it--Oh how I do wish us had told her at first," he
broke off suddenly. "Please go," he went on again to the pedlar;
"sister's frightened. I'll stay here with her till her foot's better,
and then us'll go home."

"And how will ye do that, I'd like to know, my young master?" said the
pedlar, and there was a mocking tone in his voice that made the boy look
up at him with fresh alarm. "Ye're furder from 'home' than ye think for.
No, no; here ye'll have to stay till I fetch the donkey to carry you
both. And to think of all that trouble and time lost for nothing."

"They'll give you something at home for bringing us back; they will
indeed," said Duke. "Grandpapa and Grandmamma will be so pleased to see
us safe again, I _know_ they'll give you something," he repeated, while
a sob rose in his throat at the thought that already perhaps dear
Grandpapa and Grandmamma--never had they seemed _so_ dear!--were
wondering and troubled about their absence. And somehow he quite forgot
that he himself could reward the gipsy, for in attending to Pamela's
wounded foot he had laid down the money-box, and no longer remembered
that he had it with him.

The gipsy grunted, and muttered something about "making sure" that Duke
scarcely heard. Then he turned to go.

"I'm off for the donkey then. But mind you the stiller you stays in this
here wood the better," he added impressively. "That's why I didn't like
missy crying out so loud. It's a queer place--a _very_ queer place. I'se
warrant your Nurse never brought you this way when you were out
a-walking."

"No, never," said Duke, startled, and even Pamela left off sobbing to
stare up at him with her tearful blue eyes, as if fascinated by these
mysterious hints.

"Ah, I thought not," he said, nodding his head. "Well, stay where you
are, and make no sound whatsumnever, and no harm'll come to ye. But if
you stir or speak even above a whisper," and he lowered his own voice,
"there's no saying. There's beasts you never heard tell of in this
wood--worsest of all, snakes, that think nothing of twisting round a
child and off with it for their supper afore one could cry out. But if
you stop quite still they'll not find you out before I'm back with the
donkey. It's about their time o' day for sleeping just now, I'm
thinking," and with this crumb of consolation the cruel-hearted gipsy
turned on his heel.

Words would fail me to describe the terror of the two poor little
children: a cry of appeal to the