It didn't take the little gipsy lass long to scrape dry grass and twigs together. A leathern pouch hung from her girdle, and from this she produced a flint and steel, with some touch-paper, and in less than half a minute the signal-fire was alit. A most romantic figure the girl presented as she stood there on the cliff, looking straight out seawards, one hand above her brow to screen her eyes from the red glare of the flames, her sweet, sad face a picture, with the night wind blowing back her wealth of soft fair hair and the silken frock from off her shapely limbs. It was not the beauty but the sadness of Lotty's face that appealed to Antony most. Why sad? That was the mystifying question. He had taken a strange and indefinable interest in this twelve-year-old gipsy child. He had come down here to take away the caravan for which he was to pay a solid five hundred guineas, and had made up his mind to stay only a few days; but now on the cliff-top here he suddenly resolved that, if he could be amused, he would remain at the camp for as many weeks. He had no intention of travelling in the caravan during the wintry months. He would take the great carriage south by rail, and, starting from Brighton, do a record journey right away through England and Scotland from sea to sea, starting when the first green buds were on the trees and the larks carolling over the rolling downs of Sussex. So now he lay on the grass, waiting, and wondering who Wallace would be. Hallo! Lotty has gone bounding past Antony to meet some one, her face transformed. No sadness now; only daft mirth and merriment, her arms extended, her curls anyhow all over her face and neck. A scream of delight, and next moment two very young and beautiful persons are rolling together on the half-withered grass. One is Lotty, the other is Wallace her Newfoundland. Jet black is he all over, like the wings of Crona's raven--jet black, save for the glitter of his bonny eyes, the pink of his tongue, and alabaster flash of his marvellous teeth. * * * * * 'See your room first, Mr Blake, and then come in to supper?' The speaker was Nat Biffins Lee, master and proprietor of what he was wont to call 'THE QUEEREST SHOW ON EARTH,' a broad, square, round-faced, somewhat burly man, with even teeth and a put-on smile that was seldom unshipped. Dressed in a loose velveteen jacket, with white waistcoat (diamond-mounted buttons), with an enormous spread of neck and upper chest. His loose cravat of green silk was tied in a sailor-knot so far beneath his fat chin that it seemed to belong more to the vest than to the loose shirt-collar. 'Here, hurry up, you kinchin, Lot!--Down, Wallace; kennel, sir.' Biffins cracked a short whip, and Lotty flew to obey. The look of sadness had returned to her face. Her father's manner seemed to frighten her. But she tripped like a fairy up the back steps of the 'Gipsy Queen,' and stood waiting him while he entered.