And as the wood grew closer and darker
this feeling increased. They felt as if they were miles and miles from
home, in some strange and distant country they had never before seen or
heard of; they seemed to be going on and on, as in a dream. And though
poor little Pamela still, through all her stumbles and tumbles, held
tightly up before her the corners of her apron, containing the bits of
the unlucky bowl, and Duke, on his side, still firmly clutched his
precious money-box, I do not believe either of them had by this time any
very clear remembrance of why they were laden with these queer burdens,
or what was the object of the strange and painful expedition.
And still on strode the piercing-eyed gipsy, as sure of his prey now
apparently as a fowler who watches unmoved the fruitless struggles of
some poor little birds in the net from which they have no chance of
escaping.
It would be impossible to say how far they had gone--perhaps not so very
far after all, though their panting breath and trembling little legs
showed that the gipsy's purpose of tiring them out was pretty well
accomplished--when at last a sharp cry from Pamela forced the pedlar to
look round. She had caught her foot on a stone or a root, and fallen,
and in falling one of the jagged bits of the broken crockery had cut her
leg pretty deeply; the blood was already streaming from it, her little
white sock was deeply stained, and she lay on the ground almost fainting
with terror and pain.
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