expected, and unless they hurried on they might not be
there in time to take up a good position among the many strays and waifs
of their kind always to be found at such places. There were ever so many
ways in which they expected to turn a number of honest or dishonest
"pennies" at this same fair. It was one of their regular harvest times.
Mick and his friends always managed to do something in the way of
horse-dealing on such occasions, and Diana, who was the best-looking of
the younger gipsy-women, was thoroughly up to all the tricks of
fortune-telling. Her cold haughty manners had often more success than
the wheedling flatteries of the others. She _looked_ as if she were
quite above trickery of any kind, and no doubt the things she told were
not altogether nonsense or falsehood. For she had learned to be
wonderfully quick in reading the characters of those who applied to her,
even in divining the thoughts and anxieties in their minds. And besides
these resources the gipsies had a good show of baskets and brooms of
their own manufacture to dispose of; added to which this year a hard
bargain was to be driven with Signor Fribusco, the owner of the
travelling circus, for the "two lovely orphans," whose description had
already been given to him by some of the gipsy's confidantes, to whom
Mick had sent word, knowing them to be in the Signor's neighbourhood.

Some of this Tim had found out by dint of listening to bits of
conversation when he was supposed to be asleep. He grew more and more
afraid as the days passed on and no chance of escape offered, for
various things began to make him fear they were not very far from the
town they were bound to. For one thing Mick's wife and Diana began to
pay more attention to the two children's appearance. Their fair hair was
brushed and combed every day, and their delicate skin was carefully
washed with something that restored it almost to its natural colour; all
of which had an ominous meaning for Tim.

"Diana is very kind now," said Pamela, one day when she and Duke had
been allowed for once to run about a little with the other children.
There certainly seemed small risk in their doing so, for the gipsies had
encamped for the night on a desolate moor, where no human habitations of
any kind were in sight, no passers-by to be feared.

"Yes," said Duke, who had hold of Tim's other hand; "she makes us nice
and clean and tidy."

"And she's making a gown for me," said Pamela. "It's made o