“I guess a pretty sick man painted that sign,” grinned Jimsy.

“What do you mean?” was the surly reply.

“Why, I should judge he was having an awful bad spell at the time,” was the boy’s rejoinder.

The man scowled at him fiercely.

“No joking round here,” he growled; “now, then, if you know what’s good for you you two kids will vamoose.”

“What’s the danger if we keep on?” asked Roy.

“Why, they’re trying a new kind of explosive back there.  It might go off the wrong way, your way, for instance, and hurt you,” was the reply.

“Seems a funny sort of place to try out explosives,” said Roy.

“Seems a queer sort of place for you two kids to come.  Who are you, anyhow?”

“Oh, we are camping down below and we just came out for a stroll.”

“Well, stroll some other place, then.  Git away from round here.”

“We certainly will,” flashed back Roy; “come on, Jimsy.”

As there seemed nothing else to do Jimsy agreed.  They turned away and began retracing their steps, no wiser as to the whereabouts of the man with the broken boot than they had been when they set out.

Just as they turned to go, however, another man came out of the woods behind the man with the rifle.  When he saw the boys he gave an abrupt start.

“Where did those boys come from?” he demanded.

“I don’t know.  Said they was two kids out campin’ and takin’ a stroll.”

“Taking a stroll, eh?” said the other ferociously; “they were taking a stroll looking for that Wren.”

“How do you know?”

“Because they are the same two kids who stole her from us just as we were going to demand a ransom for her.”

“That was before I joined the band.  No wonder I didn’t know them; if I had——­”

He scowled vindictively.

“Well, we can’t let ’em get away.  Here, give me that rifle,” demanded the newcomer.

The other handed it to him.  The next instant a report rang out and a bullet whizzed over the boys’ heads.

“Come back here,” shouted the man who had fired the shot; “I want to see you.”

The boys hesitated for a minute.

“The next shot ’ull come lower if you don’t,” warned the man; “come on, no nonsense.”

As there seemed to be nothing else to do the boys obeyed.  As they drew closer they recognized the fellow.

“Oh, you know me, eh?” he snarled; “well, you’ll know me better before we get through.  Follow me, now.  Pedro, you take the rifle and fall in behind.  If they try to escape shoot them down.”

Here was a fine situation.  They had found the gipsies’ camp with a vengeance, but for all the good it was going to do The Wren, unless they could get her away, they might as well not have come.  These gloomy reflections sifted through their minds as they paced along, the man with the rifle occasionally prodding them with it just to make them “step lively,” as he phrased it.