, and she rose from her seat on the roots
of the tree with the sense that this was a great crisis in her life.

She would run straight away till she came to Dunlow Common, where there
would certainly be gipsies; and cruel Tom, and the rest of her
relations who found fault with her, should never see her any more. She
thought of her father as she ran along, but made up her mind that she
would secretly send him a letter by a small gipsy, who would run away
without telling where she was, and just let him know that she was well
and happy, and always loved him very much.

Maggie soon got out of breath with running, but by the time that Tom
got to the pond again she was at the distance of three long fields, and
was on the edge of the lane leading to the highroad.

She presently passed through the gate into the lane, and she was soon
aware, not without trembling, that there were two men coming along the
lane in front of her.

She had not thought of meeting strangers; and, to her surprise, while
she was dreading their scolding as a runaway, one of the men stopped,
and in a half-whining, half-coaxing tone asked her if she had a copper
to give a poor fellow.

Maggie had a sixpence in her pocket--her Uncle Glegg's present--which
she drew out and gave this "poor fellow" with a polite smile. "That's
the only money I've got," she said. "Thank you, little miss," said the
man in a less grateful tone than Maggie expected, and she even saw that
he smiled and winked at his companion.

She now went on, and turning through the first gate that was not
locked, crept along by the hedgerows. She was used to wandering about
the fields by herself, and was less timid there than on the highroad.
Sometimes she had to climb over high gates, but that was a small evil;
she was getting out of reach very fast, and she should probably soon
come within sight of Dunlow Common. She hoped so, for she was getting
rather tired and hungry. It was still broad daylight, yet it seemed to
her that she had been walking a very great distance indeed, and it was
really surprising that the common did not come in sight.

At last, however, the green fields came to an end, and Maggie found
herself looking through the bars of a gate into a lane with a wide
margin of grass on each side of it. She crept through the bars of the
gate and walked on with a new spirit, and at the next bend in the lane
Maggie actually saw the little black tent with the blue smoke rising