She wondered if any one at The Crags missed her, and watched for her coming, but she decided it could not be, because they would be too engrossed in their grand visitors to remember poor Gipsy, the waif. No one loved her now, since Jane was gone West with her husband, and Mrs. Bond dead and lying at rest in a corner of the family burying-ground of the Willoughbys, whose white tomb-stone she could see glimmering from her windows every night. CHAPTER VI. IN DEADLY PERIL. The moon rose over the tops of the wooded hills, and shed its silvery light upon the weird, lonely scene until the white fog from the river obscured everything with a sheet of spectral white. To Gipsy, cold, wet, and suffering, the minutes dragged like hours, until her brave heart began to fail, and she alternately wept and prayed like a lost child in her despair. “Oh, God, must I die here alone, without a friend to pity or to save?” Almost as if in answer to her prayer, she caught the sudden sound of footsteps and laughter in the road, approaching opposite her hiding-place. Her heart leaped wildly with the hope of rescue, then sank heavily again with a new fear. Her first thought was of the men servants from The Crags, but these were strange voices, mixed with coarse, ribald laughter, that made the chilled blood run colder still in her young veins. She remembered suddenly that she was only a helpless young girl, and to judge from their ruffianly voices and oaths, it might be better to die here alone in her misery than to fall into their hands. “Oh, Heaven guide me, show me whether it is better to remain here and die, or to cry out to these strangers for help and succor in my distress?” she prayed dumbly. The men were cursing the fog that kept them from seeing the road, and stopping almost in front of her, they lighted a small bull’s-eye lantern that threw a fitful gleam on their burly forms, clad in rough clothing that suggested tramps to Gipsy’s alarmed mind. She almost cried out in fear the next moment, when she saw that their faces were hidden by stubbly beards and black crape masks. She put her hand over her lips, to repress their startled cry, and held her breath lest they should hear it, they were so horribly near. “I am going to rest before I go another step,” cried one of the worthies, throwing himself down so close to the fissure in the rock that Gipsy trembled with fear, while he added: “Say, Larkin, are you sure that the girl brought all her jewels with her in her trunk? Because I don’t want to run the risk of the prison-pen without getting swag enough to pay me.”