[Illustration: _Cotman._ MOUSEHOLD HEATH.]
She knew that Bill was making for a wide common in the county of Norfolk, called Mousehold Heath. You may see the place in the picture, by Cotman, over the drawing-room mantelpiece. And if you look into it you will see it is an open common with several windmills, eight sheep, some poplars, and a white donkey, and a road of a warm red, that goes up the hill with a sudden jag in it, towards a row of cottages set on the crest of the hill.
It took the gipsies some time to reach this place. They had loitered, and lingered, and trespassed, and poached their way through four counties, only the poorer by the boy’s coat, which had been left in a farmer’s hands one night while its owner was stealing hens.
Both children were stained brown, and clad roughly, in old unsavoury garments, and nearly all their high spirits and gaiety cuffed out of them by the old crone. We will not dwell on this part of the story, for at last there came a break in their dark sky.
Mousie woke one night to find Freedom bending over her, whispering.
“Listen, dear; it’s Freedom talking. Don’t answer now, but just move your hand if you understand. We mustn’t wake Granny, and old Petulengro is close outside. When you go with Robin to-morrow to fetch the water, leave the pitcher and make straight for the mill. You’ll see it standing high above ye, and never stop running till you reach the lintel, and there knock, and say ye come from me. I’ve told Robin; do ye understand me? Once in the mill, we’ll get ye home.”
The words seemed to dance and sing in Mousie’s ears. “Once in the mill, we’ll get ye home.” She saw them gold and shining before her, and “O Freedom, dear,” she said, “O Freedom!”
But Freedom had stepped out again beneath the stars. Only old Granny snored and grunted, in her corner of the van.
_Anything is worth what it costs; if it be only as a schooling in resolution, energy, and devotedness; regrets are the sole admission of a fruitless business; they show the bad tree._ --G. MEREDITH.
That day could not dawn too early for Mousie. She lay, after Freedom’s whisper had ceased, staring upon the darkness with wide lids. Her stay among the gipsies had deepened her nature in some measure. Before this the course of her being had been like that of a little burn, full of kinks and babblings, frothing round some obstructing but tiny stone, now conveying a straw as importantly as it had been a three-decker, now leaping in the sunshine doing nothing at all. But she had moments now of much thinking, and had gained some of that self-control, that comes to those who have faced the realities of life.