The other replied, still gruffly, yet in a musical language that Ruth could not identify; yet somehow she was reminded of Roberto. He, the Gypsy lad, had formed his English sentences much as this ruffian had formed his phrase. Were these two of Roberto's tribesmen?

"I like it not--I like it not!" the other burst out again, in anger.

"Why should she govern? It is an iron rod in a trembling hand."

"Psst!" snapped the other. "You respect neither age nor wisdom." He now spoke in English, but later he relapsed into the Tzigane tongue. Helen crept down to Ruth's side and listened, too; but it was little the girls understood.

The angry ruffian--the complaining one--dropped more words in English now and then, like: "We risk all--she nothing." "There were the pearls, my Carlo--ah! beautiful! beautiful! Does she not seize them as her own?"

"I put my neck in a noose no longer for any man but myself--surely not for a woman!"

Then it was that the man Carlo burst into a tirade in his native speech, and under cover of his loud talk Ruth motioned her chum to creep back up the stairway, and she followed.

A sudden disquieting thought came to her. The rain was growing less.

Suppose Tom should come abruptly into the house? He might get into trouble with these ruffians.

She whispered this thought to Helen, and her friend was panic-stricken again. "We must warn Tom--oh, we _must_ warn him somehow!" she gasped.

"Surely we will," declared the girl from the Red Mill. "Now, careful how you step. A creaking board might give us away."

They crept across the upper chamber to the rear of the house. Through another room they went, until they could look out of a broken window upon the sheds. There was Master Tom standing before the shed (the machine was hidden), wiping his hands upon a piece of waste, and looking out upon the falling rain.

He saw the girls almost instantly, and opened his mouth to shout to them, but Ruth clapped her own hand to her lips and motioned with the other for him to be silent. Tom understood.

He looked more than surprised--not a little startled, in fact.

"What will he think?" murmured Helen. "He's so reckless!"

"Leave it to me," declared Ruth, leaning out of the window into the still falling rain.

She caught the boy's eye. He watched her motions. There was built at this end of the house an outside stairway, and although it was in bad repair, she saw that an agile fellow like Tom could mount the steps without any difficulty.

Pointing to this flight, she motioned him to come by that means to their level, still warning him by gesture to make no sound. The boy understood and immediately darted across the intervening s.p.a.ce to the house.

Ruth knew there was no dining-room window from which the ruffians downstairs could see him. And they had made no move as far as she had heard.

She left Helen to meet Tom when he came in through the sagging door at the top of the outside flight of stairs, and tiptoed back into that room where they had been frightened by the bat.

It was directly over the dining-room. The same chimney was built into each room. This thought gave Ruth's active mind food for further reflection.

The rumble of the men's voices continued from below. Tom and Helen followed her so softly into the room that Ruth did not hear them until they stood beside her. Tom touched her arm and pointed downward:

"Tramps?" he asked.

"Those Gypsies, I believe," whispered Ruth, in return.

Helen was just as scared as she could be, and clung tightly to Tom's hand. "Wish we could scare them away," suggested the boy, with knitted brow.

"Perhaps we can!" uttered Ruth, suddenly eager, and her brown eyes dancing. "Sh! Wait! Let me try."

She went to the paper-stuffed stovepipe hole, out of which the bat had fallen. Helen would have exclaimed aloud, had not Tom seen her lips open and squeezed her hand warningly.

"What is it?" he hissed.

"Don't! don't!" begged Helen. "You'll let those bats all out here----"

"Bats?" queried Tom, in wonder.

"In the chimney," whispered Ruth. "Listen!"

The stir and squeaking of the bats were audible. Enough rain had come in at the top of the broken chimney to disturb the nocturnal creatures.

"Just the thing!" giggled Tom, seeing what Ruth would do. "Frighten them to pieces!"

The girl of the Red Mill had secured the stick she used before. She pulled aside the "stopper" of newspaper and thrust in the stick. At once the rustling and squeaking increased.

She worked the stick up and down insistently. Scale from the inside of the chimney began to rattle down to the hearth below. The voices ceased.

Then the men were heard to scramble up.

The bats were dislodged--perhaps many of them! There was a scuffling and scratching inside the flue.

Below, the men broke out into loud cries. They shouted their alarm in the strange language the girls had heard before. Then their feet stamped over the floor.

Tom ran lightly to the window. He saw a bat wheel out of the window below, and disappear. The rain had almost stopped.

It was evident that many of the creatures were flapping about that deserted dining-room. The two ruffians scrambled to the door, through the entry, and out upon the porch.

The sound of their feet did not hold upon the porch. They leaped down the steps, and Tom beckoned the girls eagerly to join him at the window.

The two men were racing down the lane toward the muddy highroad, paying little attention to their steps or to the last of the rainstorm.

"Panic-stricken, sure enough! Smart girl, Ruthie," was Master Tom's comment. "Now tell a fellow all about it."

The girls did so, while Ruth lit the alcohol lamp and made the tea. Tom was ravenous--nothing could spoil that boy's appet.i.te.

"Gyps., sure enough," was his comment. "But what you heard them say wasn't much."

"They'd been robbing somebody--or were going to rob," said Helen, shaking her head. "What frightful men they are!"

"Pooh! they've gone now, and the old machine is fixed. We'll plow on through the mud as soon as you like."

"I shall be glad, when we get to civilization again," said his sister.

"And I'd like very much to understand what those men were talking about," Ruth observed. "Do you suppose Roberto knows about it?

Pearls--beautiful pearls, that fellow spoke of."

"I tell you they are thieves!" declared Helen.

"We'll probably never know," Tom said, confidently. "So let's not worry!"

Master Tom did not prove a good prophet on this point, although he had foreseen the breaking down of the automobile before they started from the Red Mill. They went back to the car and started from the old house in a much more cheerful mood, neither of the girls supposing that they were likely to run across the Gypsy men again.