trouble!" and she raised a black and withered hand in warning, "or
trouble shall be upon your head!"

"Salvo!"

"Tony Salvo! Liza has spoken!" and the old gypsy turned away, after
giving Cora a look such as the young girl was not apt soon to forget.

But Cora went straight on to the police station.

CHAPTER VIII

THE BEGINNING OF THE END

Cora was pale and frightened. Jack and Ed had already reached the
office of the country squire, where that official had taken the sulky
prisoner. Walter went back to the cottage to assure the young girls
there that everything would ultimately be all right.

From under dark, shaggy eyebrows the man stared at Cora. He seemed to
know of the gypsy woman's threat, and was adding to it all the savagery
that looks and scowls could impart. But Cora was not to be thus
intimidated--to give in to such lawbreakers.

"Do you recognize the prisoner?" asked the officer.

"As well as I can tell from the opportunity I had of seeing him,"
replied the girl, in a steadied voice.

"What about him do you remember?"

"The beard, and the fact that he is lame. I must have hit him when I
fired to give the alarm."

The man looked up and smiled. "Humph!" he grunted, "fired--to
give--the alarm!"

"Pretty good firing, eh?" demanded the squire. "Now, Miss Kimball,
please give us the whole story."

Again the man cast that swift, fierce look at Cora, but her eyes were
diverted from him.

"The first time I saw him--I think it was he--was one evening when we
were returning from a motor ride. I saw a man creeping around the
cottage. He had that peculiar stoop of the shoulders."

"He's got that, all right," agreed the squire.

"The next time I saw the person, whom I take to be this man, was last
night, about midnight. I was aroused from sleep, and upon making a
light in the hall I saw a man under the window. The next moment he
jumped out, and again I saw the figure under the window."

Cora paused. Somehow she felt unreasonably nervous, but the strain of
the night's excitement might account for that.

"What have you got to say for yourself, Tony?" asked the squire.

"Not guilty," growled the man. "I was at the camp last night, and when
the old folks were packing up I got kicked with that big bay horse.
Ouch!" and he rubbed the injured leg.

"Looks funny, though, doesn't it, Tony?"

Jack and Ed were talking to Cora. "If you have finished with us,
Squire Redding, we will lea