there's no denying. You wouldn't mind my taking a
whiff, sir, would you?" and she produced a blackened clay pipe which had
seen much service. "Smoking is good for the nerves, Mr. Lambert."

The young man handed her his pouch. "Fill up," he said, smiling at the
idea of his smoking in company with an old gypsy hag.

"Bless you, my precious!" said Mother Cockleshell, accepting the offer
with avidity, and talking more in the Romany manner. "I allers did say
as you were what I said before you were, and that's golden, my Gorgious
one. Ahime!" she blew a wreath of blue smoke from her withered lips,
"that's food to me, my dearie, and heat to my old bones."

Lambert nodded. "You hinted, in Devonshire, that you had something to
say, and a few moments ago you talked about putting the crooked
straight."

"And don't the crooked need that same?" chuckled Gentilla, nodding.
"There's trouble at hand, my gentleman. The child's brewing witch's
broth, for sure."

"Chaldea!" Lambert sat up anxiously. He mistrusted the younger gypsy
greatly, and was eager to know what she was now doing.

"Aye! Aye! Aye!" Mother Cockleshell nodded three times like a veritable
Macbeth witch. "She came tearing, rampagious-like, to the camp an hour
or so back and put on her fine clothes--may they cleave with pain to her
skin--to go to the big city. It is true, rye. Kara ran by the side of
the donkey she rode upon--may she have an accident--to Wanbury."

"To Wanbury?" Lambert looked startled as it crossed his mind, and not
unnaturally, that Chaldea might have gone to inform Inspector Darby
about the conversation with Garvington in the library.

"To Wanbury first, sir, and then to Lundra."

"How can you be certain of that?"

"The child treated me like the devil's calls her," said Gentilla
Stanley, shaking her head angrily. "And I have no trust in her, for a
witchly wrong 'un she is. When she goes donkey-wise to Wanbury, I says
to a chal, says I, quick-like, 'Follow and watch her games!' So the chal
runs secret, behind hedges, and comes on the child at the railway line
making for Lundra. And off she goes on wheels in place of tramping the
droms in true Romany style."

"What the deuce has she gone to London for?" Lambert asked himself in a
low voice, but Gentilla's sharp ears overheard.

"Mischief for sure, my gentleman. Hai, but she's a bad one, that same.
But she plays and I play, with the winning for me--since the good cards
are always in the old