Frank, however, realized that somehow his chum was worked up over the matter more than he could remember having seen him for a long time. Perhaps it was the fact that his nerves had been shaken during his recent affair with the bull. Then again, there might be a slight possibility that Lanky was right with regard to the child. “Oh, that’s all right, Lanky!” he remarked, soothingly. “I’m going where you lead, and if Bones objects he knows what he can do. Not that I take much stock in your kidnapping idea, because such things happen only once in a long time nowadays.” “But you admit, Frank, that it could be; don’t you?” demanded the other, not at all shaken in his belief. “Well, yes, there might be about one chance in a hundred, Lanky,” Frank replied. “And I’m taking the hundredth chance,” said the other, doggedly, as he started off after the gypsy caravan, which had vanished entirely from view around a bend in the road while the three runners were holding this short conversation among themselves. They sighted it again as soon as they had turned the curve in the road. As if by mutual consent Frank and Bones had fallen back, and allowed Lanky to have the post of honor in the van. “If she does it again, Lanky,” remarked Bones, jeeringly, “just you give us the high sign; when we’ll jump in, and clear up the whole gypsy tribe, rescue the kidnapped princess, carry her home in triumph and receive a cool million or so from her happy dad, as a reward for our heroic achievement!” “Oh! splash!” was all Lanky sent back over his shoulder, as he ran steadily on at that telling jog-trot that seemed never to tire the runner. They rapidly overtook the caravan, for the horses were not trying to make any speed, having come a long distance, it might be, since sun-up; and, besides, the drivers knew they were within a few miles of the place where, once in so often, they made camp for several days, or a week at a time. Lanky paid no attention to the rear wagons, but passed alongside and kept pushing on. He had eyes only for the most gorgeous van in the whole procession; since it had been at the side window of this he had seen the face that, somehow, appealed to his sensitive heart. The door at the rear of the high wagon was almost wholly closed, Lanky noticed as he came along, though once he really thought he saw a face, surrounded by coils of black hair, in the opening, which could only belong to a gypsy woman. He kept his eyes fastened on the side window, for he knew that his two skeptical chums were waiting for a sign and would be apt to decide one way or another, depending on what was to be seen. And, sure enough, a face did appear there, that of a child in the bargain, and a girl, too. But she simply stared at the odd costumes of the three boy runners, and seemed to hold them in the scorn a true gypsy child feels for the house-dweller.