Picture-Play Weekly (Apr-Oct 1915)

20 PICTURE-PLAY WEEKLY "No, no !" cried out Pierre, the crippled boy. "Oh, Hegar, don't take her away from her father and mother ! She loves them dearly, I know, and you would hurt her most of all by tearing her from them " The strapping gypsy whom the chief had called Barouche, seizing the lad by the wrist, rudely shook him to silence. "Here is the tool with which we can turn the trick," Barouche told the chief, dragging Pierre forward. "The child knows this lad. She will go with him, if he asks. It shall be the work of Maygar and myself to get him into the house to-night, where he can lead her forth to us." i In the next hour the chief of the tribe was busy apportioning to the other members of the band the parts they were to play in the contemplated kidnaping of little Doris that night. At eight o'clock Pierre was led away between Barouche and another young man of the gypsy band. A beating, administered meanwhile by Barouche, had sufficed to take all the protest against the deed his tribesfolk were plotting out of the crippled boy. Besides, though he knew it was wrong to take a child reared in luxury away with a band of rough-living wanderers, the thought had come to Pierre that it would be pleasant to have Doris always near him as a playmate. The gypsies had made up their minds to steal her, and they would do so despite any efiforts he could make to prevent them ; and so the boy was prepared to carry out the bidding of his two older companions without resistance. Leading him stealthily up to the garden surrounding the mansion, in the shadow of the house they drew Pierre to a halt. They were standing, the boy saw, at the foot of a tree that rose along the side of the dwelling. "Have Gecko and the others had time to set fire to the stables yet, do you think?" the gypsy named IMaygar inquired, in a whisper, of Barouche. By way of answer, the latter pointed in silence to the sky above the tree tops in their rear, a sky that turned pink as they watched. Running feet sounded from that direction, a farm hand lifted his voice in an alarmed summons for Mr. Calhoun, and the next moment the door of the house opened, and closed with a bang, and its master ran down the steps and away at the heels of his employee toward the burning stables. "Now!" grunted Barouche; and he lifted Pierre to the tree and gave him a shove up its trunk. "Climb in the window of the little girl's room, and ask her to come and see the fire with you ; but when you have brought her out lead her toward the field instead." Pierre, going up the tree with the agility of a little monkej', swung across one of its upper branches, and so to the sill of Doris' window, from which he dropped lightly down onto the floor of her room. Doris was looking through the window on the other side of the room, toward the blazing stables, where her father was even then working furiously with his hired men to bring out the horses. Pierre, behind her, spoke her name softly. "Oh !'' exclaimed Doris, turning. "Hello!" "Hello !" answered Pierre ; and then .! he went on, as he had been instructed to do. "Wouldn't you like to come with me and watch the fire?" Delightedly Doris assented. With her hand once more placed confidingly in the crippled gypsy boy's, she went out of her room with him, down the stairs, and through the front door of the house. "This way," said Pierre, attempting to lead her in the opposite direction from the stables. "But the fire is over here!" Doris objected. "Come this way," Pierre insisted. "This is a short cut." Doris allowed him to lead her down through the garden to the road, and along it in the direction of the field where she had visited the gypsies' camp 'earlier in the day. The bushes parted at the side of the road, and Barouche . and ^Maygar stepped out. Doris was snatched up in the latter's strong arms, a soiled bandanna handkerchief* was bound ovef her mouth, stifling the cry she had been about to utter, and so, a captive, she was borne away. Away to the field where the gypsies were waiting, their tents struck, their camp fire extinguished, and their horses hitched to the wagons, in readiness to depart. And away, in one of the covered wagons, out into the great outside world of which she knew nothing, Doris was carried, five minutes later, with the tribe of nomads — to forget, in the course of time, that she had ever been anything but a g3'psy herself. By the time she was sixteen, Kilmeny — as the gypsies had rechristened Doris Calhoun — was a beautiful girl. Naturally dark, her life in the out-of-doors had tanned her skin most becomingly. Kilmeny had joined in the life of the gypsies who had kidnaped her — she told fortunes, with the rest, to visitors to the camp.