“Come,” said Dorothy to Nat. “We must go. It is getting late.”

“And you don’t want to hear about the girl that is going to run away to a circus?” called the Gypsy as Dorothy and Nat turned away.

“No, thank you, not to-night,” replied Nat. “You’d better run home before the constable comes along. They put girls in jail for running away from home.”

“Oh, do they? Then your red-headed friend must be there now,” called back the Gypsy with unconcealed malice.

“What can she mean?” asked Dorothy, clinging to her cousin’s arm as they hurried along.

“Oh, don’t mind that imp. She is just like all her kind, trying to play on your sympathies first and then using threats. She was listening to us talking and picked up all she told us. She got the initials at Glenwood—likely followed Tavia and asked some other girl what her name was. I remember now, there was a Gypsy settlement there. That part’s true enough.”

“Perhaps,” admitted Dorothy with a sigh. “I know Mrs. Pangborn positively forbade all the girls to go near the Gypsy camps, but some of the pupils might have met Urania on the road.”

“That’s about it,” decided Nat. “But she ought to stick to the game. She’d make a good player. The idea of waylaying us and pretending to have fallen down.”

“It’s hard to understand that class,” admitted Dorothy. “But I hope she’ll not stay out all night. I should be worried if I awoke, and heard her walking about under the trees near my window.”

“No danger,” declared Nat. “I must go and see that the garage is locked. She might take a notion to turn the Fire Bird into a Pullman sleeper.”

Then, leaving Dorothy on the veranda with his mother, Nat went around to the little auto shed, fastened the door securely and put the key into his pocket.

CHAPTER XIV THE RUNAWAY

THE RUNAWAY

Dorothy was not sure whether she dreamed it, or really heard sounds stirring under the trees. She had been thinking of the Gypsy girl, and Tavia, as she fell asleep, and when she suddenly awoke in the middle of the night, there seemed to be some one moving about just under the window of her room. It was so quiet that even faint sounds could be heard, and Dorothy lay there listening for some time, after being aroused. 

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