Chapter X: A Holiday Adventure

“And we might get a chance, you know,” remarked Stella, “of doing something to win the shield; though I don’t know if it would count, on a holiday!”

Margot shook her head. It was difficult to know. “Of course, I suppose there’s much more chance to find something exciting out of school,” said she. “So, perhaps, that way, it wouldn’t be fair to the rest.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean that way, exactly,” began Stella, as they walked up the little drive to the rectory front-door. “_Mo--ther!_”

They had driven down together in the ponycart which had been brought up to the Cliff School by the rector’s boy, Jim, to fetch Stella home. It had been ripping to jingle along the hard high road, even although the stolid Jim had kept hold of the reins all the way without realizing how Margot’s fingers were itching to handle them herself. Now she was watching, with envy in her eyes, as he led Jerry stablewards.

“I say, I’d love to go and--unharness the pony,” burst from Margot’s lips.

“_What!_” Stella stood still on the drive and stared.

“It’s only”--the visitor grew rather pink--“that I do so simply adore horses. Only having a car, now--oh, of course, dad’s is a ripping one, and he likes it; but it’s so un-alive after Australia.”

“I must say I’d swap Jerry for even a two-seater,” Stella sniffed. “Where _is_ mother! Talking of horses, I know exactly what we’ll do. It’s a million times better than seeing Jerry unharnessed. That’s tame! _Mother!_”

An exceedingly obedient and indulgent mother appeared suddenly on the rectory terrace at the sound of the second call.

“Stella! Here you are!”

“I say, mother, here’s Margot. And, mother, she’s got to be back by six! And it gets dark so soon; so we want to go along the Cliff road before tea.” Stella permitted herself to be embraced while Margot stood rather awkwardly by.

“So here is the little girl from the Bush!” exclaimed Mrs. Hill kindly. “I am so glad that Miss Slater allowed you to come to tea.”

But Margot had not come from the Bush. Her shyness disappeared instantly, as she rectified the mistake. “The Bush! Oh, no. Nobody lives in the Bush, you know. We’ve gone through. Once we camped there. But nobody, except kangaroos and....”

“Oh, mother; talking of kangaroos,” the impatient Stella burst in, “Margot’s most awfully interested in horses, and she told us all kinds of things in the dorm. She even likes Jerry. And I want to take her straightaway, before tea, to see those horses on the gipsies’ camping-ground. There were a dozen, quite, last week-end, and....”

“But, my dear Stella!” Her mother, though certainly anxious to fall in with the arrangements of her returned daughter, looked quite aghast at the suggestion. “I don’t think you could go there alone. The horses might be dangerous. And dad’s out. Besides----” Mrs. Hill gave quite a gasp of relief as remembrance came to her.

“Besides, they’re gone. There was a fair at Rowsley this morning, and I heard the horses going by before we were up, with the gipsies in charge.”

“Oh, _bother_!” Stella looked as disgusted as she felt. “Well, if they’re gone, of course we can’t! But how could horses possibly be dangerous? Margot says....”

But Margot, appealed to by this very headstrong daughter, looked thoughtful. “They _can_ be fierce, even. Horses! why, of course. I don’t know about _these_, but we once had a stampede. Mother and I didn’t see anything of it, but dad told us that if it hadn’t been for Long Jake....”

Even Stella appeared to knuckle under to the general opinion, since Long Jake, the dormitory hero, evidently shared it. “Still _these_ horses wouldn’t be,” she added. “They’re mostly old and half worn out. The gipsies buy them at fairs and sell them again. Well, I don’t know what we can do at all, then.”

Margot, however, had a suggestion to make.

“Look here. The horses would have been frightfully jolly, but there’s another thing. I thought of it as we were driving here. Aren’t you somewhere near the ‘Little House,’ where the old man lives? Couldn’t we--go and just look at it. We saw it from the train coming down, but I’d love to tell Gretta more about it to-night in the dorm.”

“Oh, if you like,” returned her hostess, in rather a bored tone of voice. “It’s only about a half-mile away.”

But if an excursion to the outside of the “Little House” was a very everyday affair to Stella, to Margot, who had been shut up for weeks within school bounds, the mere fact of being outside walls and gates, and walking in the wide, open spaces of the moor, with the huge expanse of the blue sea ahead, and all the winds of Heaven let loose around her--to Margot this was a thrilling joy in itself.

“Oh, I say, this _is_ jolly,” said she. “I wish Gretta were here.”

But Stella was still deep in disappointment that the thrill of the afternoon was missing. “If only you had been here last week, dad would have taken us. Then you could have tried that ‘whispering’ on some of the horses. The gipsies would have let you. Dad knows some of them, and he says they’re quite decent sorts, though all gipsies aren’t. They camp here, you know. See!”

She pointed across an expanse of moor.

“If we cut over this ridge and then down by the next, we’ll be able to see the ‘Little House,’” said Stella.

A view of the “Little House,” though certainly very secondary in excitement compared with a visit to the gipsy horse-dealers, had certainly points of interest all its own, to Margot, anyhow.

“I say....” She stood perfectly still and stared. “It must be lonely for him.”

“Lonely! I should rather think so. In winter there’s snow all round. I suppose he shuts himself up there, and, of course, nobody ever goes to see him; so it doesn’t matter for _them_! All the windows look out over the sea, you know. He evidently likes being lonely because he’s mad, I suppose.”

But, to be lonely _and_ mad seemed a piteous combination of horrors to Margot. She stood staring through grey eyes at the quiet, unhappy-looking little house, until Stella shivered at her side. “I say,--let’s go back. You’ve seen it now, and I wouldn’t dare go too near. I’d hate it, too, if he came out suddenly. He’s told some of the village children, before now, that he’ll throw them over the cliff, if he catches them staring.”

“I’m not staring--not in that way. I don’t believe he’d mind,” said Margot slowly.

But it was with a little shiver, too, that she herself turned away. There was something distinctly eerie and mysterious and--sad about the silent little dwelling-place perched up on the side of the cliff. “Doesn’t anyone go near him, then?” she inquired.

“Well, anyhow, the gipsies don’t. They think he’s uncanny. They say he bewitches their horses; and you’ll never find a horse grazing over here. Oh, I say,--why, Margot, _look_!”

They had been retracing their steps, but Stella suddenly stood still and pointed.

“Well, I never!” exclaimed Margot, with interest.

“It’s one of the tents. Then the gipsies _haven’t_ all gone. Look, there are two horses as well!”

“What a queer thing!” said Margot.

“Isn’t it!” Stella was as keen as mustard, instantly. “Perhaps they’re not our gipsies after all! Generally, all of _them_ travel together; I’ve never seen one tent left behind. I say, Margot, let’s go nearer. Mother didn’t exactly say we weren’t to look at them.”

“No. It’s all right, I should think,” agreed Margot, “so long as we don’t talk to them. I say....” She had forgotten the “Little House” entirely in her excitement. “Stella, I’ve got an idea. Let’s pretend we’re in the

(See page 120.)]

Bush. Let’s lie low and wriggle along through the heather like the ‘blacks’ do. They know all the woodcraft ways, and Long Jake’s taught me some. We’ll....”

“Oh, _do_ let’s,” begged her hostess with delight.

“Here, keep behind me.” Margot’s eyes were dancing. “Oh, isn’t it jolly to be away from rules for a bit?--though school is topping, of course. Still, keep down; don’t raise your head, and we’ll slither through the heather. There don’t seem to be any gipsies about; only the two horses, and they’re awfully tired-out looking ones. If you want to warn me, click with your tongue! _That_ sound hardly carries at all; and it’s what the natives used to do.”

“_Clic-c-ck!_” came suddenly from behind her, after about ten minutes’ stealthy wriggling.

It was quite certain, too, what the “click” was intended to convey. Margot had been just about to sound the warning herself. Out through the tent flap had emerged two gipsy men.

“I say, do they know we’re here!” whispered the excited Tenderfoot to her guide.

“I don’t think so. Better keep to ‘clicking’ though. The horses will see us first; you may be sure of that.”

Margot was right. One of the weary-looking animals stopped grazing and looked across, as the sudden snap of a twig proclaimed to him that some kind of life was stirring close at hand. “Here,” whispered Margot, “let’s roll into this clump of scrub. We can’t turn and slither back till the men have gone; and we may as well have a good look at the horses.”

The points of the horses, however, did not seem exactly worth the stealthy journey. They were a couple of rather dispirited creatures, evidently picked up cheap at the last fair. Ill-kempt and shaggy of mane and tail; tethered up, too, just across the next ridge, where they cropped the moorland grass.

“I say, I hope the men won’t notice us,” remarked Stella, when they were safely hidden in their bushes. “They’d never understand a tracking practice; they’d think we were spying on them, and they might be furious.”

The gipsies, however, were evidently in no way aware that they had been secretly tracked, _à la_ Australian aborigine, over their own bit of common land! The pair of them, still standing outside the tent flap which they had carefully pulled to after them, turned interested eyes on the horses.

“The far un hed ought to bring in a matter of ten quid at Rowsley Fair,” remarked one.

“He hed ought. If these here troubles blow over....” The second man cast a half-fearful look behind him at the tent flap against which they were standing. “But we doesn’t want to bring the police down on us. There’s no knowing now, how-some-ever, whether we’ll not be turned back, and all....”

There was plainly some mystery hanging over them. Their words hinted at such a fact; their looks made it positive.

“I say, Stella.” Margot was lying flat on the turf. “I simply can’t help hearing, so we may as well hear properly while we’re about it. The ‘blacks’ say that if they press their ears to the ground they can hear much better, and so....”

The ears of both girls were pressed close to cold Mother Earth. Were these horse-stealers? Margot’s overseas experience came back to her mind with zest. There was something on foot, certainly, and it was a relief to her pent-up feelings of excitement when, suddenly, both men, after a whispered colloquy, turned back and re-entered the tent.

“Stella, now we can _really_ talk. Have you been hearing?”

“Yes, _and_ noticing. Isn’t it queer? Margot, let’s go back. They’ve gone now. And I’m sure....”

Stella, with relief in her tones as she spoke, prepared to slither back in the direction from which they had come.

“You don’t think--for the bravery prize--?” suggested Margot tentatively. “Suppose.... Bushrangers, you know....”

But suddenly she stopped speaking. The blood of both the Saturday adventurers turned cold. For screams rang through the air. They came from the tent; so much was certain. The cries were evidently those of a child; and just as evidently those of a child in pain.