CHAPTER V.

AN ESCAPE.

When Richard walked away from the gipsy camp, the girl's heart sank within her. What would become of her? Her life was one continual terror. She could remember dimly, it seemed to her, that once she was not a gipsy, but had a beautiful home. Sometimes in the night she would dream. that a woman with tender, beautiful face was bending over her; too soon she would awake to find herself in the gipsy wagon in that terrible life. She had found once a part of a tiny garment which her gipsy mother said belonged to her, in which had been skillfully stitched the word, "Ethel." She often in her imagination pictured who had made it and what kind of a life they lived. Once in his drunken anger the brutal gipsy father had cursed her and declared he wished he had never taken her, but her mother had told her afterwards that she was their daughter and that the drunken

man did not know what he was saying. The older she grew the more her nature rebelled against the life they led and the thought of those two coarse people being her parents. Tonight it seemed a thousand times worse than ever. The kind words of Mrs. Harrison and Richard's defense of her had brought back this dim world of hers with new distinctness and had enlarged its boundaries. What would she not do for a mother like the farmer's wife? And Richard's pluck and strength had given her the first glimpse of strength giving itself for weakness. For the first time in all her memory had some one seemed to care for her and had some one defended her.

But the old fear soon drew her thought to the morrow. What would the brutal gipsy do when morning came? He might kill her in his anger at the interference of the night before. She would rather die than continue as she was.

Before midnight they were rumbling and jolting along over the rough roads and by morning they were camped again many miles away.

"Get out of here, you imp, and beg us something to eat. Don't you dare come back without a basket full!" The gipsy accompanied his order with horrible profanity and with a fierce kick that sent the girl reeling from him.

All the forenoon she tramped, tired and sore and hungry and sleepy-and had at noon a few potatoes and turnips and a loaf of bread. With a desperate dread she returned to the camp that was just arousing.

"Bring that basket here," said the man hoarsely. "What, only those potatoes and turnips!"

In vain she pleaded that she had walked and begged all the forenoon.

"Why didn't you steal, then? I'll teach ye not to come back without something good!" The lash fell upon her savagely, and at each blow she screamed in pain.

"I'd cut your head off, if it wasn't for your begging."

"Come, let up, or she won't be of no more use," said the woman.

The potatoes were roasted and with the scraps left from the day before their hunger

seemed appeased. The gipsy girl was offered nothing and could not have eaten, if anything had been given.

After dinner the camp was deserted by all except the girl and the children. The men and women had gone off to beg, trade and steal.

For a long time she sat and thought of her condition. Again she went over her cruel treatment, and her feelings of shame at the farm house. How long was this to go on? What hope was there of any change? As she grew older it had grown worse. She saw new dangers beset her path. She grew sick as she thought of what might be. Her thoughts suddenly took shape-she would run away. She was startled by the thought and looked around in fear lest some one had read her mind. She was too tired and sore now to attempt escape.

She soon fell asleep from very exhaustion and fortunately they stayed away all the afternoon and she slept on. Now and then she would moan out in her sleep as if in pain from her bruised flesh, and again she seemed begging for mercy, as she went over in her dream the attacks of the past. But

'even in its pallor and in the anxieties of her dreams there was something in the face that spoke of the divinity of man's origin, and which nothing but vice can obliterate.

At early twilight she was awakened by the return of the gipsies. They had evidently been out two by two. Some came empty handed. Others had the usual gifts. One winked shrewdly as they threw down two chickens and cracked a coarse joke about how determined chickens were to follow them off.

The girl had been aroused by the command:

"Here, you hussy, git us something to eat."

She built the fire and prepared the crude meal. Her mind was full of thoughts of escape. "There could be nothing worse than this and its outlook," was the way it kept shaping itself in her mind.

After supper, wearied by their walk, the band was soon sound asleep. Ethel waited until she felt sure they would not be disturbed, and then arose and quietly stole out into the night. One of the dogs barked and ran up to her, but when he saw who it was,