er's,
and tried to keep themselves steady against the rough jolting, till by
degrees--and it was the best thing they could have done--they both fell
asleep, and were sleeping as peacefully as in their own white cots at
home when, later in the afternoon, Diana got into the waggon again, and,
rolling up an old shawl, carefully laid it as a pillow under the two
fair heads. It was getting dusk by now, and the gipsies all disappeared
into the vans, for they began to drive too quickly for it to be possible
for them to keep up by walking alongside.

The gipsy girl sat there gazing at the two little faces she had learnt
to love. She gazed at them with a deep tenderness in her dark eyes. She
knew it was almost the last time she should see them, but it was not of
that she was thinking.

"If I could but have taken them back myself and seen them safe!" she
kept thinking. "But I daren't. With Tim no one will notice them much,
but with me it'd be different. And it'd get Mick and the others into
trouble, even if I didn't care for myself. It's safer for them too for
me to stay behind. But how to get them safe out of Crookford! I must
speak to Tim. And I don't care what Mick says or does after this. I'll
never, _never_ again have a hand in this kind of business; he may steal
horses and poultry and what he likes, but I'll have no more to do with
stealing children. If ill had come, or did come, to these innocent
creatures I'd never know another easy moment."

CHAPTER IX.

CROOKFORD FAIR.

"And the booths of mountebanks,
With the smell of tan and planks."
LONGFELLOW.

The jolting had ceased, and it was quite dark before Duke and Pamela
awoke. But through the little window of the van came twinkling lights,
and as they sat up and looked about them they heard a good many unusual
sounds--the voices of people outside calling to each other, the noise of
wheels along stony roadways--a sort of general clatter and movement
which soon told that the encampment for the night was not, as hitherto,
on the edge of some quiet village or on a lonely moor.

"Bruvver," said Pamela, who had been the first to rouse up, "are you
awake? What a long time us has been asleep! Is it the middle of the
night, and what a noise there is."

Duke slowly collected his ideas. He did not speak, but he stood up on
the bench and peeped out of the window.

"It must be that big place where there's a fair," he said. "Lo