her for a year to come.”
“But, Blossom, what do they do with the children they steal?” I asked, in a sort of agony.
“They cuts their hair off and dyes their skins brown, and then takes ’em out to fairs a ballad-singing,” answered Blossom.
“But why need they do it, when they have children of their own?”
“Ah, well, that’s a question I couldn’t answer,” said old Blossom. “Maybe their’n arn’t pretty children—Miss Lena, she is pretty.”
“Have you heard of any gipsies being encamped about here?” Tod demanded of him.
“Not lately, Mr. Joseph. Five or six months ago, there was a lot ’camped on the Markis’s ground. They warn’t there long.”
“Can’t you ride about, Blossom, and see after the child?” asked Tod, putting something into his hand.
Old Blossom pocketed it, and went off with a nod. He was riding about, as we knew afterwards, for hours. Tod made straight for the police-station at Alcester, and told his tale. Not a soul was there but Jenkins, one of the men.
“I haven’t seen no suspicious characters about,” said Jenkins, who seemed to be eating something. He was a big man, with short black hair combed on his forehead, and he had a habit of turning his face upwards, as if looking after his nose—a square ornament, that stood up straight.
“She is between four and five years old; a very pretty child, with blue eyes and a good deal of curling auburn hair,” said Tod, who was growing feverish.
Jenkins wrote it down—“Name, Todhetley. What Christian name?”
“Adalena, called ‘Lena.’”
“Recollect the dress, sir?”
“Pale blue silk; straw hat with wreath of daisies round it; open-worked white stockings, and thin black shoes; white drawers,” recounted Tod, as if he had prepared the list by heart coming along.
“That’s bad, that dress is,” said Jenkins, putting down the pen.
“Why is it bad?”
“‘Cause the things is tempting. Quite half the children that gets stole is stole for what they’ve got upon their backs. Tramps and that sort will run a risk for a blue silk that they’d not run for a brown holland pinafore. Auburn curls, too,” added Jenkins, shaking his head; “that’s a temptation also. I’ve knowed children sent back home with bare heads afore now. Any ornaments, sir?”
“She was safe to have on her little gold neck-chain and cross. They are very small, Jenkins—not worth much.”
Jenkins lifted his nose—not in disdain, it was a habit he had. “Not worth much to you, sir, who could buy such any day, but an uncommon bait to professional child-stealers. Were the cross a coral, or any stone of that sort?”
“It was a small gold cross, and the chain was thin. They could only be seen when her cloak was off. Oh, I forgot the cloak; it was white: llama, I think they call it. She was going to a child’s party.”
Some more questions and answers, most of which Jenkins took down. Handbills were to be printed and posted, and a reward offered on the morrow, if she was not previously found. Then we came away; there was nothing more to do at the station.
“Wouldn’t it have been better, Tod, had Jenkins gone out seeking her and telling of the loss abroad, instead of waiting to write all that down?”
“Johnny, if we don’t find her to night, I shall go mad,” was all he answered.
He went back down Alcester Street at a rushing pace—not a run but a quick walk.
“Where are you going now?” I asked.
“I’m going up hill and down dale until I find that gipsies’ encampment. You can go on home, Johnny, if you are tired.”
I had not felt tired until we were in the police-station. Excitement keeps off fatigue. But I was not going to give in, and said I should stay with him.
“All right, Johnny.”
Before we were clear of Alcester, Budd the land-agent came up. He was turning out of the public-house at the corner. It was dusk then. Tod laid hold of him.
“Budd, you are always about, in all kinds of nooks and by-lanes: can you tell me of any encampment of gipsies between here and the Manor-house?”
The agent’s business took him abroad a great deal, you know, into the rural districts around.
“Gipsies’ encampment?” repeated Budd, giving both of us a stare. “There’s none that I know of. In the spring, a lot of them had the impudence to squat down on the Marquis’s–”
“Oh, I know all that,” interrupted Tod. “Is there nothing of the sort about now?”
“I saw a miserable little tent to-day up Cookhill way,” said Budd. “It might have been a gipsy’s or a travelling tinker’s. ’Twasn’t of much account, whichever it was.”
Tod gave a spring. “Whereabouts?” was all he asked. And Budd explained where. Tod went off like a shot, and I after him.
If you are familiar with Alcester, or have visited at Ragley or anything of that sort, you must know the long green lane leading to Cookhill; it is dark with overhanging trees, and uphill all the way. We took that road—Tod first, and I next; and we came to the top, and turned in the direction Budd had described the tent to be in.
It was not to be called dark; the nights never are at midsummer; and rays from the bright light in the west glimmered through the trees. On the outskirts of the coppice, in a bit of low ground, we saw the tent, a little mite of a thing, looking no better than a funnel turned upside down. Sounds were heard within it, and Tod put his finger on his lip while he listened. But we were too far off, and he took his boots off, and crept up close.
Sounds of wailing—of some one in pain. But that Tod had been three parts out of his senses all the afternoon, he might have known at once that they did not come from Lena, or from any one so young. Words mingled with them in a woman’s voice; uncouth in its accents, nearly unintelligible, an awful sadness in its tones.
“A bit longer! a bit longer, Corry, and he’d ha’ been back. You needn’t ha’ grudged it to us. Oh–h! if ye had but waited a bit longer!”
I don’t write it exactly as she spoke; I shouldn’t know how to spell it: we made a guess at half the words. Tod, who had grown white again, put on his boots, and lifted up the opening of the tent.
I had never seen any scene like it; I don’t suppose I shall ever see another. About a foot from the ground was a raised surface of some sort, thickly covered with dark green rushes, just the size and shape of a gravestone. A little child, about as old as Lena, lay on it, a white cloth thrown over her, and just touching the white, still face. A torch, blazing and smoking away, was thrust into the ground and lighted up the scene. Whiter the face looked now, because it had been tawny in life. I would rather see one of our faces in death than a gipsy’s. The contrast between the white face and dress of the child, and the green bed of rushes it lay on was something remarkable. A young woman, dark too, and handsome enough to create a commotion at the fair, knelt down, her brown hands uplifted; a gaudy ring on one of the fingers, worth sixpence perhaps when new, sparkled in the torchlight. Tod strode up to the dead face and looked at it for full five minutes. I do believe he thought at first that it was Lena.
“What is this?” he asked.
“It is my dead child!” the woman answered. “She did not wait that her father might see her die!”
But Tod had his head full of Lena, and looked round. “Is there no other child here?”
As if to answer him, a bundle of rags came out of a corner and set up a howl. It was a boy of about seven, and our going in had wakened him up. The woman sat down on the ground and looked at us.
“We have lost a child—a little girl,” explained Tod. “I thought she might have been brought here—or