“Good for you, Bessie!” she exclaimed.  She darted a vicious look at Lolla.  “I wish that treacherous little gypsy would come somewhere near me,” she went on, angrily.  “I’d pull her hair and make her sorry she ever tried to help those villains to keep us.  When they put her in prison I’m going to see her, and jeer at her!”

Lolla, looking helpless now in her anger, said nothing, but she glared at the two girls.

“I think these people are very superstitious,” whispered Dolly to Bessie, when it became plain that, for the moment, the two gypsies intended only to watch them, without making any further attempt to tie them up.

“I think so too,” returned Bessie, in the same tone.  “But I don’t see what good that is going to do us, Dolly.”

“Neither do I, just yet, Bessie.  But I can’t help thinking that there must be some way that we could frighten them, if we could only think of it; so that they would be frightened and run away.”

“We might tell them—­Oh, I’ve got an idea, Dolly.”

She looked at Peter and Lolla.  They were at the very edge of the little clearing in which Dolly had been imprisoned.

“Listen, Lolla,” said Bessie, calmly.  “I believe that you are a good girl, though you have lied to me, and tried to make me think you were my friend, when all the time you were planning, you could betray me.  This place is dangerous.”

Lolla looked at her scornfully and tossed head.

“Don’t think you can frighten me with your stories,” she said, with a laugh.  “It is dangerous—­for you.  When my man comes you will find that he is not a coward, like Peter, to be frightened with your knife.  He will take it away from you and beat you, too, for trying to frighten Peter with it.”

“Yes, he is brave, Lolla.  We saw that when he ran away from the fire that he saw last night near the lake.”

Bessie was taking a chance when she said that.  She did not know whether Lolla had heard of the mysterious flashlight explosion or not, but she thought it more than probable that John had told her of it.  And she was reasonably sure that he was still wondering what had caused the light that had so suddenly blinded him.  Her swift look at Lolla showed her that her blow had struck home.

“He is a brave man, indeed, to keep on with his wicked plan to steal my friend after such a warning,” Bessie went on sternly.  “But his bravery will do him no good.  There is a spirit looking after us.  It made the fire that frightened him, and the next time he will not only see the fire; he will feel it, too.”

Now she looked not only at Lolla, who seemed shaken, but at Peter, who was staring at her as if fascinated.  Evidently he, too, had heard of the strange fire.  Bessie had reckoned on the probability, that seemed almost a certainty, that John would not have been able to explain, even to himself, the nature of the flashlight explosion.  And evidently she was right.  Then she took another chance, guessing at what she thought John would probably have said to explain the fire.