“You can do anything,” Silva said in a voice strangely stern in one so young, “if you have to do it. So we planned it all very carefully. Tyma went back to Aunt Save and then he returned a few nights later. While I was in the field with father, he took the baby and went back with her to Satuit; put her in the cave. He went by night and almost always through the woods. Nobody saw him. When Aunt Save woke up the next morning, Tyma was in his tent.” “What did your father say?” “He was wild. He thought at once it was Tyma and he went over to see Aunt Save. Tyma was there, but of course there was no baby about. Aunt Save said that Tyma had no baby with him and father knew that Aunt Save wouldn’t lie to him. She asked father if he didn’t want me to come and live with her as long as he was going to get married. Father said yes and when he came back, he told me to go to Aunt Save. He gave me my car fare and I went.” “Didn’t he do anything more to find the baby?” Maida asked in a horrified tone. “Oh yes--he hunted everywhere--he talked about her all the time. And then after ten days or so he told the police and there were articles in the newspapers with his picture and Nesta’s--it didn’t look anything like her. Reporters came to see him. But after a while nobody cared. People don’t care what happens to gypsies.” Silva’s voice was bitter. “Then he got married and as his wife didn’t want Nesta, he stopped bothering about her.” “And do you mean to tell me,” Maida said in an awed voice, “that you kept the baby in the cave nearly two months?” “Ever since just after you children came to the Little House. We were planning to steal Nesta when we saw you first. That’s why we had to be so hateful to you-- We had to do everything we could to keep you away from the cave. That’s why we acted so terribly that first day when you were swimming in the lake and that’s why we broke your canoes and that’s why we stole all your lunch the day of the picnic. That day, Tyma was in the cave with the baby and I was bringing a bottle of milk and a little doll for her. She was too little to play with a doll, but I wanted her to have one. Rosie Brine caught sight of me. I dodged around the bushes and got into the cave. I think she would have thought she imagined me if I hadn’t dropped the doll. Tyma and I sat there trembling.... And then we realized that you were going to eat your lunches right near.... The baby was asleep; but we were frightened to death for fear she would wake up and cry ... and then the idea came to us to steal your lunches ... and ruin everything so you would think tramps had been there.... And then the baby _did_ cry.... Oh how frightened we were! Tyma and I clung to each other and the same idea came to us both at once. I began to moan very loud. And so did Tyma. And then you couldn’t trace the sound and it frightened you and you all ran away. Tyma said you would never come back and you didn’t. That is, except one night, when I saw Arthur Duncan.”