“I’m sorry for you, Lolla,” said Eleanor.  “We all are.  We think you didn’t know what you were doing, and how wicked it was.  I will do my best for you, but your best chance is to make John tell all he knows.”

“How can I?  He blames me.  He says if I and Peter hadn’t been such cowards all would have been well.  He is angry at me; he will not forgive me.”

“Oh, yes, he will, Lolla.  I am sure he loves you, and that he did this wicked thing because he wanted to have much money to spend buying nice things for you; pretty dresses, and a fine wagon, with good horses.  So he will be sorry for speaking angrily to you, soon, and you will be able to make him tell the truth, if you only try.  Will you try?”

“Yes,” decided Lolla, suddenly.  “I think you are good—­that you forgive us.  Do you?”

“I certainly do.  After all, you see, Lolla, you haven’t done us any harm.”

Lolla pointed to Bessie.

“Will she forgive me?” she inquired.  “I tricked her—­made a fool of her—­but she made a fool of me afterward.  I lied to her; will she forgive me, too, like you?”

“Did you hear that, Bessie?” asked Eleanor, by way of answer to the gypsy girl’s question.

“Yes,” said Bessie.  “I’m sorry you did it, Lolla, because I only wanted to help your man, and if you hadn’t done what you said you were going to do, and helped me to get Dolly away from him, he wouldn’t be in all this trouble now.

“But you didn’t understand about that, and you helped your own people instead of a stranger.  I don’t think that’s such a dreadful thing to do.  It’s something like a soldier in a war.  He may think his country is wrong, but if there’s a battle he has to fight for it, just the same.”

“But remember that the best way to help John now is to make him see that he has been wrong, and to try to make him understand that he can make up for his wickedness by helping us to punish the bad man who got him to do this,” said Eleanor.  “That man, you see, was too much of a coward to do his work himself, so he got your man to do it, knowing that if anyone was to be punished he would escape, and John would get into trouble.

“John doesn’t owe anything to a man like that; he needn’t think he’s got to keep him out of trouble.  The man wouldn’t do it for him.  He won’t help him now.  He’ll pretend he doesn’t know anything about this at all.”

“I will try,” promised Lolla.  “But I think John is angry with me, and will not listen.  But I will do my best.”

And, after a little while, which the guides used to cook a meal, and to rest after their strenuous tramping in the effort to find the missing girls, Andrew told off half a dozen of them to make their way to the county seat, a dozen miles away, with the three gypsies.

“Just get them there and turn them over to the sheriff, boys,” said the old guide.  “He’ll hold them safe until they’ve been tried, and we won’t have any call to worry about them no more.  But be careful while you’re on your way down.  They’re slippery customers, and as like as not to try to run away from you and get to their own people.”