The gipsies would expect him to endeavour to regain his friends, and would watch to cut off his return.

Felix determined to make, instead, for another camp farther east, and to get even there by a detour.
Bitterly he reproached himself for his folly in leaving the camp, knowing that gipsies were about, with no other weapon than the bow.

The knife at his belt was practically no weapon at all, useful only in the last extremity.

Had he a short sword, or javelin, he would have faced the two gipsies who first sprang towards him.

Worse than this was the folly of wandering without the least precaution into a territory at that time full of gipsies, who had every reason to desire his capture.