“Why do you say that now?” said Duke rather crossly; “it’s only making it all worser and worser.  I wish——­”

But what Duke wished was never to be known, for just at that moment sounds coming down the lane, evidently drawing nearer and nearer, made him start up and peep out from behind the few thin low-growing shrubs at the top of the wall.

“Hush, sister,” he said, quite forgetting that it was himself and not “sister” who had been speaking,—­“there are such funny people coming down the lane.  Come here, close by me; there, you can see them—­don’t they look funny?”

Pamela squeezed herself forward between Duke and a bush, and looked where he pointed to.  A little group of people was to be seen making their way slowly along the lane.  There were a man, two women, and two boys—­the women with red kerchiefs over their heads, and something picturesque about their dress and bearing, though they were dirty and ragged.  They, as well as the man, had very dark skins, black hair, and bright piercing eyes, and the elder of the two boys, a great loose-limbed fellow of sixteen or so, was just like them.  But the other boy, who did not look more than nine or ten, though his skin was tanned by the weather nearly as brown as his companion’s, had lighter hair and eyes.  He followed the others at a little distance, not seeming to attend to what they were saying, though they were all talking eagerly, and rather loudly, in a queer kind of language, which Duke and Pamela could not understand at all.  The younger boy whistled as he came along, and he held a stout branch in his hand, from which, with a short rough knife, he was cutting away the twigs and bark.  He did not seem unhappy though he looked thin, and his clothes hardly held together they were so ragged.

All these particulars became visible to the children, as the party of gipsies—­for such they were, though of a low class—­came nearer and nearer.  I forgot to say that the sixth member of the party was a donkey, a poor half-starved looking creature, with roughly-made panniers, stuffed with crockery apparently, for basins and jugs and pots of various kinds were to be seen sticking out of them in all directions.  And besides the donkey’s load there was a good deal more to carry, for the man and the women and the big boy were all loaded with bundles of different shapes and sizes, and the little fellow had a sort of knapsack on his back.  They would probably have passed on their way without dreaming of the two small people in Spy Tower up above their heads, had not Duke, suddenly catching sight of the donkey’s burden, exclaimed loudly to Pamela: 

“See, see, sister; they have jugs and dishes.  Perhaps us could get a bowl like ours.”

At the sound of the child’s voice the man stopped short in what he was saying to his companions, and looked up.

“Good day, my little master, and my pretty missy too,” he said in a smooth voice, not the least like the rather harsh tones in which he had been speaking a moment before in the strange language.  “At your service, and is there anything I can do for you?”