"Wait till she speaks again." Another long pause, and then another long recital in gibberish by the old woman, broken by the same coughing and groaning as before.

Then the man said-- "Stand up, and hold your hands above your head." Bilk obeyed.
"You want to know how to escape the peril ?" said the man.
Bilk, with his hands still up, nodded.
"To-night at nine o'clock you will hear a bell." Again Bilk nodded.

Fancy the gipsies knowing that! "You will go up to a small room with a chair and a bed in it, and undress." A pause, and another nod from the astonished Bilk.
"You will put on a long white robe coming down to your ankles.

At half- past nine the place will be dark--as black as pitch." Bilk shuddered a little at the prospect.
"Then will be the time to escape your peril, or else to fall a victim.
To escape it you must go quietly down the stairs and out of the house.
The being who rules your life will be away for this one evening, and you will escape through his room by the window, which is close to the ground." Bilk started once more.

_He_ knew the doctor was to be out that evening, but what short of supernatural vision could tell the gipsies of it?
"You must escape in the long white robe, and run past here on to the cross roads.