The gipsies had gone away quickly: of course they had taken Ralph with them. Now what was she to do? She stood still in a shadowy part of the field, and, as she did so, she distinctly heard the sound of wheels, and listening, there floated also to her ears the sound of many voices singing. Her school-companions were returning from their picnic. They were coming back, as arranged, by moonlight. They were happy: they were enjoying themselves. Harriet distinctly heard Robina's voice above the others. Robina had a clear voice like a bird. Her notes were very high. They seemed to rise up as though, like the larks, they would pierce the sky. Now they rose above the other voices in a sort of torrent of rejoicing. Harriet dug her fingers into her ears. "Oh, how soon they will be back!" she thought; "and they will miss him, and they will know all about me, and oh--I can't, can't stand it! I will follow the gipsies. I wonder where they have gone." Harriet thought for a few minutes. The police had already been to visit that very field. They had gone there in Dr Pyke's company, and they were taking steps to follow the gipsies on horseback. But Harriet knew something that the police did not know. One of the servants in the house had long ago been a gipsy girl herself; and Harriet, who was much fascinated by stories of the wild brown people, used to talk to this girl when she got a chance. The girl, from time to time, imparted some of the secrets of her people to Harriet. Amongst other things, she had told her of the favourite resting-places of her tribe. This special common was one. But there was another five miles away, in the very heart of a deep wood, where they used to go when they wanted to hide something. The police did not know of this place of refuge in the middle of the High Woods, as they were called; but Harriet remembered it now. It was five miles away, and she was only a little girl, and she was tired. But what of that if it might be her privilege to find Ralph and bring him back? What mattered any amount of fatigue? Cora had told her how to get to the hiding-place in the wood. She had described how difficult it was for an ordinary person to find it, but had given Harriet a full description of it in one of her moments of confidence. "We often wanted to make ourselves scarce," Cora would say, "and no one ever yet found us there. It was a bonny enough place, too, although the trees grew so thick around that we did not get much sunshine."