“How long the boys are.”

“Yes, it seems an hour since they rushed out, but it isn’t really more than half that.”

“Oh, I do hope nothing has happened.”

Thus spoke Marie, Alice and Natalie in turn, as they sat with Mabel and her mother, anxiously waiting.

“I—I suppose you’ll have to tell father,” ventured Mabel, after a pause, a catch manifesting itself in her voice.

“Yes, dear,” replied Mrs. Anderson. “But don’t distress yourself. It is no one’s fault. Father would want to know.”

“Perhaps he can do something,” suggested Natalie.

“The police ought to be able to,” asserted Mabel with rather fierce energy. “Oh, if I were a man I’d get right after those thieving Gypsies, and make them give up the ring! Why weren’t we boys?”

“It’s so much nicer to be girls,” murmured Natalie.

“I don’t see why, even if we are girls, that we can’t do something,” declared Alice with conviction. Alice always loved to undertake strenuous matters, though not always carrying them out. Still, she meant well.

“What do you mean?” asked Marie.

“I mean why can’t we get on the trail of those Gypsies, providing they have gone and left a trail. I think trail is the right word,” she added, doubtfully.

“Very proper,” admitted Natalie. “One always has a ‘trail’ to camp.”

“What is this I hear about you girls going camping?” asked Mrs. Anderson, probably to furnish a new topic of conversation, and relieve the strain of waiting.

“Oh, it’s just a notion,” answered Natalie. “The boys laughed at our Camp Fire Association, and we vowed that we could live in a tent in the woods as well as they. It sounds nice, but—I don’t know,” and she leaned dreamily back in her chair.

“Oh, Natalie!” exclaimed Marie. “And you were so anxious to go!”

“Well, I am yet. Only I don’t know whether my people will consent. It’s delightful to think about, anyhow.”

“It’s this way, mother,” began Mabel, and she briefly explained how the camping idea had germinated. Then, probably to forget the unpleasant episode of the ring, they all talked woodland lore.

“Well,” remarked Phil, as he and his chums stood with the officer, looking at the dying embers of the Gypsy fire on the deserted site of the encampment, “there’s nothing doing here, as Mr. Shakespeare would say. What’s to be done?”

“I vote we take after ’em!” exclaimed Jack. “They can’t have gotten far in this time. They didn’t have the chance.”

“That’s right,” chimed in Blake. “Come on, fellows.”

“Wait a minute, boys,” advised the officer. “It’s a dark night, and there are several roads branching off this one. The Gypsies could take either one.”

“But we could inquire,” exclaimed Phil. “A Gypsy caravan of that size couldn’t go along without attracting attention, even from sleepy farmers. They could tell if it had passed by, and if we got on some wrong branch road, we could easily get back on the main one, and pick up the trail.”

“That sounds good to me!” declared Blake. “I’m ready for a fracas.”

“Same here,” came from Jack. “Say, I’m glad I didn’t let her tell my fortune. She might have taken my watch while she told me a pretty girl across the water was waiting for me to write to her.”

“Oh, what do you think you are—a lady-killer?” demanded Phil. “If we’re going to do anything let’s do it.”

“How one can be deceived,” murmured Blake. “And she such a pretty girl. She looked something like Natalie.”

“Dry up!” commanded Jack shortly. “You’ve got Natalie on the brain. Come on!”

“I wouldn’t, boys,” advised the officer. “It’s dark, there are any number of roads the tribe could have taken, not to say of slipping off into the woods.”

“That’s right,” agreed Blake. “We didn’t think of that.”

“And making inquiries, and then doubling back in case you’re on the wrong road, all takes time,” went on the policeman. “You had much better wait until morning.”

“I guess that’s right,” assented Phil. “Poor momsey will be wild about her ring, though. Well, back home it is,” and he turned away from the deserted encampment.

They had not gone far on the backward trail ere they heard the tramp of approaching feet on the hard highway, for they were not yet in the district of sidewalks.

“Some one’s coming!” exclaimed Phil.

“It walks like the Chief,” commented Officer Brady.

“Who’s there?” demanded a sharp voice from the darkness.

“It is the Chief!” the policeman asserted. “It’s Brady, sir,” he added, in answer to a question. “I’ve been out chasin’ after a band of Gypsies.”

“Ha! I’m after the same tribe I guess. Have you seen anything of young Anderson—Blake Lathrop or Jack Pendleton, Brady?” asked the head of the police force.

“They’re here with me, sir.”

“Ah! Their folks just telephoned to me about them. Got worried I guess.”

“That’s some of the girls’ work,” was Jack’s whispered opinion.

“Did you get the ring?” demanded the Chief.

“No, sir. They’d skipped out.”

“I thought so. Well, it’s too late to do anything to-night. Come back to the station, and we’ll send out a telephone alarm. Anderson!”

“Yes, Chief.”

“Can you describe your mother’s ring?”

“Sure.”

“Then come along with me and I’ll write it down so as to have it when I send out the alarm.”

“Then we’ll get back to your house, Phil,” suggested Blake. “We’ll tell your mother and sister about it.”

“All right. I’ll come as soon as I can.”

It needed but a look at the faces of the two lads, as they entered the house a little later, to tell the four girls, and Mrs. Anderson, that their errand had been fruitless.

“Oh mother!” cried Mabel. “It’s all my fault!”

“Nonsense!” declared her mother, though there was a dull ache in her heart at the loss of her beautiful ring.

“We’re going to get on their trail the first thing in the morning!” declared Jack fiercely. “They can’t get far away—a Gypsy tribe is too conspicuous to hide away very long.”

The boys told of their chase, and explained Phil’s absence, though before they had finished he came in. Then it all had to be gone over with again, so that it was quite late when the five left Mabel’s house.

“Wo-he-lo!” chorused Alice, Natalie and Marie, as they waved good-night to Mabel and Phil. “Wo-he-lo!”

“What’s that?” demanded Jack, rather surprised at the musical intonation of his sister and her two chums.

“The call of our camp,” explained Natalie. “It is made up of the first two letters of the words—work—health—love. Isn’t it pretty?”

“Love?” asked Blake mischievously.

“Silly!” murmured Natalie.

“Say it again,” demanded Jack.
“Wo-he-lo!
Wo-he-lo!
Dogwood! Dogwood Camp!
Ho! Ho!”

Thus chanted Marie.

“Bravo!” complimented Jack. “That will do as a war-whoop to scare the Gypsies—when we find them,” he added more soberly.

“See you at the Academy to-morrow,” called Mabel, as she and her mother and brother went off the steps.

“Wo-he-lo!” gurgled Natalie deep in her throat. She was half Indian, some of her friends used to say, and they often called her Pocahontas. “Wo-he-lo!”

“The call of the camp,” murmured Jack. “I wonder if they really will go off to the woods?”

“We’d have no end of good times if they did,” replied his chum in a low voice. “We could camp near them, go on picnics, off rowing, in a motor——”

“Don’t count too much,” interrupted Jack. “Girls are finicky creatures. They may change their minds half a dozen times before vacation.”

As Natalie’s home was not much out of their way, Jack and Marie went in that direction with her, Blake and Alice going part of the distance.

“We’ll get on the trail of the false but beautiful Gypsy girl after class to-morrow,” called Blake to Jack, as they parted.

“Sure thing. Good-night!”