CHAPTER XVI

THE GYPSIES AGAIN

When Ruth shouted to Agnes from the kitchen, where she was frying crabs, to call the children, Agnes dropped the book she had been reading and remembered for the first time that she had neglected to tie the boat.

“Oh, Ruth!” she shrieked. “See what I’ve done!”

Ruth came to the opening in the front of the tent, flushed and disheveled, demanding:

“Well, _what_? This old fat snaps so!”

“The boat!” cried Agnes.

Ruth stared up and down the shore. There were other boats drawn up on the sand and a few moored beyond low-water mark; but their boat was not in sight.

“Have you let it get away, Agnes Kenway?” Ruth demanded.

“Well! you don’t suppose I went down there and pushed it off, do you?”

“This is no laughing matter——”

“I guess I—I’m not laughing,” gulped Agnes. “It—it’s go-o-one! See! the tide is flowing in and I forgot to tie it.”

She was a little mixed here; it was the boat she had forgotten to tie.

“So,” murmured Ruth; “if the boat had been tied, the tide wouldn’t have carried it away,” and she had no intention of punning, either! “_Now_ what shall we do? That boat cost seventy-five dollars, the man said.”

“Oh, Ruthie!”

“What will Mr. Howbridge say?”

“Oh, Ruthie!”

“No use crying about it,” said the oldest Corner House girl, with decision. “_That_ won’t help.”

“But—but it’s gone out to sea.”

“Nonsense! The tide has taken it up the river. It’s gone round the bend. I hope it won’t be smashed on the rocks, that’s all. We must go after it.”

“How?” asked the tearful Agnes.

“Get another boat, of course. But let’s eat. The children will be hungry, and—— My goodness! the crabs are burning up!” and she ran back into the tent. “Get Tess and Dot, and tell them to hurry!” she called from inside.

But Tess and Dot were not to be found. The beach just then was practically deserted. It was the dinner hour and the various campers all had the sort of appetites that demands meals served promptly on time.

Agnes ran to the other tents in Camp Willowbend; but her small sisters were not with any of the neighbors. It was strange. They had been forbidden to go out of sight of their own tent when neither Ruth nor Agnes was with them; and Tess and Dot were remarkably obedient children.

“I certainly do not understand it,” Ruth said, when Agnes brought back the news.

At that moment a shuffling step sounded outside the tent and a husky voice demanded:

“Any clams terday, lady? Fresh clams—jest dug. Ten cents a dozen; two-bits for fifty; half a dollar a hundred. Fresh clams!”

“Oh!” cried Agnes, springing to the tent entrance so suddenly that the wooden-legged clam-man started back in surprise. “Oh! have you seen my sisters anywhere on the beach?”

“Hel-_lo_!” growled the startled man. “I dunno ’bout thet thar, shipmet. What kind o’ sisters be they?”

“Two little girls,” said Ruth, eagerly, joining Agnes at the opening. “One of them carried a doll in her arms. She is dark. The bigger one is fair.”

The saltish old fellow chuckled deep in his hairy throat. “Guess I seen ’em, shipmets,” he said. “Them’s the leetle gals that didn’t know clam-holes.”

“Well! what became of them?” demanded the impatient Agnes.

“Why——I dug ’em, shipmet, an’ they air in this i-den-ti-cal basket now,” declared the clam-digger.

“Well!” gasped Agnes, behind her hand. “Maybe the children didn’t know clam-holes; but _he_ doesn’t know beans!”

Ruth asked again: “We mean, what became of the girls, sir?”

“I couldn’t tell ye, shipmet. D’ye want any clams?” pursued this man of one idea. “Ten cents a dozen; two-bits for——”

“I’ll buy some clams—yes,” cried Ruth, in some desperation. “But tell us where you last saw our sisters, sir?”

“How many you want, shipmet?” demanded the quite unmoved old fellow.

“Two!” cried Agnes. “There were only two of them. Two little girls——Oh!”

Ruth had pinched her, and now said, calmly: “Please count out a hundred for us, sir. Here is fifty cents. And please tell us where you saw our little sisters?”

“I seed two small gals, shipmet, down on the flats yonder,” said the clam digger, setting down his basket and squatting with the wooden leg stretched out before him. He began to busily count the clams onto the little platform before the tent.

“Where did they go, sir?” asked Ruth.

“I didn’t take no pertic’lar notice of ’em, shipmet. They had a dratted dog with them——”

“Oh! Tom Jonah is with them. Then they _can’t_ be lost,” gasped Agnes.

“Las’ time I ’member of cockin’ me eye at ’em,” declared the old clam digger, “they was inter a boat right down here below this tent. The dog was with ’em.”

He counted out the last clam, took his fifty cents, and departed. The two older Corner House girls looked at each other. Agnes was very white.

“Do—do you suppose they drifted away in the boat?” she whispered.

“I expect so,” agreed Ruth. “Come on, Ag. We’ll go up beyond the bend and see if we can sight the boat.”

“Oh! if they fall overboard——”

“Tom Jonah would bring them both ashore if they did, I believe,” said Ruth, though her voice shook a little. “Do you want something to eat before you go?”

Agnes looked at her scornfully. “I don’t ever want to eat again if Dot and Tess aren’t found,” she sobbed. “Come on!”

“We’ll take something along to eat, if you don’t want to eat here,” Ruth said, sensibly. “The children will be hungry enough when we find them, you may be sure.”

“_If_ we find them,” suggested the desperate Agnes.

“Don’t talk like a goose, Ag!” exclaimed the older sister. “Of course we’ll find them. They’ve only drifted away.”

“But you said yourself the boat might be smashed against the rocks.”

“Tom Jonah’s with them,” said Ruth, confidently. “He could live in the water altogether, you know. Don’t be worried about the children being drowned—— Oh, Agnes!”

The change in her sister’s voice startled Agnes, who had gone into the back part of the tent. She ran out to where Ruth was wrapping the fried soft-shell crabs in a sheet of brown paper.

Ruth was staring through the open flap of the tent. Outside, about where the clam digger had stood a few moments before, was the tall, scarred-faced Gypsy tramp that they had seen at the nomads’ camp the day they came to Pleasant Cove!

“Oh, Ruth!” echoed Agnes, coming to Ruth’s side.

But the older sister quickly recovered her self-possession. Her first thought was:

“If Tom Jonah were only here!”

Ruth went to the door. The man leered at her and doffed his old cap.

“Good day, little lady,” he said. “She remember me—Big Jim—heh?”

“I remember you,” Ruth said, shortly.

“Ver’ proud,” declared the Gypsy, bowing again.

“What do you want?” asked the oldest Corner House girl, with much more apparent courage than she really felt.

“You remember Zaliska—heh?” asked the man, shrewdly.

“I remember her,” said Ruth.

“Little lady seen Zaliska since that day—heh?”

“What do you want to know for?” demanded Ruth, puzzled, yet standing her ground. She remembered in a flash all her suspicions regarding the young girl who masqueraded as the Gypsy Queen.

“Zaliska come here, heh?” said the man, doggedly, and with something besides curiosity in his narrow eyes.

“I don’t know why I should tell you if she had been here,” declared Ruth, while Agnes clung to her arm in fear.

“The little lady would fool Big Jim. No! We want find Zaliska.”

“Don’t come here for her,” said Ruth, sharply. “She’s not here.”

“But she been here—heh?” repeated the fellow. “She come here like she was dressed at the camp—heh? Then she go away different—heh?”

Ruth knew well enough what he meant. He hinted that the masquerading girl had come here to see Ruth, and discarded her queen’s garments and slipped away in her own more youthful character.

“I’m not sure that I know what you mean,” she said to the evil-faced man. “But one thing I can tell you—and you can believe it. I have not seen Zaliska since that day we girls came by your camp.”

“Ha! she come here to see you——”

“No. She went to the hotel and to a friend’s house in the village,” said Ruth, “asking for me. I did not see her. She has not come here.”

“Huh!” grunted the man, and backed away, doubtfully.

“Now we are busy and you must not trouble us any more,” declared Ruth, hurriedly. “Come, Agnes!”

“He’ll come in the tent and search it,” whispered Agnes, in her sister’s ear.

“I will speak to Mr. Stryver. He is here to-day,” said Ruth, mentioning a neighbor in the camp.

“Big Jim,” as the Gypsy called himself, had backed away from the tent, but he watched the departing girls with lowering gaze. At Mr. Stryver’s tent Ruth halted long enough to tell the gentleman to keep his eye on the Gypsy man who was hanging about the camp.

“The women were here to sell baskets and such like truck while you girls were off crabbing, this morning,” said Mrs. Stryver. “It gives me the shivers to have those folks around. I think we ought to have these tent camps policed.”

“I’ll ’tend to this fellow,” promised Mr. Stryver, who was a burly man, and not afraid of anything.

Ruth hurried Agnes away toward the bend without another word.

“Why didn’t you tell them Tess and Dot were lost?” asked Agnes, gulping down a sob.

“I don’t want anybody to know it, if we can help,” returned Ruth. “It just looks as though we didn’t take sufficient care of them.”

“It—it was all my fault,” choked Agnes. “If I had tied the boat as you told me——”

“It doesn’t matter whose fault it is,” said Ruth, quickly. “Or, if it is anybody’s fault! We don’t want folks to say that the Corner House girls from Milton don’t know enough to take care of each other while they are under canvas.”

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