wall again, and they watched the Tinker's wife
loosen the string about the legs of the geese, and tie them by a long
cord to the bush, beside the little pig. Then all the Tinker people
gathered around the pot and began to eat their supper.

The baby and the dog were on the ground playing together. The Twins
could hear the shouts of the baby, and the barks of the dog.

It was quite dusk by this time, but the moon grew brighter and brighter
in the sky, and the flames of the Tin