"Oh, come," whispered Belle. "I am so frightened. That is one of the
gypsies from the beach camp."

Cora had regained her feet, and with a bruised hand was now passing
along with the others.

"We might have had a couple of quarts of fortune out of that basket
just as well as not," insisted Jack. "I never saw anything so handy."

"Oh, those gypsies are a pest," declared Mr. Rand. "But I am just
superstitious enough not to want to offend any of them. I claim to be
a first-class chaperon--first-class!"

"Are you hurt, Cora?" asked Bess, seeing that Cora was pressing her
hand to her lips.

"Only scratched from the brush," and she winced. "Those berry bushes
seem to have a grudge against me."

"But the old Gypsy?" asked Bess, as the two girls stood close together.

"Oh, I didn't mind her rant," replied Cora. "They always have
something wonderful to tell one."

"I wish they would not cross our path so often," went on the other
girl. "Seems to me they have been the one drawback of our entire trip."

"Let us hope that they will now be satisfied," said Cora with that
indefinite manner which so often conveys a stronger meaning than might
have been intended.

Both girls sighed. Then they joined the others, while the old gypsy
woman looked after them sharply.

Ed was hailing the driver of the bus--"Silent Bill," they called him,
because he was never known to keep still, not even at his grandmother's
funeral. Silent Bill lost no time in getting his horses headed right,
also in starting out to describe the wonders and beauties of the White
Mountains.

It was fun to take the bus ride, and no one was more pleased at the
prospect than was Mr. Rand.

"Nothing like sitting down square," he declared. "Why young folks
always want to walk themselves into the grave is more than I pretend to
understand."

"My, but that old gypsy woman did frighten me," said Belle to Hazel.
"I never saw such a look as she gave Cora! I honestly thought she was
going to drop. Maybe she----"

"Blew powder into her eyes. The same thought came to me," replied
Hazel. "Well, I hope we won't see any more gypsies until we get within
police precincts. We have had enough of them here."

Then Silent Bill called out something about how the air in those peaks
would make a dead man well. "Look at them peaks!" he insisted.
"That's what fetches folks up here every summer."

"They fetched me down," remarked Mr. Rand, "but then I never did