THE WORLD FOR SALE

By Gilbert Parker

CONTENTS:

PRELUDE

BOOK I

I. "THE DRUSES ARE UP!"II. THE WHISPER FROM BEYONDIII. CONCERNING INGOLBY AND THE TWO TOWNSIV. THE COMING OF JETHRO FAWEV. "BY THE RIVER STARZKE. .. . IT WAS SO DONE"VI. THE UNGUARDED FIRESVII. IN WHICH THE PRISONER GOES FREE

BOOK II

VIII. THE SULTANIX. MATTER AND MIND AND TWO MENX. FOR LUCKXI. THE SENTENCE OF THE PATRINXII. "LET THERE BE LIGHT"XIII. THE CHAIN OF THE PASTXIV. SUCH THINGS MAY NOT BEXV. THE WOMAN FROM WIND RIVERXVI. THE MAYOR FILLS AN OFFICEXVII. THE MONSEIGNEUR AND THE NOMADXVIII. THE BEACONSXIX. THE BEEPER OF THE BRIDGE

BOOK III

XX. TWO LIFE PIECESXXI. THE SNARE OF THE FOWLERXXII. THE SECRET MANXXIII. THE RETURN OF BELISARIUSXXIV. AT LONG LASTXXV. MAN PROPOSESXXVI. THE SLEEPERXXVII. THE WORLD FOR SALE

INTRODUCTION

'The World for Sale' is a tale of the primitive and lonely West andNorth, but the primitiveness and loneliness is not like that to be foundin 'Pierre and His People'. Pierre's wanderings took place in a periodwhen civilization had made but scant marks upon the broad bosom of theprairie land, and towns and villages were few and far scattered. TheLebanon and Manitou of this story had no existence in the time of Pierre, except that where Manitou stands there was a Hudson's Bay Company's postat which Indians, half-breeds, and chance settlers occasionally gatheredfor trade and exchange-furs, groceries, clothing, blankets, tobacco, andother things; and in the long winters the post was as isolated as anoasis in the Sahara. 

That old life was lonely and primitive, but it had its compensatingbalance of bright sun, wild animal life, and an air as vivid and virileas ever stirred the veins of man. Sometimes the still, bright cold wasbroken by a terrific storm, which ravaged, smothered, and entombed thestray traveller in ravines of death. That was in winter; but in summer, what had been called, fifty years ago, an alkali desert was aneverlasting stretch of untilled soil, with unsown crops, and here andthere herds of buffalo, which were stalked by alert Red Indians, half-breeds, and white pioneer hunters. 

The stories in 'Pierre and His People' were true to the life of thattime; the incidents in 'The World for Sale', and the whole narrative, aretrue to the life of a very few years ago. Railways have pierced andopened up lonely regions of the Sagalae, and there are two thriving townswhere, in the days of Pierre, only stood a Hudson's Bay Company's postwith its store. Now, as far as eye can see, vast fields of grain greetthe eye, and houses and barns speckle the greenish brown or Tuscan yellowof the crop-covered lands, while towns like Lebanon and Manitou providefor the modern settler all the modern conveniences which science hasgiven to civilized municipalities. Today the motor-car and the telephoneare as common in such places as they are in a thriving town of the UnitedKingdom. After the first few days of settlement two things alwaysappear--a school-house and a church. Probably there is no country in theworld where elementary education commands the devotion and the cash ofthe people as in English Canada; that is why the towns of Lebanon andManitou had from the first divergent views. Lebanon was English, progressive, and brazenly modern; Manitou was slow, reactionary, more orless indifferent to education, and strenuously Catholic, and was thusopposed to the militant Protestantism of Lebanon. 

It was my idea to picture a situation in the big new West where destinyis being worked out in the making of a nation and the peopling of thewastes. I selected a very modern and unusual type of man as the centralfigure of my story. He was highly educated, well born, and carefullybrought up. He possessed all the best elements of a young man in a newcountry--intelligent self-dependence, skill, daring, vision. He had anoriginal turn of mind, and, as men are obliged to do in new countries, he looked far ahead. Yet he had to face what pioneers and reformers inold countries have to face, namely the disturbance of rooted interests. Certainly rooted interests in towns but a generation old cannot beextensive or remarkable, but if they are associated with habits andprinciples, they may be as deadly as those which test the qualities andwreck the careers of men in towns as old as London. The difference, however, between the old European town and the new Western town is thatdifferences in the Western town are more likely to take physical form, as was the case in the life of Ingolby. In order to accentuate theprimitive and yet highly civilized nature of the life I chose my heroinefrom a race and condition more unsettled and more primitive than that ofLebanon or Manitou at any time. I chose a heroine from the gipsy race, and to heighten the picture of the primitive life from which she had comeI made her a convert to the settled life of civilization. I had knownsuch a woman, older, but with the same characteristics, the samestruggles, temptations, and suffering the same restriction of her lifeand movements by the prejudice in her veins--the prejudice of racialpredilection. 

Looking at the story now after its publication, I am inclined to thinkthat the introduction of the gipsy element was too bold, yet I believeit was carefully worked out in construction, and was a legitimate, intellectual enterprise. The danger of it was that it might detract fromthe reality and vividness of the narrative as a picture of Western life. Most American critics of the book seem not to have been struck by thisdoubt which has occurred to me. They realize perhaps more faithfullythan some of the English critics have done that these mad contrasts areby no means uncommon in the primitive and virile life of the West andNorth. Just as California in the old days, just as Ballaret in Australiadrew the oddest people from every corner of the world, so Western towns, with new railways, brought strange conglomerations into the life. Forinstance, a town like Winnipeg has sections which represent the life ofnearly every race of Europe, and towns like Lebanon and Manitou, withEnglish and French characteristics controlling them mainly, are still assubject to outside racial influences as to inside racial antagonisms. 

I believe The World for Sale shows as plainly as anything can show thevexed and conglomerate life of a Western town. It shows how racialcharacteristics may clash, disturb, and destroy, and yet how wisdom, tact, and lucky incident may overcome almost impossible situations. Theantagonisms between Lebanon and Manitou were unwillingly and unjustlydeepened by the very man who had set out to bring them together, as oneof the ideals of his life, and as one of the factors of his success. Ingolby, who had everything to gain by careful going, almost wrecked hisown life, and he injured the life of the two towns by impulsive acts. 

The descriptions of life in the two towns are true, and the chiefcharacters in the book are lifted out of the life as one has seen it. Men like Osterhaut and Jowett, Indians like Tekewani, doctors likeRockwell, priests like Monseigneur Fabre, ministers like Mr. Tripple, andne'er-do-weels like Marchand may be found in many a town of the West andNorth. Naturally the book must lack in something of that magneticpicturesqueness and atmosphere which belongs to the people in theProvince of Quebec. Western and Northern life has little of the settledcharm which belongs to the old civilization of the French province. Theonly way to recapture that charm is to place Frenchmen in the West, andhave them act and live--or try to act and live--as they do in old Quebec. 

That is what I did with Pierre in my first book of fiction, Pierre andHis People, but with the exception of Monseigneur Fabre there is noFrenchman in this book who fulfils, or could fulfil, the temperamentalplace which I have indicated. Men like Monseigneur Fabre have lived inthe West, and worked and slaved like him, blest and beloved by allclasses, creeds, and races. Father Lacombe was one of them. The part heplayed in the life of Western Canada will be written some day by one whounderstands how such men, celibate, and dedicated to religious life, mayplay a stupendous part in the development of civilization. Something ofhim is to be found in my description of Monseigneur Fabre. 

NOTE

This book was begun in 1911 and finished in 1913, a year before war brokeout. It was published serially in the year 1915 and the beginning of1916. It must, therefore, go to the public on the basis of its meritsalone, and as a picture of the peace-life of the great North West. 

PRELUDE

Harvest-time was almost come, and the great new land was resting undercoverlets of gold. From the rise above the town of Lebanon, therestretched out ungarnered wheat in the ear as far as sight could reach, and the place itself and the neighbouring town of Manitou on the otherside of the Sagalac River were like islands washed by a topaz sea. 

Standing upon the Rise, lost in the prospect, was an old, white-hairedman in the cassock of a priest, with grey beard reaching nearly to thewaist. 

For long he surveyed the scene, and his eyes had a rapt look. 

At last he spoke aloud:

 "There shall be an heap of corn in the earth, high upon the hills; his fruit shall shake like Libanus, and shall be green in the city like grass upon the earth. "

A smile came to his lips--a rare, benevolent smile. He had seen thisexpanse of teeming life when it was thought to be an alkali desert, fitonly to be invaded by the Blackfeet and the Cree and the Blood Indians ona foray for food and furs. Here he had come fifty years before, and hadgone West and North into the mountains in the Summer season, when theland was tremulous with light and vibrating to the hoofs of herds ofbuffalo as they stampeded from the hunters; and also in the Winter time, when frost was master and blizzard and drift its malignant servants. 

Even yet his work was not done. In the town of Manitou he still saidmass now and then, and heard the sorrows and sins of men and women, andgave them "ghostly comfort, " while priests younger than himself took theburden of parish-work from his shoulders. 

For a lifetime he had laboured among the Indians and the few whites andsquaw-men and half-breeds, with neither settlement nor progress. Then, all at once, the railway; and people coming from all the world, andcities springing up! Now once more he was living the life ofcivilization, exchanging raw flesh of fish and animals and a meal oftallow or pemmican for the wheaten loaf; the Indian tepee for the warmhouse with the mansard roof; the crude mass beneath the trees for therefinements of a chancel and an altar covered with lace and white linen. 

A flock of geese went honking over his head. His eyes smiled in memoryof the countless times he had watched such flights, had seen thousandsof wild ducks hurrying down a valley, had watched a family of heronsstretching away to some lonely water-home. And then another soundgreeted his ear. It was shrill, sharp and insistent. A great serpentwas stealing out of the East and moving down upon Lebanon. It gaveout puffs of smoke from its ungainly head. It shrieked in triumph asit came. It was the daily train from the East, arriving at the SagalacRiver. 

"These things must be, " he said aloud as he looked. While he losthimself again in reminiscence, a young man came driving across theplains, passing beneath where he stood. The young man's face and figuresuggested power. In his buggy was a fishing-rod. 

His hat was pulled down over his eyes, but he was humming cheerfully tohimself. When he saw the priest, he raised his hat respectfully, yetwith an air of equality. 

"Good day, Monseigneur" (this honour of the Church had come at last tothe aged missionary), he said warmly. "Good day--good day!"

The priest raised his hat and murmured the name, "Ingolby. " As thedistance grew between them, he said sadly: "These are the men who changethe West, who seize it, and divide it, and make it their own--

 "'I will rejoice, and divide Sichem: and mete out the valley of Succoth. '

"Hush! Hush!" he said to himself in reproach. "These things must be. The country must be opened up. That is why I came--to bring the Truthbefore the trader. "

Now another traveller came riding out of Lebanon towards him, gallopinghis horse up-hill and down. He also was young, but nothing about himsuggested power, only self-indulgence. He, too, raised his hat, orrather swung it from his head in a devil-may-care way, and overdid hissalutation. He did not speak. The priest's face was very grave, if nota little resentful. His salutation was reserved. 

"The tyranny of gold, " he murmured, "and without the mind or energy thatcreated it. Felix was no name for him. Ingolby is a builder, perhaps ajerry-builder; but he builds. "

He looked across the prairie towards the young man in the buggy. 

"Sure, he is a builder. He has the Cortez eye. He sees far off, andplans big things. But Felix Marchand there--"

He stopped short. 

"Such men must be, perhaps, " he added. Then, after a moment, as he gazedround again upon the land of promise which he had loved so long, hemurmured as one murmurs a prayer:

 "Thou suferedst men to ride over our heads: we went through fire and water, and Thou broughtest us out into a wealthy place. "

BOOK I

I. "THE DRUSES ARE UP!"II. THE WHISPER FROM BEYONDIII. CONCERNING INGOLBY AND THE TWO TOWNSIV. THE COMING OF JETHRO FAWEV. "BY THE RIVER STARZKE. .. . IT WAS SO DONE"VI. THE UNGUARDED FIRESVII. IN WHICH THE PRISONER GOES FREE

CHAPTER I

"THE DRUSES ARE UP!"

"Great Scott, look at her! She's goin' to try and take 'em !" exclaimedOsterhaut, the Jack-of-all-trades at Lebanon. 

"She ain't such a fool as all that. Why, no one ever done it alone. Lowwater, too, when every rock's got its chance at the canoe. But, mygracious, she is goin' to ride 'em!"

Jowett, the horse-dealer, had a sportsman's joy in a daring thing. 

"See, old Injun Tekewani's after her! He's calling at her from the bank. He knows. He done it himself years ago when there was rips in the tribean' he had to sew up the tears. He run them Rapids in his canoe--"

"Just as the Druse girl there is doin'--"

"An' he's done what he liked with the Blackfeet ever since. "

"But she ain't a chief--what's the use of her doin' it? She's goin'straight for them. She can't turn back now. She couldn't make the bankif she wanted to. She's got to run 'em. Holy smoke, see her wavin' thepaddle at Tekewani! Osterhaut, she's the limit, that petticoat--so quietand shy and don't-look-at-me, too, with eyes like brown diamonds. "

"Oh, get out, Jowett; she's all right! She'll make this country sit upsome day-by gorry, she'll make Manitou and Lebanon sit up to-day if sheruns the Carillon Rapids safe!"

"She's runnin' 'em all right, son. She's--by jee, well done, Miss Druse!Well done, I say--well done!" exclaimed Jowett, dancing about and wavinghis arms towards the adventurous girl. 

The girl had reached the angry, thrashing waters where the rocks rent andtore into white ribbons the onrushing current, and her first trial hadcome on the instant the spitting, raging panthers of foam struck the bowof her canoe. The waters were so low that this course, which she hadmade once before with her friend Tekewani the Blackfeet chief, had perilsnot met on that desperate journey. Her canoe struck a rock slantwise, shuddered and swung round, but by a dexterous stroke she freed the frailcraft. It righted and plunged forward again into fresh death-traps. 

It was these new dangers which had made Tekewani try to warn her from theshore--he and the dozen braves with him: but it was characteristic of hisrace that, after the first warning, when she must play out the game tothe bitter end, he made no further attempt to stop her. The Indians randown the river-bank, however, with eyes intent on her headlong progress, grunting approval as she plunged safely from danger to danger. 

Osterhaut and Jowett became silent, too, and, like the Indians, ran asfast as they could, over fences, through the trees, stumbling andoccasionally cursing, but watching with fascinated eyes this adventuressof the North, taking chances which not one coureur-de-bois or river-driver in a thousand would take, with a five thousand-dollar prize as thelure. Why should she do it?

"Women folks are sick darn fools when they git goin', " gasped Osterhautas he ran. "They don't care a split pea what happens when they've gotthe pip. Look at her--my hair's bleachin'. "

"She's got the pip all right, " stuttered Jowett as he plunged along; "butshe's foreign, and they've all got the pip, foreign men and women both--but the women go crazy. "

"She keeps pretty cool for a crazy loon, that girl. If I owned her, I'd--"

Jowett interrupted impatiently. "You'd do what old man Druse does--you'dlet her be, Osterhaut. What's the good of havin' your own way with onethat's the apple of your eye, if it turns her agin you? You want her tokiss you on the high cheek-bone, but if you go to play the cat-o'-nine-tails round her, the high cheek-bone gets froze. Gol blast it, look ather, son! What are the wild waves saying? They're sayin', 'This is asurprise, Miss Druse. Not quite ready for ye, Miss Druse. ' My, ain'tshe got the luck of the old devil!"

It seemed so. More than once the canoe half jammed between the rocks, and the stern lifted up by the force of the wild current, but again thepaddle made swift play, and again the cockle-shell swung clear. But nowFleda Druse was no longer on her feet. She knelt, her strong, slim brownarms bared to the shoulder, her hair blown about her forehead, her daringeyes flashing to left and right, memory of her course at work under sucha strain as few can endure without chaos of mind in the end. A hundredtimes since the day she had run these Rapids with Tekewani, she had goneover the course in her mind, asleep and awake, forcing her brain to seeagain every yard of that watery way; because she knew that the day mustcome when she would make the journey alone. Why she would make it shedid not know; she only knew that she would do it some day; and the dayhad come. For long it had been an obsession with her--as though somespirit whispered in her ear--"Do you hear the bells ringing at Carillon?Do you hear the river singing towards Carillon? Do you see the wildbirds flying towards Carillon? Do you hear the Rapids calling--theRapids of Carillon?"

Night and day since she had braved death with Tekewani, giving him a gun, a meerschaum pipe, and ten pounds of beautiful brown "plug" tobacco as atoken of her gratitude--night and day she had heard this spirit murmuringin her ear, and always the refrain was, "Down the stream to Carillon!Shoot the Rapids of Carillon!"

Why? How should she know? Wherefore should she know? This was of thethings beyond the why of the human mind. Sometimes all our lives, if wekeep our souls young, and see the world as we first saw it with eyes andheart unsoiled, we hear the murmuring of the Other Self, that Self fromwhich we separated when we entered this mortal sphere, but which followedus, invisible yet whispering inspiration to us. But sometimes we onlyhear It, our own soul's oracle, while yet our years are few, and we havenot passed that frontier between innocence and experience, reality andpretence. Pretence it is which drives the Other Self away with wailingon its lips. Then we hear It cry in the night when, because of thetrouble of life, we cannot sleep; or at the play when we are caught awayfrom ourselves into another air than ours; when music pours around uslike a soft wind from a garden of pomegranates; or when a child asks aquestion which brings us back to the land where everything is so truethat it can be shouted from the tree-tops. 

Why was Fleda Druse tempting death in the Carillon Rapids?

She had heard a whisper as she wandered among the pine-trees there atManitou, and it said simply the one word, "Now!" She knew that she mustdo it; she had driven her canoe out into the resistless current to ridethe Rapids of Carillon. Her Other Self had whispered to her. 

Yonder, thousands of miles away in Syria, there were the Hills ofLebanon; and there was one phrase which made every Syrian heart beatfaster, if he were on the march. It was, "The Druses are up!" Whenthat wild tribe took to the saddle to war upon the Caravans and againstauthority, from Lebanon to Palmyra, from Jerusalem to Damascus men lookedanxiously about them and rode hard to refuge. 

And here also in the Far North where the River Sagalac ran a wild race toCarillon, leaving behind the new towns of Lebanon and Manitou, "theDruses were up. "

The daughter of Gabriel Druse, the giant, was riding the Rapids of theSagalac. The suspense to her and to those who watched her course--toTekewani and his braves, to Osterhaut and Jowett--could not be long. It was a matter of minutes only, in which every second was a miracleand might be a catastrophe. 

From rock to rock, from wild white water to wild white water she sped, now tossing to death as it seemed, now shooting on safely to the nexttest of skill and courage--on, on, till at last there was only onepassage to make before the canoe would plunge into the smooth waterrunning with great swiftness till it almost reached Carillon. 

Suddenly, as she neared the last dangerous point, round which she mustswing between jagged and unseen barriers of rock, her sight became for aninstant dimmed, as though a cloud passed over her eyes. She had neverfainted in her life, but it seemed to her now that she was hovering onunconsciousness. Commending the will and energy left, she fought theweakness down. It was as though she forced a way through tossing, buffeting shadows; as though she was shaking off from her shouldersshadowy hands which sought to detain her; as though smothering thingskept choking back her breath, and darkness like clouds of wool gatheredabout her face. She was fighting for her life, and for years it seemedto be; though indeed it was only seconds before her will reasserteditself, and light broke again upon her way. Even on the verge of thelast ambushed passage her senses came back; but they came with a starkrealization of the peril ahead: it looked out of her eyes as a face showsitself at the window of a burning building. 

Memory shook itself free. It pierced the tumult of waters, found theambushed rocks, and guided the lithe brown arms and hands, so that theswift paddle drove the canoe straight onward, as a fish drives itselfthrough a flume of dragon's teeth beneath the flood. The canoe quiveredfor an instant at the last cataract, then responding to Memory and Will, sped through the hidden chasm, tossed by spray and water, and swept intothe swift current of smooth water below. 

Fleda Druse had run the Rapids of Carillon. She could hear the bellsringing for evening service in the Catholic Church of Carillon, andbells-soft, booming bells-were ringing in her own brain. Like muffledsilver these brain-bells were, and she was as one who enters into a deepforest, and hears far away in the boscage the mystic summons of forestdeities. Voices from the banks of the river behind called to her--hilarious, approving, agitated voices of her Indian friends, and ofOsterhaut and Jowett, those wild spectators of her adventure: but theywere not wholly real. Only those soft, booming bells in her brain werereal. 

Shooting the Rapids of Carillon was the bridge by which she passed fromthe world she had left to this other. Her girlhood was ended--wondering, hovering, unrealizing girlhood. This adventure was the outward sign, therite in the Lodge of Life which passed her from one degree of being toanother. 

She was safe; but now as her canoe shot onward to the town of Carillon, her senses again grew faint. Again she felt the buffeting mist, againher face was muffled in smothering folds; again great hands reached outtowards her; again her eyes were drawn into a stupefying darkness; butnow there was no will to fight, no energy to resist. The paddle layinert in her fingers, her head drooped. She slowly raised her head once, twice, as though the call of the exhausted will was heard, but suddenlyit fell heavily upon her breast. For a moment so, and then as the canoeshot forward on a fresh current, the lithe body sank backwards in thecanoe, and lay face upward to the evening sky. 

The canoe sped on, but presently it swung round and lay athwart thecurrent, dipping and rolling. 

From the banks on either side, the Indians of the Manitou Reservation andthe two men from Lebanon called out and hastened on, for they saw thatthe girl had collapsed, and they knew only too well that her danger wasnot yet past. The canoe might strike against the piers of the bridge atCarillon and overturn, or it might be carried to the second cataractbelow the town. They were too far away to save her, but they keptshouting as they ran. 

None responded to their call, but that defiance of the last cataract ofthe Rapids of Carillon had been seen by one who, below an eddy on theLebanon side of the river, was steadily stringing upon maple-twigs blackbass and long-nosed pike. As he sat in the shade of the trees, he hadseen the plunge of the canoe into the chasm, and had held his breath inwonder and admiration. Even at that distance he knew who it was. He hadseen Fleda only a few times before, for she was little abroad; but whenhe had seen her he had asked himself what such a face and form were doingin the Far North. It belonged to Andalusia, to the Carpathians, toSyrian villages. 

"The pluck of the very devil!" he had exclaimed, as Fleda's canoe sweptinto the smooth current, free of the dragon's teeth; and as he hadsomething of the devil in himself, she seemed much nearer to him than thehundreds of yards of water intervening. Presently, however, he saw herdroop and sink away out of sight. 

For an instant he did not realize what had happened, and then, with angryself-reproach, he flung the oars into the rowlocks of his skiff and drovedown and athwart the stream with long, powerful strokes. 

"That's like a woman!" he said to himself as he bent to the oars, andnow and then turned his head to make sure that the canoe was still safe. "Do the trick better than a man, and then collapse like a rabbit. "

He was Max Ingolby, the financier, contractor, manager of greatinterests, disturber of the peace of slow minds, who had come to Lebanonwith the avowed object of amalgamating three railways, of making theplace the swivel of all the trade and interests of the Western North; butalso with the declared intention of uniting Lebanon and Manitou in onemunicipality, one centre of commercial and industrial power. 

Men said he had bitten off more than he could chew, but he had repliedthat his teeth were good, and he would masticate the meal or know thereason why. He was only thirty-three, but his will was like nothing theWest had seen as yet. It was sublime in its confidence, it was free fromconceit, and it knew not the word despair, though once or twice it hadknown defeat. 

Men cheered him from the shore as his skiff leaped through the water. "It's that blessed Ingolby, " said Jowett, who had tried to "do" thefinancier in a horsedeal, and had been done instead, and was now a devoutadmirer and adherent of the Master Man. "I saw him driving down therethis morning from Lebanon. He's been fishing at Seely's Eddy. "

"When Ingolby goes fishing, there's trouble goin' on somewhere and he'sstalkin' it, " rejoined Osterhaut. "But, by gol, he's goin' to do thistrump trick first; he's goin' to overhaul her before she gits to thebridge. Look at him swing! Hell, ain't it pretty! There you go, oldIngolby. You're right on it, even when you're fishing. "

On the other-the Manitou-shore Tekewani and his braves were lesstalkative, but they were more concerned in the incident than Osterhautand Jowett. They knew little or nothing of Ingolby the hustler, but theyknew more of Fleda Druse and her father than all the people of Lebanonand Manitou put together. Fleda had won old Tekewani's heart when shehad asked him to take her down the Rapids, for the days of adventure forhim and his tribe were over. The adventure shared with this girl hadbrought back to the chief the old days when Indian women tanned bearskinsand deerskins day in, day out, and made pemmican of the buffalo-meat;when the years were filled with hunting and war and migrant journeyingsto fresh game-grounds and pastures new. 

Danger faced was the one thing which could restore Tekewani's self-respect, after he had been checked and rebuked before his tribe by theIndian Commissioner for being drunk. Danger faced had restored it, andFleda Druse had brought the danger to him as a gift. 

If the canoe should crash against the piers of the bridge, if it shoulddrift to the cataract below, if anything should happen to this white girlwhom he worshipped in his heathen way, nothing could preserve his self-respect; he would pour ashes on his head and firewater down his throat. 

Suddenly he and his braves stood still. They watched as one would watchan enemy a hundred times stronger than one's self. The white man's skiffwas near the derelict canoe; the bridge was near also. Carillon nowlined the bank of the river with its people. They ran upon the bridge, but not so fast as to reach the place where, in the nick of time, Ingolbygot possession of the rolling canoe; where Fleda Druse lay waiting like aprincess to be waked by the kiss of destiny. 

Only five hundred yards below the bridge was the second cataract, and shewould never have waked if she had been carried into it. 

To Ingolby she was as beautiful as a human being could be as she lay withwhite face upturned, the paddle still in her hand. 

"Drowning isn't good enough for her, " he said, as he fastened her canoeto his skiff. 

"It's been a full day's work, " he added; and even in this human crisis hethought of the fish he had caught, of "the big trouble, " he had beenthinking out as Osterhaut had said, as well as of the girl that he wassaving. 

"I always have luck when I go fishing, " he added presently. "I can takeher back to Lebanon, " he continued with a quickening look. "She'll beall right in a jiffy. I've got room for her in my buggy--and room forher in any place that belongs to me, " he hastened to reflect with acurious, bashful smile. 

"It's like a thing in a book, " he murmured, as he neared the waitingpeople on the banks of Carillon, and the ringing of the vesper bells cameout to him on the evening air. 

"Is she dead?" some one whispered, as eager hands reached out to securehis skiff to the bank. 

"As dead as I am, " he answered with a laugh, and drew Fleda's canoe upalongside his skiff. 

He had a strange sensation of new life, as, with delicacy and gentleness, he lifted her up in his strong arms and stepped ashore. 

CHAPTER II

THE WHISPER FROM BEYOND

Ingolby had a will of his own, but it had never been really triedagainst a woman's will. It was, however, tried sorely when Fleda came toconsciousness again in his arms and realized that a man's face was nearerto hers than any man's had ever been except that of her own father. Hereyes opened slowly, and for the instant she did not understand, but whenshe did, the blood stole swiftly back to her neck and face and forehead, and she started in dismay. 

"Put me down, " she whispered faintly. 

"I'm taking you to my buggy, " he replied. "I'll drive you back toLebanon. " He spoke as calmly as he could, for there was a strangefluttering of his nerves, and the crowd was pressing him. 

"Put me down at once, " she said peremptorily. She trembled on her feet, and swayed, and would have fallen but that Ingolby and a woman in black, who had pushed her way through the crowd with white, anxious face, caughther. 

"Give her air, and stand back!" called the sharp voice of the constableof Carillon, and he heaved the people back with his powerful shoulders. 

A space was cleared round the place where Fleda sat with her headagainst the shoulder of the stately woman in black who had come to herassistance. A dipper of water was brought, and when she had drunk itshe raised her head slowly and her eyes sought those of Ingolby. 

"One cannot pay for such things, " she said to him, meeting his lookfirmly and steeling herself to thank him. Though deeply grateful, it wasa trial beyond telling to be obliged to owe the debt of a life to anyone, and in particular to a man of the sort to whom material gifts couldnot be given. 

"Such things are paid for just by accepting them, " he answered quickly, trying to feel that he had never held her in his arms, as she evidentlydesired him to feel. He had intuition, if not enough of it, for theregions where the mind of Fleda Druse dwelt. 

"I couldn't very well decline, could I?" she rejoined, quick humourshooting into her eyes. "I was helpless. I never fainted before in mylife. "

"I am sure you will never faint again, " he remarked. "We only do suchthings when we are very young. "

She was about to reply, but paused reflectively. Her half-opened lipsdid not frame the words she had been impelled to speak. 

Admiration was alive in his eyes. He had never seen this type ofwomanhood before--such energy and grace, so amply yet so lithely framed;such darkness and fairness in one living composition; such individuality, yet such intimate simplicity. Her hair was a very light brown, sweepingover a broad, low forehead, and lying, as though with a sense of modesty, on the tips of the ears, veiling them slightly. The forehead was classicin its intellectual fulness; but the skin was so fresh, even when pale asnow, and with such an underglow of vitality, that the woman in her, sexand the possibilities of sex, cast a glamour over the intellect andtemperament showing in every line of her contour. In contrast to thelight brown of the hair was the very dark brown of the eyes and the stilldarker brown of the eyelashes. The face shone, the eyes burned, and thepiquancy of the contrast between the soft illuminating whiteness of theskin and the flame in the eyes had fascinated many more than Ingolby. 

Her figure was straight yet supple, somewhat fuller than is modernbeauty, with hints of Juno-like stateliness to come; and the curves ofher bust, the long lines of her limbs, were not obscured by herabsolutely plain gown of soft, light-brown linen. She was tall, but nottoo commanding, and, as her hand was raised to fasten back a wisp ofhair, there was the motion of as small a wrist and as tapering a bare armas ever made prisoner of a man's neck. 

Impulse was written in every feature, in the passionate eagerness ofher body; yet the line from the forehead to the chin, and the firmshapeliness of the chin itself, gave promise of great strength of will. From the glory of the crown of hair to the curve of the high instep of aslim foot it was altogether a personality which hinted at history--attragedy, maybe. 

"She'll have a history, " Madame Bulteel, who now stood beside the girl, herself a figure out of a picture by Velasquez, had said of her sadly;for she saw in Fleda's rare qualities, in her strange beauty, happeningswhich had nothing to do with the life she was living. So this duenna ofGabriel Druse's household, this aristocratic, silent woman was ever onthe watch for some sudden revelation of a being which had not founditself, and which must find itself through perils and convulsions. 

That was why, to-day, she had hesitated to leave Fleda alone and come toCarillon, to be at the bedside of a dying, friendless woman whom bychance she had come to know. In the street she had heard of what washappening on the river, and had come in time to receive Fleda from thearms of her rescuer. 

"How did you get here?" Fleda asked her. 

"How am I always with you when I am needed, truant?" said the other witha reproachful look. "Did you fly? You are so light, so thin, you couldbreathe yourself here, " rejoined the girl, with a gentle, quizzicalsmile. "But, no, " she added, "I remember, you were to be here atCarillon. "

"Are you able to walk now?" asked Madame Bulteel. 

"To Manitou--but of course, " Fleda answered almost sharply. 

After the first few minutes the crowd had fallen back. They watched herwith respectful admiration from a decent distance. They had the chivalrytowards woman so characteristic of the West. There was no vulgarity intheir curiosity, though most of them had never seen her before. All, however, had heard of her and her father, the giant greybeard who movedand lived in an air of mystery, and apparently secret wealth, for morethan once he had given large sums--large in the eyes of folks of moderatemeans, when charity was needed; as in the case of the floods the yearbefore, and in the prairie-fire the year before that, when so many peoplewere made homeless, and also when fifty men had been injured in onerailway accident. On these occasions he gave disproportionately to hismode of life. 

Now, when they saw that Fleda was about to move away, they drew just alittle nearer, and presently one of the crowd could contain hisadmiration no longer. He raised a cheer. 

"Three cheers for Her, " he shouted, and loud hurrahs followed. 

"Three cheers for Ingolby, " another cried, and the noise was boisterousbut not so general. 

"Who shot Carillon Rapids?" another called in the formula of the West. 

"She shot the Rapids, " was the choral reply. "Who is she?" came theantiphon. 

"Druse is her name, " was the gay response. "What did she do?"

"She shot Carillon Rapids--shot 'em dead. Hooray!"

In the middle of the cheering, Osterhaut and Jowett arrived in a wagonwhich they had commandeered, and, about the same time, from across thebridge, came running Tekewani and his braves. 

"She done it like a kingfisher, " cried Osterhaut. "Manitou's got thebelt. "

Fleda Druse's friendly eyes were given only for one instant to Osterhautand his friend. Her gaze became fixed on Tekewani who, silent, and withimmobile face, stole towards her. In spite of the civilization whichcontrolled him, he wore Indian moccasins and deerskin breeches, thoughhis coat was rather like a shortened workman's blouse. He did not belongto the life about him; he was a being apart, the spirit of vanished andvanishing days. 

"Tekewani--ah, Tekewani, you have come, " the girl said, and her eyessmiled at him as they had not smiled at Ingolby or even at the woman inblack beside her. 

"How!" the chief replied, and looked at her with searching, worshippingeyes. 

"Don't look at me that way, Tekewani, " she said, coming close to him. "I had to do it, and I did it. "

"The teeth of rock everywhere!" he rejoined reproachfully, with agesture of awe. 

"I remembered all--all. You were my master, Tekewani. "

"But only once with me it was, Summer Song, " he persisted. Summer Songwas his name for her. 

"I saw it--saw it, every foot of the way, " she insisted. "I thoughthard, oh, hard as the soul thinks. And I saw it all. " There wassomething singularly akin in the nature of the girl and the Indian. Shespoke to him as she never spoke to any other. 

"Too much seeing, it is death, " he answered. "Men die with too muchseeing. I have seen them die. To look hard through deerskin curtains, to see through the rock, to behold the water beneath the earth, and therocks beneath the black waters, it is for man to see if he has a soul, but the seeing--behold, so those die who should live!"

"I live, Tekewani, though I saw the teeth of rocks beneath the blackwater, " she urged gently. 

"Yet the half-death came--"

"I fainted, but I was not to die--it was not my time. "

He shook his head gloomily. "Once it may be, but the evil spirits temptus to death. It matters not what comes to Tekewani; he is as the leafthat falls from the stem; but for Summer Song that has far to go, it isthe madness from beyond the Hills of Life. "

She took his hand. "I will not do it again, Tekewani. "

"How!" he said, with hand upraised, as one who greets the great in thisworld. 

"I don't know why I did it, " she added meaningly. "It was selfish. Ifeel that now. "

The woman in black pressed her hand timidly. 

"It is so for ever with the great, " Tekewani answered. "It comes, also, from beyond the Hills--the will to do it. It is the spirit that whispersover the earth out of the Other Earth. No one hears it but the great. The whisper only is for this one here and that one there who is of theFew. It whispers, and the whisper must be obeyed. So it was from thebeginning. "

"Yes, you understand, Tekewani, " she answered softly. "I did it becausesomething whispered from the Other Earth to me. "

Her head drooped a little, her eyes had a sudden shadow. 

"He will understand, " answered the Indian; "your father will understand, "as though reading her thoughts. He had clearly read her thought, thisdispossessed, illiterate Indian chieftain. Yet, was he so illiterate?Had he not read in books which so few have learned to read? His life hadbeen broken on the rock of civilization, but his simple soul had learnedsome elemental truths--not many, but the essential ones, without whichthere is no philosophy, no understanding. He knew Fleda Druse wasthinking of her father, wondering if he would understand, half-fearing, hardly hoping, dreading the moment when she must meet him face to face. She knew she had been selfish, but would Gabriel Druse understand? Sheraised her eyes in gratitude to the Blackfeet chief. 

"I must go home, " she said. 

She turned to go, but as she did so, a man came swaggering down thestreet, broke through the crowd, and made towards her with an arm raised, a hand waving, and a leer on his face. He was a thin, rather handsome, dissolute-looking fellow of middle height and about forty, in dandifieddress. His glossy black hair fell carelessly over his smooth foreheadfrom under a soft, wide-awake hat. 

"Manitou for ever!" he cried, with a flourish of his hand. "I salutethe brave. I escort the brave to the gates of Manitou. I escort thebrave. I escort the brave. Salut! Salut! Salut! Well done, BeautyBeauty--Beauty--Beauty, well done again!"

He held out his hand to Fleda, but she drew back with disgust. FelixMarchand, the son of old Hector Marchand, money-lender and capitalist ofManitou, had pressed his attentions upon her during the last year sincehe had returned from the East, bringing dissoluteness and vulgar pridewith him. Women had spoiled him, money had corrupted and degraded him. 

"Come, beautiful brave, it's Salut! Salut! Salut!" he said, bendingtowards her familiarly. 

Her face flushed with anger. 

"Let me pass, monsieur, " she said sharply. 

"Pride of Manitou--" he apostrophized, but got no farther. 

Ingolby caught him by the shoulders, wheeled him round, and then flunghim at the feet of Tekewani and his braves. 

At this moment Tekewani's eyes had such a fire as might burn in Wotan'ssmithy. He was ready enough to defy the penalty of the law forassaulting a white man, but Felix Marchand was in the dust, and thatwould do for the moment. 

With grim face Ingolby stood over the begrimed figure. "There's theriver if you want more, " he said. "Tekewani knows where the water'sdeepest. " Then he turned and followed Fleda and the woman in black. Felix Marchand's face was twisted with hate as he got slowly to his feet. 

"You'll eat dust before I'm done, " he called after Ingolby. Then, amidthe jeers of the crowd, he went back to the tavern where he had beencarousing. 

CHAPTER III

CONCERNING INGOLBY AND THE TWO TOWNS

A word about Max Ingolby. 

He was the second son of four sons, with a father who had been a failure;but with a mother of imagination and great natural strength of brain, yetwhose life had been so harried in bringing up a family on nothing at all, that there only emerged from her possibilities a great will to do theimpossible things. From her had come the spirit which would not bedenied. 

In his boyhood Max could not have those things which lads prize--fishing-rods, cricket-bats and sleds, and all such things; but he could take mostprizes at school open to competition; he could win in the running-jump, the high-jump, and the five hundred yards' race; and he could organize apicnic, or the sports of the school or town--at no cost to himself. Hisfinance in even this limited field had been brilliant. Other peoplepaid, and he did the work; and he did it with such ease that the othersintriguing to crowd him out, suffered failure and came to him in the endto put things right. 

He became the village doctor's assistant and dispenser at seventeen andinduced his master to start a drug-store. He made the drug-store asuccess within two years, and meanwhile he studied Latin and Greekand mathematics in every spare hour he had--getting up at five in themorning, and doing as much before breakfast as others did in a whole day. His doctor loved him and helped him; a venerable Archdeacon, an Oxfordgraduate, gave him many hours of coaching, and he went to the Universitywith three scholarships. These were sufficient to carry him through inthree years, and there was enough profit-sharing from the drug-businesshe had founded on terms to shelter his mother and his younger brothers, while he took honours at the University. 

There he organized all that students organize, and was called in at lastby the Bursar of his college to reorganize the commissariat, which he didwith such success that the college saved five thousand dollars a year. He had genius, the college people said, and after he had taken his degreewith honours in classics and mathematics they offered him a professorshipat two thousand dollars a year. 

He laughed ironically, but yet with satisfaction, when the professorshipwas offered. It was all so different from what was in his mind for thefuture. As he looked out of the oriel window in the sweet gothicbuilding, to the green grass and the maples and elms which made thecollege grounds like an old-world park, he had a vision of himselfpermanently in these surroundings of refinement growing venerable withyears, seeing pass under his influence thousands of young men directed, developed and inspired by him. 

He had, however, shaken himself free of this modest vision. He knew thatsuch a life would act like a narcotic to his real individuality. Hethirsted for contest, for the control of brain and will; he wanted toconstruct; he was filled with the idea of simplifying things, ofeconomizing strength; he saw how futile was much competition, and how thebig brain could command and control with ease, wasting no force, savinglabour, making the things controlled bigger and better. 

So it came that his face was seen no more in the oriel window. With amere handful of dollars, and some debts, he left the world of scholarshipand superior pedagogy, and went where the head offices of railways were. Railways were the symbol of progress in his mind. The railhead was theadvance post of civilization. It was like Cortez and his Conquistadoresoverhauling and appropriating the treasures of long generations. Sowhere should he go if not to the Railway?

His first act, when he got to his feet inside the offices of thePresident of a big railway, was to show the great man how two "outside"proposed lines could be made one, and then further merged into thecompany controlled by the millionaire in whose office he sat. He got hischance by his very audacity--the President liked audacity. In attemptingthis merger, however, he had his first failure, but he showed that hecould think for himself, and he was made increasingly responsible. Aftera few years of notable service, he was offered the task of building abranch line of railway from Lebanon and Manitou north, and northwest, andon to the Coast; and he had accepted it, at the same time planning tomerge certain outside lines competing with that which he had in hand. For over four years he worked night and day, steadily advancing towardshis goal, breaking down opposition, manoeuvring, conciliating, fighting. 

Most men loved his whimsical turn of mind, even those who were the agentsof the financial clique which had fought him in their efforts to getcontrol of the commercial, industrial, transport and banking resources ofthe junction city of Lebanon. In the days when vast markets would beestablished for Canadian wheat in Shanghai and Tokio, then these twotowns of Manitou and Lebanon on the Sagalac would be like the swivel tothe organization of trade of a continent. 

Ingolby had worked with this end in view. In doing so he had tried toget what he wanted without trickery; to reach his goal by playing thegame according to the rules, and this policy nonplussed his rivals andassociates. They expected secret moves, and he laid his cards on thetable. Sharp, quick, resolute and ruthless he was, however, if he knewthat he was being tricked. Then he struck, and struck hard. The war ofbusiness was war and not "gollyfoxing, " as he said. Selfish, stubbornand self-centred he was in much, but he had great joy in the natural andsincere, and he had a passionate love of Nature. To him the flat prairiewas never ugly. Its very monotony had its own individuality. TheSagalac, even when muddy, had its own deep interest, and when it was fullof logs drifting down to the sawmills, for which he had found the moneyby interesting capitalists in the East, he sniffed the stinging smell ofthe pines with elation. As the great saws in the mills, for which he hadsecured the capital, throwing off the spray of mangled wood, hummed andbuzzed and sang, his mouth twisted in the droll smile it always wore whenhe talked with such as Jowett and Osterhaut, whose idiosyncrasies werelike a meal to him; as he described it once to some of the big men fromthe East who had been behind his schemes, yet who cavilled at his ways. He was never diverted from his course by such men, and while he was loyalto those who had backed him, he vowed that he would be independent ofthese wooden souls in the end. They and the great bankers behind themwere for monopoly; he was for organization and for economic prudence. Sofar they were necessary to all he did; but it was his intention to shakehimself free of all monopoly in good time. One or two of his colleaguessaw the drift of his policy and would have thrown him over if they couldhave replaced him by a man as capable, who would, at the time, consent togrow rich on their terms. 

They could not understand a man who would stand for a half-hour watchinga sunset, or a morning sky dappled with all the colours that shake from aprism; they were suspicious of a business-mind which could gloat over thelight falling on snow-peaked mountains, while it planned a great bridgeacross a gorge in the same hour; of a man who would quote a verse ofpoetry while a flock of wild pigeons went whirring down a pine-girtvalley in the shimmer of the sun. 

On the occasion when he had quoted a verse of poetry to them, one of themsaid to him with a sidelong glance: "You seem to be dead-struck onNature, Ingolby. "

To that, with a sly quirk of the mouth, and meaning to mystify hiswooden-headed questioner still more, he answered: "Dead-struck? Dead-drunk, you mean. I'm a Nature's dipsomaniac--as you can see, " he addedwith a sly note of irony. 

Then instantly he had drawn the little circle of experts into adiscussion upon technical questions of railway-building and finance, which made demands upon all their resources and knowledge. In thatconference he gave especial attention to the snub-souled financier whohad sneered at his love of Nature. He tied his critic up in knots ofself-assertion and bad logic which presently he deftly, deliberately andskilfully untied, to the delight of all the group. 

"He's got as much in his ten years in the business as we've got outof half a life-time, " said the chief of his admirers. This was thePresident who had first welcomed him into business, and introduced him tohis colleagues in enterprise. 

"I shouldn't be surprised if the belt flew off the wheel some day, "savagely said Ingolby's snub-souled critic, whose enmity was held incheck by the fact that on Ingolby, for the moment, depended the safetyof the hard cash he had invested. 

But the qualities which alienated an expert here and there caught theimagination of the pioneer spirits of Lebanon. Except those who, forfinancial reasons, were opposed to him, and must therefore pit themselvesagainst him, as the representatives of bigger forces behind them, he wasa leader of whom Lebanon was combatively proud. At last he came to thepoint where his merger was practically accomplished, and a problemarising out of it had to be solved. It was a problem which taxed everyquality of an able mind. The situation had at last become acute, andTime, the solvent of most complications, had not quite eased the strain. Indeed, on the day that Fleda Druse had made her journey down theCarillon Rapids, Time's influence had not availed. So he had gonefishing, with millions at stake--to the despair of those who were riskingall on his skill and judgment. 

But that was Ingolby. Thinking was the essence of his business, notTime. As fishing was the friend of thinking, therefore he fished inSeely's Eddy, saw Fleda Druse run the Carillon Rapids, saved her fromdrowning, and would have brought her in pride and peace to her own home, but that she decreed otherwise. 

CHAPTER IV

THE COMING OF JETHRO FAWE

Gabriel Druse's house stood on a little knoll on the outskirts of thetown of Manitou, backed by a grove of pines. Its front windows faced theSagalac, and the windows behind looked into cool coverts where in olddays many Indian tribes had camped; where Hudson's Bay Company's men hadpitched their tents to buy the red man's furs. But the red man no longerset up his tepee in these secluded groves; the wapiti and red deer hadfled to the north never to return, the snarling wolf had stolen intoregions more barren; the ceremonial of the ancient people no longer madeweird the lonely nights; the medicine-man's incantations, the harvest-dance, the green-corn-dance, the sun-dance had gone. The braves, theirwomen, and their tepees had been shifted to reservations whereGovernments solemnly tried to teach them to till the field, and growcorn, and drive the cart to market; while yet they remembered the herdsof buffalo which had pounded down the prairie like storm-clouds and giventheir hides for the tepee; and the swift deer whose skins made the wigwamluxurious. 

Originally Manitou had been the home of Icelanders, Mennonites, andDoukhobors; settlers from lands where the conditions of earlier centuriesprevailed, who, simple as they were in habits and in life, wereignorant, primitive, coarse, and none too cleanly. 

They had formed an unprogressive polyglot settlement, and the placeassumed a still more primeval character when the Indian Reservation wasformed near by. When French Canadian settlers arrived, however, theplace became less discordant to the life of a new democracy, though theydid little to make it modern in the sense that Lebanon, across the river, where Ingolby lived, was modern from the day the first shack was thrownup. 

Manitou showed itself antagonistic to progress; it was old-fashioned, andprimitively agricultural. It looked with suspicion on the factoriesbuilt after Ingolby came and on the mining propositions, which circledthe place with speculation. Unlike other towns of the West, it wasinsanitary and uneducated; it was also given to nepotism and a primitivekind of jobbery; but, on the whole, it was honest. It was a settlementtwenty years before Lebanon had a house, though the latter exceeded thepopulation of Manitou in five years, and became the home of alladventuring spirits--land agents, company promoters, mining prospectors, railway men, politicians, saloon keepers, and up to-date dissentingpreachers. Manitou was, however, full of back-water people, religiousfanatics, little farmers, guides, trappers, old coureurs-de-bois, Hudson's Bay Company factors and ex-factors, half-breeds; and all therest. 

The real feud between the two towns began about the time of the arrivalof Gabriel Druse, his daughter, and Madame Bulteel, the woman in black, and it had grown with great rapidity and increasing intensity. Manitoucondemned the sacrilegiousness of the Protestants, whose meeting-houseswere used for "socials, " "tea-meetings, " "strawberry festivals, " andentertainments of many kinds; while comic songs were sung at the tablewhere the solemn Love Feast was held at the quarterly meetings. At lastwhen attempts were made to elect to Parliament an Irish lawyer who addedto his impecuniousness, eloquence, a half-finished University education, and an Orangeman's prejudices of the best brand of Belfast or Derry, inter-civic strife took the form of physical violence. The great bridgebuilt by Ingolby between the two towns might have been ten thousand yardslong, so deep was the estrangement between the two places. They had onlyone thing in common--a curious compromise--in the person of NathanRockwell, an agnostic doctor, who had arrived in Lebanon with areputation for morality somewhat clouded; though, where his patients inManitou and Lebanon were concerned, he had been the "pink of propriety. "

Rockwell had arrived in Lebanon early in its career, and had remainedunimportant until a railway accident occurred at Manitou and the residentdoctors were driven from the field of battle, one by death, and one byillness. Then it was that the silent, smiling, dark-skinned, cool-headedand cool-handed Rockwell stepped in, and won for himself the gratitude ofall--from Monseigneur Lourde, the beloved Catholic priest, to Tekewani, the chief. This accident was followed by an epidemic. 

That was at the time, also, when Fleda Druse returned from Winnipeg whereshe had been at school for one memorable and terrible six months, piningfor her father, defying rules, and crying the night through for "the openworld, " as she called it. So it was that, to her father's dismay and joyin one, she had fled from school, leaving all her things behind her; andhad reached home with only the clothes on her back and a few cents in herpocket. 

Instantly on her return she had gone among the stricken people asfearlessly as Rockwell had done, but chiefly among the women andchildren; and it was said that the herbal medicine she administered wasmarvellous in its effect--so much so that Rockwell asked for theprescription, which she declined to give. 

Thus it was that the French Canadian mothers with daughters of their own, bright-eyed brunettes, ready for the man-market, regarded with tolerationthe girl who took their children away for picnics down the river or intothe woods, and brought them back safe and sound at the end of the day. Not that they failed to be shocked sometimes, when, on her wild Indianpony, Fleda swept through Manitou like a wind and out into the prairie, riding, as it were, to the end of the world. Try as they would, thesegrateful mothers of Manitou, they could not get as near to Fleda Druse astheir children did, and they were vast distances from her father. 

"There, there, look at him, " said old Madame Thibadeau to her neighbourChristine Brisson--"look at him with his great grey-beard, and his eyeslike black fires, and that head of hair like a bundle of burnt flax! Hecomes from the place no man ever saw, that's sure. "

"Ah, surelee, men don't grow so tall in any Christian country, " announcedChristine Brisson, her head nodding sagely. "I've seen the pictures inthe books, and there's nobody so tall and that looks like him--notanywhere since Adam. "

"Nom de pipe, sometimes-trulee, sometimes, I look up there at where helives, and I think I see a thousand men on horses ride out of the woodsbehind his house and down here to gobble us all up. That's the way Ifeel. It's fancy, but I can't help that. " Dame Thibadeau rested herhands--on her huge stomach as though the idea had its origin there. 

"I've seen a lot of fancies come to pass, " gloomily returned her friend. "It's a funny world. I don't know what to make of its sometimes. "

"And that girl of his, the strangest creature, as proud as a peacock, butthen as kind as kind to the children--of a good heart, surelee. They sayshe has plenty of gold rings and pearls and bracelets, and all like that. Babette Courton, she saw them when she went to sew. Why doesn'tMa'm'selle wear them?"

Christine looked wise and smoothed out her apron as though it was aparchment. "With such queer ones, who knows? But, yes, as you say, shehas a kind heart. The children, well, they follow her everywhere. "

"Not the children only, " sagely added the other. "From Lebanon theycome, the men, and plenty here, too; and there's that Felix Marchand, theworst of all in Manitou or anywhere. "

"I'd look sharp if Felix Marchand followed me, " remarked Christine. "There are more papooses at the Reservation since he come back, and overin Lebanon--!" She whispered darkly to her friend, and they noddedknowingly. 

"If he plays pranks in Manitou he'll get his throat cut, for sure. Evenwith Protes'ants and Injuns it's bad enough, " remarked Dame Thibadeau, panting with the thought of it. 

"He doesn't even leave the Doukhobors alone. There's--" Again Christinewhispered, and again that ugly look came to their faces which belongs tothe thought of forbidden things. 

"Felix Marchand'll have much money--bad penny as he is, " continuedChristine in her normal voice. "He'll have more money than he can put inall the trouser legs he has. Old Hector, his father, has enough for agover'ment. But that M'sieu' Felix will get his throat cut if he followsMa'm'selle Druse about too much. She hates him--I've seen when they met. Old man Druse'll make trouble. He don't look as he does for nothing. "

"Ah, that's so. One day, we shall see what we shall see, " murmuredChristine, and waved a hand to a friend in the street. 

This conversation happened on the evening of the day that Fleda Druseshot the Carillon Rapids alone. An hour after the two gossips had hadtheir say Gabriel Druse paced up and down the veranda of his house, stopping now and then to view the tumbling, hurrying Sagalac, or to dwellupon the sunset which crimsoned and bronzed the western sky. His walkhad an air of impatience; he seemed disturbed of mind and restless ofbody. 

He gave an impression of great force. He would have been picked out of amultitude, not alone because of his remarkable height, but because he hadan air of command and the aloofness which shows a man sufficient untohimself. 

As he stood gazing reflectively into the sunset, a strange, plaintive, birdlike note pierced the still evening air. His head lifted quickly, yet he did not look in the direction of the sound, which came from thewoods behind the house. He did not stir, and his eyes half-closed, asthough he hesitated what to do. The call was not that of a bird familiarto the Western world. It had a melancholy softness like that of thebell-bird of the Australian bush. Yet, in the insistence of the note, itwas, too, a challenge or a summons. 

Three times during the past week he had heard it--once as he went by themarket-place of Manitou; once as he returned in the dusk from Tekewani'sReservation, and once at dawn from the woods behind the house. Hispresent restlessness and suppressed agitation had been the result. 

It was a call he knew well. It was like a voice from a dead world. Itasked, he knew, for an answering call, yet he had not given it. It wasseven days since he first heard it in the market-place, and in that sevendays he had realized that nothing in this world which has ever been, really ceases to be. Presently, the call was repeated. On the threeformer occasions there had been no repetition. The call had trembled inthe air but once and had died away into unbroken silence. Now, however, it rang out with an added poignancy. It was like a bird calling to itsvanished mate. 

With sudden resolution Druse turned. Leaving the veranda, he walkedslowly behind the house into the woods and stood still under the branchesof a great cedar. Raising his head, a strange, solemn note came from hislips; but the voice died away in a sharp broken sound which was morehuman than birdlike, which had the shrill insistence of authority. Thecall to him had been almost ventriloquial in its nature. His lips hadnot moved at all. 

There was silence for a moment after he had called into the void, as itwere, and then there appeared suddenly from behind a clump of juniper, ayoung man of dark face and upright bearing. He made a slow obeisancewith a gesture suggestive of the Oriental world, yet not like the usualgesture of the East Indian, the Turk or the Persian; it was composite ofall. 

He could not have been more than twenty-five years of age. He was sosparely made, and his face being clean-shaven, he looked even younger. His clothes were the clothes of the Western man; and yet there was amanner of wearing them, there were touches which were evidence to thewatchful observer that he was of other spheres. His wide, felt, Westernhat had a droop on one side and a broken treatment of the crown, which ofitself was enough to show him a stranger to the prairie, while his brownvelveteen jacket, held by its two lowest buttons, was reminiscent of anun-English life. His eyes alone would have announced him as of someforeign race, though he was like none of the foreigners who had been thepioneers of Manitou. Unlike as he and Gabriel Druse were in height, build, and movement, still there was something akin in them both. 

After a short silence evidently disconcerting to him, "Blessing and hail, my Ry, " he said in a low tone. He spoke in a strange language and with avoice rougher than his looks would have suggested. 

The old man made a haughty gesture of impatience. "What do you want withme, my Romany 'chal'?" he asked sharply. --[A glossary of Romany wordswill be found at the end of the book. ]

The young man replied hastily. He seemed to speak by rote. His mannerwas too eager to suit the impressiveness of his words. "The sheep arewithout a shepherd, " he said. "The young men marry among the Gorgios, orthey are lost in the cities and return no more to the tents and thefields and the road. There is disorder in all the world among theRomanys. The ancient ways are forgotten. Our people gather and settleupon the land and live as the Gorgios live. They forget the way beneaththe trees, they lose their skill in horses. If the fountain is choked, how shall the water run?"

A cold sneer came to the face of Gabriel Druse. "The way beneath thetrees!" he growled. "The way of the open road is enough. The waybeneath the trees is the way of the thief, and the skill of the horse isthe skill to cheat. "

"There is no other way. It has been the way of the Romany since the timeof Timur Beg and centuries beyond Timur, so it is told. One man and allmen must do as the tribe has done since the beginning. "

The old man pulled at his beard angrily. "You do not talk like a Romany, but like a Gorgio of the schools. "

The young man's manner became more confident as he replied. "Thinking onwhat was to come to me, I read in the books as the Gorgio reads. I satin my tent and worked with a pen; I saw in the printed sheets what theworld was doing every day. This I did because of what was to come. "

"And have you read of me in the printed sheets? Did they tell you whereI was to be found?" Gabriel Druse's eyes were angry, his manner wasauthoritative. 

The young man stretched out his hands eloquently. "Hail and blessing, myRy, was there need of printed pages to tell me that? Is not everythingknown of the Ry to the Romany people without the written or printedthing? How does the wind go? How does the star sweep across the sky?Does not the whisper pass as the lightning flashes? Have you forgottenall, my Ry? Is there a Romany camp at Scutari? Shall it not know whatis the news of the Bailies of Scotland and the Caravans by the Tagus? Itis known always where my lord is. All the Romanys everywhere know it, and many hundreds have come hither from overseas. They are east, theyare south, they are west. "

He made gesture towards these three points of the compass. A dark frowncame upon the old man's forehead. "I ordered that none should seek tofollow, that I be left in peace till my pilgrimage was done. Even as thefirst pilgrims of our people in the days of Timur Beg in India, so I havecome forth from among you all till the time be fulfilled. "

There was a crafty look in the old man's eyes as he spoke, and ages ofdubious reasoning and purpose showed in their velvet depths. 

"No one has sought me but you in all these years, " he continued. "Whoare you that you should come? I did not call, and there was my commandthat none should call to me. "

A bolder look grew in the other's face. His carriage gained in ease. "There is trouble everywhere--in Italy, in Spain, in France, in England, in Russia, in mother India"--he made a gesture of salutation and bowedlow--"and our rites and mysteries are like water spilt upon the ground. If the hand be cut off, how shall the body move? That is how it is. Youare vanished, my lord, and the body dies. "

The old man plucked his beard again fiercely and his words came withguttural force. "That is fool's talk. In the past I was nevereverywhere at once. When I was in Russia, I was not in Greece; when Iwas in England, I was not in Portugal. I was always 'vanished' from oneplace to another, yet the body lived. "

"But your word was passed along the roads everywhere, my Ry. Your tonguewas not still from sunrise to the end of the day. Your call was heardalways, now here, now there, and the Romanys were one; they heldtogether. "

The old man's face darkened still more and his eyes flashed fire. "Theseare lies you are telling, and they will choke you, my Romany 'chal'. AmI deceived, I who have known more liars than any man under the sky? Am Ito be fooled, who have seen so many fools in their folly? There isroguery in you, or I have never seen roguery. "

"I am a true Romany, my Ry, " the other answered with an air of courageand a little defiance also. 

"You are a rogue and a liar, that is sure. These wailings are your own. The Romany goes on his way as he has gone these hundreds of years. If Iam silent, my people will wait until I speak again; if they see me notthey will wait till I enter their camps once more. Why are you here?Speak, rogue and liar. " The wrathful old man, sure in his reading of theyouth, towered above him commandingly. It almost seemed as though hewould do him bodily harm, so threatening was his attitude, but the youngRomany raised his head, and with a note of triumph said:

"I have come for my own, as it is my right. "

"What is your own?"

"What has been yours until now, my Ry. "

A grey look stole slowly up the strong face of the exiled leader, for hismind suddenly read the truth behind the young man's confident words. 

"What is mine is always mine, " he answered roughly. "Speak! What is itI have that you come for?"

The young man braced himself and put a hand upon his lips. "I come foryour daughter, my Ry. " The old man suddenly regained his composure, andauthority spoke in his bearing and his words. "What have you to do withmy daughter?"

"She was married to me when I was seven years of age, as my Ry knows. I am the son of Lemuel Fawe--Jethro Fawe is my name. For three thousandpounds it was so arranged. On his death-bed three thousand pounds didmy father give to you for this betrothal. I was but a child, yet Iremembered, and my kinsmen remembered, for it is their honour also. I amthe son of Lemuel Fawe, the husband of Fleda, daughter of Gabriel Druse, King and Duke and Earl of all the Romanys; and I come for my own. "

Something very like a sigh of relief came from Gabriel Druse's lips, butthe anger in his face did not pass, and a rigid pride made the distancebetween them endless. He looked like a patriarch giving judgment as heraised his hand and pointed with a menacing finger at Jethro Fawe, hisRomany subject--and, according to the laws of the Romany tribes, his son-in-law. It did not matter that the girl--but three years of age when ithappened--had no memory of the day when the chiefs and great peopleassembled outside the tent of Lemuel Fawe when he lay dying, and, by thesimple act of stepping over a branch of hazel, the two children weremarried: if Romany law and custom were to abide, then the two now wereman and wife. Did not Lemuel Fawe, the old-time rival of Gabriel Drusefor the kinship of the Romanys, the claimant whose family had been rulersof the Romanys for generations before the Druses gained ascendancy--didnot Fawe, dying, seek to secure for his son by marriage what he hadfailed to get for himself by other means?

All these things had at one time been part of Gabriel Druse's covenant oflife, until one year in England, when Fleda, at twelve years of age, wastaken ill and would have died, but that a great lady descended upon theircamp, took the girl to her own house, and there nursed and tended her, giving her the best medical aid the world could produce, so that the girllived, and with her passionate nature loved the Lady Barrowdale as shemight have loved her own mother, had that mother lived and she had everknown her. And when the Lady Barrowdale sickened and died of the samesickness which had nearly been her own death, the promise she made thenoverrode all other covenants made for her. She had promised the greatlady who had given her own widowed, childless life for her own, that shewould not remain a Gipsy, that she would not marry a Gipsy, but that ifever she gave herself to any man it would be to a Gorgio, a European, whotravelled oftenest "the open road" leading to his own door. The yearswhich had passed since those tragic days in Gloucestershire had seen theshadows of that dark episode pass, but the pledge had remained; andGabriel Druse had kept his word to the dead, because of the vow made tothe woman who had given her life for the life of a Romany lass. 

The Romany tribes of all the nations did not know why their Ry had hiddenhimself in the New World; they did not know that the girl had for everforsworn their race, and would never become head of all the Romanys, solving the problem of the rival dynasties by linking her life with thatof Jethro Fawe. But Jethro Fawe had come to claim his own. 

Now Gabriel Druse's eyes followed his own menacing finger with sharpinsistence. In the past such a look had been in his eyes when he hadsentenced men to death. They had not died by the gallows or the sword orthe bullet, but they had died as commanded, and none had questioned hisdecree. None asked where or how the thing was done when a fire sprang upin a field, or a quarry, or on a lonely heath or hill-top, and on thepyre were all the belongings of the condemned, being resolved into dustas their owner had been made earth again. 

"Son of Lemuel Fawe, " the old man said, his voice rough with authority, "but that you are of the Blood, you should die now for this disobedience. When the time is fulfilled, I will return. Until then, my daughter and Iare as those who have no people. Begone! Nothing that is here belongsto you. Begone, and come no more!"

"I have come for my own--for my Romany 'chi', and I will not go withouther. I am blood of the Blood, and she is mine. "

"You have not seen her, " said the old man craftily, and fighting hardagainst the wrath consuming him, though he liked the young man's spirit. "She has changed. She is no longer Romany. "

"I have seen her, and her beauty is like the rose and the palm. "

"When have you seen her since the day before the tent of Lemuel Fawe nowseventeen years ago?" There was an uneasy note in the commanding tone. 

"I have seen her three times of late, and the last time I saw her was anhour or so since, when she rode the Rapids of Carillon. "

The old man started, his lips parted, but for a moment he did not speak. At last words came. "The Rapids--speak. What have you heard, Jethro, son of Lemuel?"

"I did not hear, I saw her shoot the Rapids. I ran to follow. AtCarillon I saw her arrive. She was in the arms of a Gorgio of Lebanon--Ingolby is his name. "

A malediction burst from Gabriel Druse's lips, words sharp and terriblein their intensity. For the first time since they had met the young manblanched. The savage was alive in the giant. 

"Speak. Tell all, " Druse said, with hands clenching. 

Swiftly the young man told all he had seen, and described how he had runall the way--four miles--from Carillon, arriving before Fleda and herIndian escort. 

He had hardly finished his tale, shrinking, as he told it, from thefierceness of his chief, when a voice called from the direction of thehouse. 

"Father--father, " it cried. 

A change passed over the old man's face. It cleared as the face of thesun clears when a cloud drives past and is gone. The transformation wasstartling. Without further glance at his companion, he moved swiftlytowards the house. Once more Fleda's voice called, and before he couldanswer they were face to face. 

She stood radiant and elate, and seemed not apprehensive of disfavour orreproach. Behind her was Tekewani and his braves. 

"You have heard?" she asked reading her father's face. 

"I have heard. Have you no heart?" he answered. "If the Rapids haddrowned you!"

She came close to him and ran her fingers through his beard tenderly. "I was not born to be drowned, " she said softly. 

Now that she was a long distance from Ingolby, the fact that a man hadheld her in his arms left no shadow on her face. Ingolby was now onlypart of her triumph of the Rapids. She tossed a hand affectionatelytowards Tekewani and his braves. 

"How!" said Gabriel Druse, and made a gesture of salutation to theIndian chief. 

"How!" answered Tekewani, and raised his arm high in response. Aninstant afterwards Tekewani and his followers were gone their ways. 

Suddenly Fleda's eyes rested on the young Romany who was now standing ata little distance away. Apprehension came to her face. She felt herheart stand still and her hands grow cold, she knew not why. But she sawthat the man was a Romany. 

Her father turned sharply. A storm gathered in his face once more, and amurderous look came into his eyes. 

"Who is he?" Fleda asked, scarce above a whisper, and she noted theinsistent, amorous look of the stranger. 

"He says he is your husband, " answered her father harshly. 

CHAPTER V

"BY THE RIVER STARZKE . . . IT WAS SO DONE"

There was absolute silence for a moment. The two men fixed their gazeupon the girl. The fear which had first come to her face passedsuddenly, and a will, new-born and fearless, possessed it. Yesterdaythis will had been only a trembling, undisciplined force, but since thenshe had been passed through the tests which her own soul, or Destiny, hadset for her, and she had emerged a woman, confident and understanding, iftremulous. In days gone by her adventurous, lonely spirit had driven herto the prairies, savagely riding her Indian pony through the streets ofManitou and out on the North Trail, or south through coulees, or westwardinto the great woods, looking for what: she never found. 

Her spirit was no longer the vague thing driving here and there withpleasant torture. It had found freedom and light; what the Romany folkcall its own 'tan', its home, though it be but home of each day's trek. That wild spirit was now a force which understood itself in a new ifuncompleted way. It was a sword free from its scabbard. 

The adventure of the Carillon Rapids had been a kind of deliverance of anunborn thing which, desiring the overworld, had found it. A few hoursago the face of Ingolby, as she waked to consciousness in his arms, hadtaught her something suddenly; and the face of Felix Marchand had taughther even more. Something new and strange had happened to her, and herfather's uncouth but piercing mind saw the change in her. Her quick, fluttering moods, her careless, undirected energy, her wistfulwaywardness, had of late troubled and vexed him, called on capacities inhim which he did not possess; but now he was suddenly aware that she hademerged from passionate inconsistencies and in some good sense had foundherself. 

Like a wind she had swept out of childhood into a woman's world where theeyes saw things unseen before, a world how many thousand leagues in thefuture; and here in a flash, also, she was swept like a wind back againto a time before there was even conscious childhood--a dim, distant timewhen she lived and ate and slept for ever in the field or the vale, inthe quarry, beside the hedge, or on the edge of harvest-fields; when shewas carried in strong arms, or sat in the shelter of a man's breast as ahorse cantered down a glade, under an ardent sky, amid blooms never seensince then. She was whisked back into that distant, unreal world by thefigure of a young Romany standing beside a spruce-tree, and by herfather's voice which uttered the startling words: "He says he is yourhusband!"

Indignation and a bitter pride looked out of her eyes, as she heard thepreposterous claim--as though she were some wild dweller of the junglebeing called by her savage mate back to the lair she had forsaken. 

"Since when were you my husband?" she asked Jethro Fawe composedly. 

Her quiet scorn brought a quiver to his spirit; for he was of a people towhom anger and passion were part of every relationship of life, itsstimulus and its recreation, its expression of the individual. 

His eyelids trembled, but he drew himself together. "Seventeen years agoby the River Starzke in the Roumelian country, it was so done, " hereplied stubbornly. "You were sealed to me, as my Ry here knows, and asyou will remember, if you fix your mind upon it. It was beyond the cityof Starzke three leagues, under the brown scarp of the Dragbad Hills. It was in the morning when the sun was by a quarter of its course. Ithappened before my father's tent, the tent of Lemuel Fawe. There you andI were sealed before our Romany folk. For three thousand pounds which myfather gave to your father, you--"

With a swift gesture she stopped him. Walking close up to him, shelooked him full in the eyes. There was a contemptuous pride in her facewhich forced him to lower his eyelids sulkily. 

He would have understood a torrent of words--to him that would haveregulated the true value of the situation; but this disdainful composureembarrassed him. He had come prepared for trouble and difficulty, but hehad rather more determination than most of his class and people, and hisspirit of adventure was high. Now that he had seen the girl who was hisown according to Romany law, he felt he had been a hundred timesjustified in demanding her from her father, according to the pledge andbond of so many years ago. He had nothing to lose but his life, and hehad risked that before. This old man, the head of the Romany folk, hadthe bulk of the fortune which had been his own father's and he had thelogic of lucre which is the most convincing of all logic. Yet with thegirl holding his eyes commandingly, he was conscious that he was askingmore than a Romany lass to share his 'tan', to go wandering from Romanypeople to Romany people, king and queen of them all when Gabriel Drusehad passed away. Fleda Druse would be a queen of queens, but there wasthat queenliness in her now which was not Romany--something which wasGorgio, which was caste, which made a shivering distance between them. 

As he had spoken, she saw it all as he described it. Vaguely, cloudily, the scene passed before her. Now and again in the passing years hadfilmy impressions floated before her mind of a swift-flowing river andhigh crags, and wooded hills and tents and horsemen and shouting, and alad that held her hand, and banners waved over their heads, and gallopingand shouting, and then a sudden quiet, and many men and women gatheredabout a tent, and a wailing thereafter. After which, in her faintremembrance, there seemed to fall a mist, and a space of blankness, andthen a starting up from a bed, and looking out of the doors of a tent, where many people gathered about a great fire, whose flames licked theheavens, and seemed to devour a Romany tent standing alone with a Romanywagon full of its household things. 

As Jethro Fawe had spoken, the misty, elusive visions had become livingmemories, and she knew that he had spoken the truth, and that thesefleeting things were pictures of her sealing to Jethro Fawe and the deathof Lemuel Fawe, and the burning of all that belonged to him in that lastritual of Romany farewell to the dead. 

She knew now that she had been bargained for like any slave--for threethousand pounds. How far away it all seemed, how barbaric and revolting!Yet here it all was rolling up like a flood to her feet, to bear her awayinto a past with its sordidness and vagabondage, however gilded andgraded above the lowest vagabondage. 

Here at Manitou she had tasted a free life which was not vagabondage, thepassion of the open road which was not an elaborate and furtive evasionof the law and a defiance of social ostracism. Here she and her fathermoved in an atmosphere of esteem touched by mystery, but not bysuspicion; here civilization in its most elastic organization andflexible conventions, had laid its hold upon her, had done in thisexpansive, loosely knitted social system what could never have beenaccomplished in a great city--in London, Vienna, Rome, or New York. Shehad had here the old free life of the road, so full of the scent of deepwoods--the song of rivers, the carol of birds, the murmuring of trees, the mysterious and devout whisperings of the night, the happy communingsof stray peoples meeting and passing, the gaiety and gossip of themarket-place, the sound of church bells across a valley, the storms andwild lightnings and rushing torrents, the cries of frightened beasts, thewash and rush of rain, the sharp pain of frost, and the agonies of somelost traveller rescued from the wide inclemency, the soft starlightafter, the balm of the purged air, and "rosy-fingered morn" blinkingblithely at the world. The old life of the open road she had had herewithout anything of its shame, its stigma, and its separateness, itsdiscordance with the stationary forces of law and organized community. 

Wild moments there had been of late years when she longed for the facesof Romany folk gathered about the fire, while some Romany 'pral' drew allhearts with the violin or the dulcimer. When Ambrose or Gilderoy orChristo responded to the pleadings of some sentimental lass, and sang tothe harpist's strings:

 "Cold blows the wind over my true love, Cold blow the drops of rain; I never, never had but one sweetheart; In the green wood he was slain, "

and to cries of "Again! 'Ay bor'! again!" the blackeyed lover, hypnotizing himself into an ecstasy, poured out race and passion and warwith the law, in the true Gipsy rant which is sung from Transylvania toYetholm or Carnarvon or Vancouver:

 "Time was I went to my true love, Time was she came to me--"

The sharp passion which moved her now as she stood before Jethro Fawewould not have been so acute yesterday; but to-day--she had lain in aGorgio's arms to-day; and though he was nothing to her, he was still aGorgio of Gorgios; and this man before her--her husband--was at best buta man of the hedges and the byre and the clay-pit, the quarry and thewood; a nomad with no home, nothing that belonged to what she was now apart of--organized, collective existence, the life of the house-dweller, not the life of the 'tan', the 'koppa', and the 'vellgouris'--the tent, the blanket, and the fair. 

"I was never bought, and I was never sold, " she said to Jethro Fawe atlast "not for three thousand pounds, not in three thousand years. Lookat me well, and see whether you think it was so, or ever could be so. Look at me well, Jethro Fawe. "

"You are mine--it was so done seventeen years ago, " he answered, defiantly and tenaciously. 

"I was three years old, seventeen years ago, " she returned quietly, buther eyes forced his to look at her, when they turned away as though theirlight hurt him. 

"It is no matter, " he rejoined. "It is the way of our people. It hasbeen so, and it will be so while there is a Romany tent standing ormoving on. "

In his rage Gabriel Druse could keep silence no longer. 

"Rogue, what have you to say of such things?" he growled. "I am thehead of all. I pass the word, and things are so and so. By long and bylast, if I pass the word that you shall sleep the sleep, it will be so, my Romany 'chal'. "

His daughter stretched out her hand to stop further speech from herfather--"Hush!" she said maliciously, "he has come a long way fornaught. It will be longer going back. Let him have his say. It is hiscapital. He has only breath and beauty. "

Jethro shrank from the sharp irony of her tongue as he would not haveshrunk before her father's violence. Biting rejection was in her tones. He knew dimly that the thing he shrank from belonged to nothing Romany inher, but to that scornful pride of the Gorgios which had kept the Romanyoutside the social pale. 

"Only breath and beauty!" she had said, and that she could laugh at hishandsomeness was certain proof that it was not wilfulness which rejectedhis claims. Now there was rage in his heart greater than had been inthat of Gabriel Druse. 

"I have come a long way for a good thing, " he said with head thrown back, "and if 'breath and beauty' is all I bring, yet that is because what myfather had in his purse has made my 'Ry' rich"--he flung a hand outtowards Gabriel Druse--"and because I keep to the open road as my fatherdid, true to my Romany blood. The wind and the sun and the fatness ofthe field have made me what I am, and never in my life had I an ache ora pain. You have the breath and the beauty, too, but you have the goldalso; and what you are and what you have is mine by the Romany law, andit will come to me, by long and by last. "

Fleda turned quietly to her father. "If it is true concerning the threethousand pounds, give it to him and let him go. It will buy him what hewould never get by what he is. "

The old man flashed a look of anger upon her. "He came empty, he shallgo empty. Against my commands, his insolence has brought him here. Andlet him keep his eyes skinned, or he shall have no breath with which toreturn. I am Gabriel Druse, lord over all the Romany people in all theworld from Teheran to San Diego, and across the seas and back again; andmy will shall be done. "

He paused, reflecting for a moment, though his fingers opened and shut inanger. "This much I will do, " he added. "When I return to my people Iwill deal with this matter in the place where Lemuel Fawe died. By theplace called Starzke, I will come to reckoning, and then and then only. "

"When?" asked the young man eagerly. 

Gabriel Druse's eyes flashed. "When I return as I will to return. " Thensuddenly he added: "This much I will say, it shall be before--"

The girl stopped him. "It shall be when it shall be. Am I a chattel tobe bartered by any will except my own? I will have naught to do with anyRomany law. Not by Starzke shall the matter be dealt with, but here bythe River Sagalac. This Romany has no claim upon me. My will is my own;I myself and no other shall choose my husband, and he will never be aRomany. "

The young man's eyes suddenly took on a dreaming, subtle look, submergingthe sulkiness which had filled him. Twice he essayed to speak, butfaltered. At last, with an air, he said:

"For seventeen years I have kept the faith. I was sealed to you, andI hold by the sealing. Wherever you went, it was known to me. In mythoughts I followed. I read the Gorgio books; I made ready for this day. I saw you as you were that day by Starzke, like the young bird in thenest; and the thought of it was with me always. I knew that when I sawyou again the brown eyes would be browner, the words at the lips would besweeter--and so it is. All is as I dreamed for these long years. I wasever faithful. By night and day I saw you as you were when Romany lawmade you mine for ever. I looked forward to the day when I would takeyou to my 'tan', and there we two would--"

A flush sprang suddenly to Fleda Druse's face, then slowly faded, leavingit pale and indignant. Sharply she interrupted him. 

"They should have called you Ananias, " she said scornfully. "My fatherhas called you a rogue, and now I know you are one. I have not heard, but I know--I know that you have had a hundred loves, and been true tonone. The red scarfs you have given to the Romany and the Gorgio fly-aways would make a tent for all the Fawes in all the world. "

At first he flung up his head in astonishment at her words, then, as sheproceeded, a flush swept across his face and his eyes filled up againwith sullenness. She had read the real truth concerning him. He hadgone too far. He had been convincing while he had said what was true, but her instinct had suddenly told her what he was. Her perception hadpierced to the core of his life--a vagabondage, a little more gilded thanwas common among his fellows, made possible by his position as thesuccessor to her father, and by the money of Lemuel Fawe which he haddissipated. 

He had come when all his gold was gone to do the one bold thing whichmight at once restore his fortunes. He had brains, and he knew now thathis adventure was in grave peril. 

He laughed in his anger. "Is only the Gorgio to embrace the Romany lass?One fondled mine to-day in his arms down there at Carillon. That's theway it goes! The old song tells the end of it:

 "'But the Gorgio lies 'neath the beech-wood tree; He'll broach my tan no more; And my love she sleeps afar from me, But near to the churchyard door. 

 'Time was I went to my true love, Time was she came to me--'"

He got no farther. Gabriel Druse was on him, gripping his arms so tightto his body that his swift motion to draw a weapon was frustrated. Theold man put out all his strength, a strength which in his younger dayswas greater than any two men in any Romany camp, and the "breath andbeauty" of Jethro Fawe grew less and less. His face became purple anddistorted, his body convulsed, then limp, and presently he lay on theground with a knee on his chest and fierce, bony hands at his throat. 

"Don't kill him--father, don't!" cried the girl, laying restraininghands on the old man's shoulders. He withdrew his hands and released thebody from his knee. Jethro Fawe lay still. 

"Is he dead?" she whispered, awestricken. "Dead?" The old man felt thebreast of the unconscious man. He smiled grimly. "He is lucky not to bedead. "

"What shall we do?" the girl asked again with a white face. 

The old man stooped and lifted the unconscious form in his arms as thoughit was that of a child. "Where are you going?" she asked anxiously, ashe moved away. 

"To the hut in the juniper wood, " he answered. She watched till he haddisappeared with his limp burden into the depths of the trees. Then sheturned and went slowly towards the house. 

CHAPTER VI

THE UNGUARDED FIRES

The public knew well that Ingolby had solved his biggest businessproblem, because three offices of three railways--one big and two small--suddenly became merged under his control. At which there was rejoicingat Lebanon, followed by dismay and indignation at Manitou, for one of thesmaller merged railways had its offices there, and it was now removed toLebanon; while several of the staff, having proved cantankerous, werepromptly retired. As they were French Canadians, their retirement becamea public matter in Manitou and begot fresh quarrel between the rivaltowns. 

Ingolby had made a tactical mistake in at once removing the office of themerged railway from Manitou, and he saw it quickly. It was not possibleto put the matter right at once, however. 

There had already been collision between his own railway-men and therivermen from Manitou, whom Felix Marchand had bribed to cause trouble:two Manitou men had been seriously hurt, and feeling ran high. Ingolby'seyes opened wide when he saw Marchand's ugly game. He loathed thedissolute fellow, but he realized now that his foe was a factor to bereckoned with, for Marchand had plenty of money as well as a bad nature. He saw he was in for a big fight with Manitou, and he had to think itout. 

So this time he went pigeon-shooting. 

He got his pigeons, and the slaughter did him good. As though in keepingwith the situation, he shot on both sides of the Sagalac with great goodluck, and in the late afternoon sent his Indian lad on ahead to Lebanonwith the day's spoil, while he loitered through the woods, a gun slung inthe hollow of his arm. He had walked many miles, but there was still aspring to his step and he hummed an air with his shoulders thrown backand his hat on the back of his head. He had had his shooting, he haddone his thinking, and he was pleased with himself. He had shaped hishomeward course so that it would bring him near to Gabriel Druse's house. 

He had seen Fleda only twice since the episode at Carillon, and met heronly once, and that was but for a moment at a Fete for the hospital atManitou, and with other people present--people who lay in wait for crumbsof gossip. 

Since the running of the Rapids, Fleda had filled a larger place in theeyes of Manitou and Lebanon. She had appealed to the Western mind: shehad done a brave physical thing. Wherever she went she was madeconscious of a new attitude towards herself, a more understandingfeeling. At the Fete when she and Ingolby met face to face, people hadimmediately drawn round them curious and excited. These could notunderstand why the two talked so little, and had such an every-day mannerwith each other. Only old Mother Thibadeau, who had a heart that sees, caught a look in Fleda's eyes, a warm deepening of colour, a suddenembarrassment, which she knew how to interpret. 

"See now, monseigneur, " she said to Monseigneur Lourde, nodding towardsFleda and Ingolby, "there would be work here soon for you or FatherBidette if they were not two heretics. "

"Is she a heretic, then, madame?" asked the old white-headed priest, hiseyes quizzically following Fleda. 

She is not a Catholic, and she must be a heretic, that's certain, " wasthe reply. 

"I'm not so sure, " mused the priest. Smiling, he raised his hat as hecaught Fleda's eyes. He made as if to go towards her, but something inher look held him back. He realized that Fleda did not wish to speakwith him, and that she was even hurrying away from her father, wholumbered through the crowd as though unconscious of them all. 

Presently Monseigneur Lourde saw Fleda leave the Fete and take the roadtowards home. There was a sense of excitement in her motions, and healso had seen that tremulous, embarrassed look in her eyes. It puzzledhim. He did not connect it wholly with Ingolby as Madame Thibadeau haddone. He had lived so long among primitive people that he was moreaccustomed to study faces than find the truth from words, and he hadalways been conscious that this girl, educated and even intellectual, wasat heart as primitive as the wildest daughter of the tepees of the North. There was also in her something of that mystery which belongs to theuniversal itinerary--that cosmopolitan something which is the nativehuman. 

"She has far to go, " the priest said to himself as he turned to greetIngolby with a smile, bright and shy, but gravely reproachful, too. 

This happened on the day before the collision between the railway-men andthe river-drivers, and the old priest already knew what trouble wasafoot. 

There was little Felix Marchand did which was hidden from him. He madehis way to Ingolby to warn him. 

As Ingolby now walked in the woods towards Gabriel Druse's house, herecalled one striking phrase used by the aged priest in reference to theclosing of the railway offices. 

"When you strike your camp, put out the fires, " was the aphorism. 

Ingolby stopped humming to himself as the words came to his memory again. Bending his head in thought for a moment, he stood still, cogitating. 

"The dear old fellow was right, " he said presently aloud with upliftedhead. "I struck camp, but I didn't put out the fires. There's a lot ofthat in life. "

That is what had happened also to Gabriel Druse and his daughter. They had struck camp, but had not put out the camp-fires. That whichhad been done by the River Starzke came again in its appointed time. The untended, unguarded fire may spread devastation and ruin, followingwith angry freedom the marching feet of those who builded it. 

"Yes, you've got to put out your fires when you quit the bivouac, "continued Ingolby aloud, as he gazed ahead of him through the openinggreenery, beyond which lay Gabriel Druse's home. Where he was the woodswere thick, and here and there on either side it was almost impenetrable. Few people ever came through this wood. It belonged in greater part toGabriel Druse, and in lesser part to the Hudson's Bay Company and theGovernment; and as the land was not valuable till it was cleared, andthere was plenty of prairie land to be had, from which neither stick norstump must be removed, these woods were very lonely. Occasionally atrapper or a sportsman wandered through them, but just here where Ingolbywas none ever loitered. It was too thick for game, there was no roadwayleading anywhere, but only an overgrown path, used in the old days byIndians. It was this path which Ingolby trod with eager steps. 

Presently, as he stood still at sight of a ground-hog making for itshiding-place, he saw a shadow fall across the light breaking through thetrees some distance in front of him. It was Fleda. She had not seenhim, and she came hurrying towards where he was with head bent, abrightly-ribboned hat swinging in her fingers. She seemed part of thewoods, its wild simplicity, its depth, its colour-already Autumn wascrimsoning the leaves, touching them with amber tints, making thewoodland warm and kind. She wore a dress of golden brown which matchedher hair, and at her throat was a black velvet ribbon with a brooch ofantique paste which flashed the light like diamonds, but more softly. 

Suddenly, as she came on, she stopped and raised her head in a listeningattitude, her eyes opening wide as if listening, too--it was as thoughshe heard with them as well; alive to catch sounds which evaded capture. She was like some creature of an ancient wood with its own secret andimmemorial history which the world could never know. There was that inher face which did not belong to civilization or to that fighting worldof which Ingolby was so eager a factor. All the generations of the woodand road, the combe and the river, the quarry and the secluded boscagewere in her look. There was that about her which was at once elusive andprimevally real. 

She was not of those who would be lost in the dust of futility. Whatevershe was, she was an independent atom in the mass of the world's breeding. Perhaps it was consciousness of the dynamic quality in the girl, hernearness to naked nature, which made Madame Bulteel say that she would"have a history. "

If she got twisted as she came wayfaring, if her mind became possessed ofa false passion or purpose which she thought a true one, then tragedywould await her. Yet in this quiet wood so near to the centuries thatwere before Adam was, she looked like a spirit of comedy listening tillthe Spirit of the Wood should break the silence. 

Ingolby felt his blood beat faster. He had a feeling that he was lookingat a wood-nymph who might flash out of his vision as a mere fantasy ofthe mind. There shot through him the strangest feeling that if she werehis, he would be linked with something alien to the world of which hewas. 

Yet, recalling the day at Carillon when her cheek lay on his shoulder andher warm breast was pressed unresistingly against him, as he lifted herfrom his boat, he knew that he would have to make the hardest fight ofhis life if he meant not to have more of her than this briefacquaintance, so touched by sensation and romance. He was, maybe, somewhat sensational; his career had, even in its present restrictedcompass, been spectacular; but romance, with its reveries and itsmoonshinings, its impulses and its blind adventures, had not been anypart of his existence. 

Hers were not the first red lips which, voluntarily or involuntarily, hadinvited him; nor hers the first eyes which had sparkled to his glances;and this triumphant Titian head of hers was not the only one he had seen. 

When he had taken her hand at the Hospital Fete, her fingers, long andwarm and fine, had folded round his own with a singular confidence, aninvoluntary enclosing friendliness; and now as he watched her listening--did she hear something?--he saw her hand stretch out as thoughcommanding silence, the "hush!" of an alluring gesture. 

This assuredly was not the girl who had run the Carillon Rapids, for thatadventuress was full of a vital force like a man's, and this girl had theevanishing charm of a dryad. 

Suddenly a change passed over her. She was as one who had listened andhad caught the note of song for which she waited; but her face clouded, and the rapt look gave way to an immediate distress. The fantasy of thewood-nymph underwent translation in Ingolby's mind; she was now like amortal, who, having been transformed, at immortal dictate was returningto mortal state again. 

To heighten the illusion, he thought he heard faint singing in the depthsof the wood. He put his hands to his ears for a moment, and took themaway again to make sure that it was really singing and not hisimagination; and when he saw Fleda's face again, there was fresh evidencethat his senses had not deceived him. After all, it was not strange thatsome one should be singing in that deepest wood beyond. 

Now Fleda moved forward towards where he stood, quickening her footstepsas though remembering something she must do. He stepped out into thepath and came to meet her. She heard his footsteps, saw him, and stoodstill abruptly. 

She did not make a sound, but a hand went to her bosom quickly, as thoughto quiet her heart or to steady herself. He had broken suddenly upon herintent thoughts, he had startled her as she had been seldom startled, forall her childhood training had been towards self-possession beforesurprise and danger. 

"This is not your side of the Sagalac, " she said with a half-smile, regaining composure. 

"That is in dispute, " he answered gaily. "I want to belong to both sidesof the Sagalac, I want both sides to belong to each other so that eitherside shall not be my side or your side, or--"

"Or Monsieur Felix Marchand's side, " she interrupted meaningly. 

"Oh, he's on the outside!" snapped the fighter, with a hardening mouth. 

She did not reply at once, but put her hat on, and tied the ribbonsloosely under her chin, looking thoughtfully into the distance. 

"Is that the Western slang for saying he belongs nowhere?" she asked. 

"Nowhere here, " he answered with a grim twist to the corner of his mouth, his eyes half-closing with sulky meaning. "Won't you sit down?" headded quickly, in a more sprightly tone, for he saw she was about to moveon. He motioned towards a log lying beside the path and kicked somebranches out of the way. 

After slight hesitation she sat down, burying her shoes in the fallenleaves. 

"You don't like Felix Marchand?" she remarked presently. 

"No. Do you?"

She met his eyes squarely--so squarely that his own rather lost theircourage, and he blinked more quickly than is needed with a healthy eye. He had been audacious, but he had not surprised the garrison. 

"I have no deep reason for liking or disliking him, and you have, " sheanswered firmly; yet her colour rose slightly, and he thought he hadnever seen skin that looked so like velvet-creamy, pink velvet. 

"You seemed to think differently at Carillon not long ago, " he returned. 

"That was an accident, " she answered calmly. "He was drunk, and that isfor forgetting--always. "

"Always! Have you seen many men drunk?" he asked quickly. He did notmean to be quizzical, but his voice sounded so, and she detected it. 

"Yes, many, " she answered with a little ring of defiance in her tone--"many, often. "

"Where?" he queried recklessly. 

"In Lebanon, " she retorted. "In Lebanon--your side. "

How different she seemed from a few moments ago when she stood listeninglike a nymph for the song of the Spirit of the Wood! Now she was gay, buoyant, with a chamois-like alertness and a beaming vigour. 

"Now I know what 'blind drunk' means, " he replied musingly. "In Manitouwhen men get drunk, the people get astigmatism and can't see thetangledfooted stagger. "

"It means that the pines of Manitou are straighter than the cedars ofLebanon, " she remarked. 

"And the pines of Manitou have needles, " he rejoined, meaning to give herthe victory. 

"Is my tongue as sharp as that?" she asked, amusement in her eyes. 

"So sharp I can feel the point when I can't see it, " he retorted. 

"I'm glad of that, " she replied with an affectation of conceit. "Ofcourse if you live in Lebanon you need surgery to make you feel a point. "

"I give in--you have me, " he remarked. 

"You give in to Manitou?" she asked provokingly. "Certainly not--onlyto you. I said, 'You have me. '"

"Ah, you give in to that which won't hurt you--"

"Wouldn't you hurt me?" he asked in a softening tone. 

"You only play with words, " she answered with sudden gravity. "Hurt you?I owe you what I can not pay back. I owe you my life; but as nothing canbe given in exchange for a life, I cannot pay you. "

"But like may be given for like, " he rejoined in a tone suddenly full ofmeaning. 

"Again you are playing with words--and with me, " she answered brusquely, and a little light of anger dawned in her eyes. Did he think that hecould say a thing of that sort to her--when he pleased? Did he thinkthat because he had done her a great service, he could say casually whatbelonged only to the sacred moments of existence? She looked at him withrising indignation, but there suddenly came to her the conviction that hehad not spoken with affronting gallantry, but that for him the moment hada gravity not to be marred by the place or the circumstance. 

"I beg your pardon if I spoke hastily, " he answered presently. "Yetthere's many a true word spoken in jest. "

There was a moment's silence. She realized that he was drawn to her, andthat the attraction was not alone due to his having saved her atCarillon; that he was not taking advantage of the thing which must everbe a bond between them, whatever came of life. When she had seen him atthe Hospital Fete, a feeling had rushed over her that he had got nearerto her than any man had ever done. Then--even then, she felt the thingwhich all lovers, actual, or in the making, feel--that they must dosomething for the being who to them is more than all else and all others. She was not in love with Ingolby. How could she be in love with this manshe had seen but a few times--this Gorgio. Why was it that even as theytalked together now, she felt the real, true distance between them--ofrace, of origin, of history, of life, of circumstance? The hut in thewood where Gabriel Druse had carried Jethro Fawe was not three hundredyards away. 

She sighed, stirred, and a wild look came in her eyes--a look ofrebellion or of protest. Presently she recovered herself. She was acreature of sudden moods. 

"What is it you want to do with Manitou and Lebanon?" she asked after apause in which the thoughts of both had travelled far. 

"You really wish to know--you don't know?" he asked with suddenintensity. 

She regarded him frankly, smiled, then she laughed outright, showing herteeth very white and regular and handsome. The boyish eagerness of hislook, the whimsical twist of his mouth, which always showed when he waskeenly roused--as though everything that really meant anything was partof a comet-like comedy--had caused her merriment. All the hidden thingsin his face seemed to open out into a swift shrewdness and dry candourwhen he was in his mood of "laying all the cards upon the table. "

"I don't know, " she answered quietly. "I have heard things, but I shouldlike to learn the truth from you. What are your plans?"

Her eyes were burning with inquiry. She was suddenly brought to thegateways of a new world. Plans--what had she or her people to do withplans! What Romany ever constructed anything? What did the building ofa city or a country mean to a Romany 'chal' or a Romany 'chi', they wholived from field to field, from common to moor, from barn to city wall. A Romany tent or a Romany camp, with its families, was the wholeterritory of their enterprise, designs and patriotism. They saw thethousand places where cities could be made, and built their fires on thesites of them, and camped a day, and were gone, leaving them waiting andbarren as before. They travelled through the new lands in America fromthe fringe of the Arctic to Patagonia, but they raised no roof-tree; theytilled no acre, opened no market, set up no tabernacle: they had neitherhome nor country. 

Fleda was the heir of all this, the product of generations of suchvagabondage. Had the last few years given her the civic sense, the homesense? From the influence of the Englishwoman, who had made her forsakethe Romany life, had there come habits of mind in tune with the women ofthe Sagalac, who were helping to build so much more than their homes?Since the incident of the Carillon Rapids she had changed, but what thechange meant was yet in her unopened Book of Revelations. Yet somethingstirred in her which she had never felt before. She had come of a raceof wayfarers, but the spirit of the builders touched her now. 

"What are my plans?" Ingolby drew along breath of satisfaction. "Well, just here where we are will be seen a great thing. There's the Yukon andall its gold; there's the Peace River country and all its unploughedwheat-fields; there's the whole valley of the Sagalac, which alone canmaintain twenty millions of people; there's the East and the Britishpeople overseas who must have bread; there's China and Japan going togive up rice, and eat the wheaten loaf; there's the U. S. A. With itshundred millions of people--it'll be that in a few years--and itsexhausted wheat-fields; and here, right here, is the bread-basket for allthe hungry peoples; and Manitou and Lebanon are the centre of it. Theywill be the distributing centre. I want to see the base laid right. I'mnot going to stay here till it all happens, but I want to plan it all sothat it will happen, then I'll go on and do a bigger thing somewhereelse. These two towns have got to come together; they must play one biggame. I want to lay the wires for it. That's why I've got capitaliststo start paper-works, engineering works, a foundry, and a sash-door-and-blind factory--just the beginning. That's why I've put two factories onone side of the river and two on the other. "

"Was it really you who started those factories?" she askedincredulously. 

"Of course! It was part of my plans. I wasn't foolish enough to buildand run them myself. I looked for the right people that had the moneyand the brains, and I let them sweat--let them sweat it out. I'm not amanufacturer; I'm an inventor and a builder. I built the bridge over theriver; and--"

She nodded. "Yes, the bridge is good; but they say you are a schemer, "she added suggestively. 

"Certainly. But if I have schemes which'll do good, I ought to besupported. I don't mind what they call me, so long as they don't call metoo late for dinner. "

They both laughed. It was seldom he talked like this, and never had hetalked to such a listener before. "The merging of the three railways wasa good scheme, and I was the schemer, " he continued. "It might meanmonopoly, but it won't work out that way. It will simply concentrateenergy and: save elbow-grease. It will set free capital and capacity forother things. "

"They say there will be fewer men at work, not only in the offices but onthe whole railway system, and they don't like that in Manitou--ah, no, they don't!" she urged. 

"They're right in a sense, " he answered. "But the men will be employedat other things, which won't represent waste and capital overlapping. Overlapping capital hits everybody in the end. But who says all that?Who raises the cry of 'wolf' in Manitou?"

"A good many people say it now, " she answered, "but I think FelixMarchand said it first. He is against you, and he is dangerous. "

He shrugged a shoulder. "Oh, if any fool said it, it would be the same!"he answered. "That's a fire easily lighted; though it sometimes burnslong and hard. " He frowned, and a fighting look came into his face. 

"Then you know all that is working against you in Manitou--working harderthan ever before?"

"I think I do, but I probably don't know all. Have you any special newsabout it?"

"Felix Marchand is spending money among the men. They are going onstrike on your railways and in the mills. "

"What mills--in Manitou?" he asked abruptly. "In both towns. "

He laughed harshly. "That's a tall order, " he said sharply. "Bothtowns--I don't think so, not yet. "

"A sympathetic strike is what he calls it, " she rejoined. 

"Yes, a row over some imagined grievance on the railway, and all themen in all the factories to strike--that's the new game of the modernlabour agitator! Marchand has been travelling in France, " he addeddisdainfully, "but he has brought his goods to the wrong shop. What dothe priests--what does Monseigneur Lourde say to it all?"

"I am not a Catholic, " she replied gravely. "I've heard, though, thatMonseigneur is trying to stop the trouble. But--" She paused. 

"Yes--but?" he asked. "What were you going to say?"

"But there are many roughs in Manitou, and Felix Marchand makes friendswith them. I don't think the priests will be able to help much in theend, and if it is to be Manitou against Lebanon, you can't expect a greatdeal. "

"I never expect more than I get--generally less, " he answered grimly;and he moved the gun about on his knees restlessly, fingering the lockand the trigger softly. 

"I am sure Felix Marchand means you harm, " she persisted. 

"Personal harm?"

"Yes. "

He laughed sarcastically again. "We are not in Bulgaria or Sicily, " herejoined, his jaw hardening; "and I can take care of myself. What makesyou say he means personal harm? Have you heard anything?"

"No, nothing, but I feel it is so. That day at the Hospital Fete helooked at you in a way that told me. I think such instincts are givento some people and some races. You read books--I read people. I wantedto warn you, and I do so. This has been lucky in a way, this meeting. Please don't treat what I've said lightly. Your plans are in danger andyou also. " Was the psychic and fortune-telling instinct of the Romanyalive in her and working involuntarily, doing that faithfully which herpeople did so faithlessly? The darkness which comes from intense feelinghad gathered underneath her eyes, and gave them a look of pensiveness notin keeping with the glow of her perfect health, the velvet of her cheek. 

"Would you mind telling me where you got your information?" he askedpresently. 

"My father heard here and there, and I, also, and some I got from oldMadame Thibadeau, who is a friend of mine. I talk with her more thanwith any one else in Manitou. First she taught me how to crochet, butshe teaches me many other things, too. "

"I know the old girl by sight. She is a character. She would know alot, that woman. "

He paused, seemed about to speak, hesitated, then after a moment hastilysaid: "A minute ago you spoke of having the instinct of your race, orsomething like that. What is your race? Is it Irish, or--do you mind myasking? Your English is perfect, but there is something--something--"

She turned away her head, a flush spreading over her face. She wasunprepared for the question. No one had ever asked it directly of hersince they had come to Manitou. Whatever speculation there had been, shehad never been obliged to tell any one of what race she was. She spokeEnglish with no perceptible accent, as she spoke Spanish, Italian, French, Hungarian and Greek; and there was nothing in her speech markingher as different from the ordinary Western woman. Certainly she wouldhave been considered pure English among the polyglot population ofManitou. 

What must she say? What was it her duty to say? She was living the lifeof a British woman, she was as much a Gorgio in her daily existence asthis man be side her. Manitou was as much home--nay, it was a thousandtimes more home--than the shifting habitat of the days when they wanderedfrom the Caspians to John o' Groat's. 

For years all traces of the past had been removed as completely as thoughthe tide had washed over them; for years it had been so, until thefateful day when she ran the Carillon Rapids. That day saw her wholehorizon alter; that day saw this man beside her enter on the stage of herlife. And on that very day, also, came Jethro Fawe out of the Past anddemanded her return. 

That had been a day of Destiny. The old, panting, unrealized, tempestuous longing was gone. She was as one who saw danger and facedit, who had a fight to make and would make it. 

What would happen if she told this man that she was a Gipsy--the daughterof a Gipsy ruler, which was no more than being head of a clan of theworld's transients, the leader of the world's nomads. Money--her fatherhad that, at least--much money; got in ways that could not bear the lightat times, yet, as the world counts things, not dishonestly; for more thanone great minister in a notable country in Europe had commissioned him, more than one ruler and crowned head had used him when "there was troublein the Balkans, " or the "sick man of Europe" was worse, or the RussianBear came prowling. His service had ever been secret service, when helived the life of the caravan and the open highway. He had no stableplace among the men of all nations, and yet secret rites and mysteriesand a language which was known from Bokhara to Wandsworth, and fromWaikiki to Valparaiso, gave him dignity of a kind, clothed him withimportance. 

Yet she wanted to tell this man beside her the whole truth, and see whathe would do. Would he turn his face away in disgust? What had she aright to tell? She knew well that her father would wish her to keep tothat secrecy which so far had sheltered them--at least until JethroFawe's coming. 

At last she turned and looked him in the eyes, the flush gone from herface. 

"I'm not Irish--do I look Irish?" she asked quietly, though her heartwas beating unevenly. 

"You look more Irish than anything else, except, maybe, Slav orHungarian--or Gipsy, " he said admiringly and unwittingly. 

"I have Gipsy blood in me, " she answered slowly, "but no Irish orHungarian blood. "

"Gipsy--is that so?" he said spontaneously, as she watched him sointently that the pulses throbbed at her temples. 

A short time ago Fleda might have announced her origin defiantly, now hercourage failed her. She did not wish him to be prejudiced against her. 

"Well, well, " he added, "I only just guessed at it, because there'ssomething unusual and strong in you, not because your eyes are so darkand your hair so brown. "

"Not because of my 'wild beauty'--I thought you were going to say that, "she added ironically and a little defiantly. "I got some verses by postthe other day from one of your friends in Lebanon--a stock-rider I thinkhe was, and they said I had a 'wild beauty' and a 'savage sweetness. '"

He laughed, yet he suddenly saw her sensitive vigilance, and by instincthe felt that she was watching for some sign of shock or disdain on hispart; yet in truth he cared no more whether she had Gipsy blood in herthan he would have done if she had said she was a daughter of the Czar. 

"Men do write that kind of thing, " he added cheerfully, "but it's quiteharmless. There was a disease at college we called adjectivitis. Yourpoet friend had it. He could have left out the 'wild' and 'savage' andhe'd have been pleasant, and truthful too--no, I apologize. "

He had seen her face darken under the compliment, and he hastened to putit right. 

"I loved a Gipsy once, " he added whimsically to divert attention from hismistake, and with so genuine a sympathy in his voice that she wasdisarmed. "I was ten and she was fifty at least. Oh, a wonderful woman!I had a boy friend, a fat, happy, little joker he was; his name wasCharley Long. Well, this woman was his aunt. When she moved through thetown people looked twice. She was tall and splendidly made, and hermanner--oh, as if she owned the place. She did own a lot--she had moremoney than any one else thereabouts, anyhow. It was the tallest kind ofa holiday when Charley and I walked out to the big white house-golly, butit was white--to visit her! We didn't eat much the day before we went tosee her; and we didn't eat much the day after, either. She used to feedus--I wish I could eat like that now! I can see her brown eyes followingus about, full of fire, but soft and kind, too. She had a great temper, they said, but everybody liked her, and some loved her. She'd had onegirl, but she died of consumption, got camping out in bad weather. AuntCynthy--that was what we called her, her name being Cynthia--never gotover her girl's death. She blamed herself for it. She had had thosefits of going back to the open-for weeks at a time. The girl oughtn't tohave been taken to camp out. She was never strong, and it was the wrongplace and the wrong time of year--all right in August and all wrong inOctober. 

"Well, always after her girl's death Aunt Cynthy was as I knew her, being good to us youngsters as no one else ever was, or could be. Her tea-table was a sight; and the rest of the meals were banquets. The first time I ever ate hedgehog was at her place. A little while ago, just before you came, I thought of her. A hedgehog crossed the pathhere, and it brought those days back to me--Charley Long and Aunt Cynthyand all. Yes, the first time I ever ate hedgehog; was in Aunt Cynthy'shouse. Hi-yi, as old Tekewani says, but it was good!"

"What is the Romany word for hedgehog?" Fleda asked in a low tone. 

"Hotchewitchi, " he replied instantly. "That's right, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is right, " she answered, and her eyes had a far-away look, butthere was a kind of trouble at her mouth. 

"Do you speak Romany?" she added a little breathlessly. 

"No, no. I only picked up words I heard Aunt Cynthy use now and then whenshe was in the mood. "

"What was the history of Aunt Cynthy?"

"I only know what Charley Long told me. Aunt Cynthy was the daughterof a Gipsy--they say the only Gipsy in that part of the country at thetime--who used to buy and sell horses, and travel in a big van ascomfortable as a house. The old man suddenly died on the farm ofCharley's uncle. In a month the uncle married the girl. She brought himthirty thousand dollars. "

Fleda knew that this man who had fired her spirit for the first time hadtold his childhood story to show her the view he took of her origin; butshe did not like him less for that, though she seemed to feel a chasmbetween them still. The new things moving in her were like breezes thatstir the trees, not like the wind turning the windmill which grinds thecorn. She had scarcely yet begun to grind the corn of life. 

She did not know where she was going, what she would find, or where thenew trail would lead her. The Past dogged her footsteps, hung round herlike the folds of a garment. Even as she rejected it, it asserted itspower, troubled her, angered her, humiliated her, called to her. 

She was glad of this meeting with Ingolby. It had helped her. She hadset out to do a thing she dreaded, and it was easier now than it wouldhave been if they had not met. She had been on her way to the Hut in theWood, and now the dread of the visit to Jethro Fawe had diminished. The last voice she would hear before she entered Jethro Fawe's prisonwas that of the man who represented to her, however vaguely, the lifewhich must be her future--the settled life, the life of Society and notof the Saracen. 

After he had told his boyhood story they sat in silence for a moment ortwo, then she rose, and, turning to him, was about to speak. At thatinstant there came distinctly through the wood a faint, trilling sound. Her face paled a little, and the words died upon her lips. Ingolby, having turned his head as though to listen, did not see the change in herface, and she quickly regained her self-control. 

"I heard that sound before, " he said, "and I thought from your look youheard it, too. It's funny. It is singing, isn't it?"

"Yes, it's singing, " she answered. 

"Who is it--some of the heathen from the Reservation?"

"Yes, some of the heathen, " she answered. 

"Has Tekewani got a lodge about here?"

"He had one here in the old days. "

"And his people go to it still-was that where you were going when I brokein on you?"

"Yes, I was going there. I am a heathen, also, you know. "

"Well, I'll be a heathen, too, if you'll show me how; if you think I'dpass for one. I've done a lot of heathen things in my time. "

She gave him her hand to say good-bye. "Mayn't I go with you?" heasked. 

"'I must finish my journey alone, '" she answered slowly, repeating a linefrom the first English book she had ever read. 

"That's English enough, " he responded with a laugh. "Well, if I mustn'tgo with you I mustn't, but my respects to Robinson Crusoe. " He slung thegun into the hollow of his arm. "I'd like much to go with you, " heurged. 

"Not to-day, " she answered firmly. 

Again the voice came through the woods, a little louder now. 

"It sounds like a call, " he remarked. 

"It is a call, " she answered--"the call of the heathen. "

An instant after she had gone on, with a look half-smiling, half-forbidding, thrown over her shoulder at him. 

"I've a notion to follow her, " he said eagerly, and he took a step in herdirection. 

Suddenly she turned and came back to him. "Your plans are in danger--don't forget Felix Marchand, " she said, and then turned from him again. 

"Oh, I'll not forget, " he answered, and waved his cap after her. "No, I'll not forget monsieur, " he added sharply, and he stepped out with alight of battle in his eyes. 

CHAPTER VII

IN WHICH THE PRISONER GOES FREE

As Fleda wound her way through the deeper wood, remembering the thingswhich had just been said between herself and Ingolby, the colour came andwent in her face. To no man had she ever talked so long and intimately, not even in the far-off days when she lived the Romany life. 

Then, as daughter of the head of all the Romanys, she had her placeapart; and the Romany lads had been few who had talked with her even as achild. Her father had jealously guarded her until the time when she fellunder the spell and influence of Lady Barrowdale. Here, by the Sagalac, she had moved among this polyglot people with an assurance of her ownseparateness which was the position of every girl in the West, butdeveloped in her own case to the nth degree. 

Never before had she come so near--not to a man, but to what concerned aman; and never had a man come so near to her or what concerned her inmostlife. It was not a question of opportunity or temptation--these alwaysattend the footsteps of those who would adventure; but for long she hadfenced herself round with restrictions of her own making; and the secrecyand strangeness of her father's course had made this not only possible, but in a sense imperative. 

The end to that had come. Gaiety, daring, passion, elation, depression, were alive in her now, and in a sense had found an outlet in a handful ofdays--indeed since the day when Jethro Fawe and Max Ingolby had come intoher life, each in his own way, for good or for evil. If Ingolby came forgood, then Jethro Fawe came for evil. She would have revolted at thesuggestion that Jethro Fawe came for good. 

Yet, during the last few days, she had been drawn again and again towardsthe hut in the wood. It was as though a power stronger than herself hadordered her not to wander far from where the Romany claimant of herselfawaited his fate. As though Jethro knew she was drawn towards him, hehad sung the Gipsy songs which she and Ingolby had heard in the distance. He might have shouted for relief in the hope of attracting the attentionof some passer-by, and so found release and brought confusion and perhapspunishment to Gabriel Druse; but that was not possible to him. First andlast he was a Romany, good or bad; and it was his duty to obey his Ry ofRys, the only rule which the Romany acknowledged. "Though he slay me, yet will I trust him, " he would have said, if he had ever heard thephrase; but in his stubborn way he made the meaning of the phrase thepivot of his own action. If he could but see Fleda face to face, he madeno doubt that something would accrue to his advantage. He would not giveup the hunt without a struggle. 

Twice a day Gabriel Druse had placed food and water inside the door ofthe hut and locked him fast again, but had not spoken to him save once, and then but to say that his fate had not yet been determined. Jethro'sreply had been that he was in no haste, that he could wait for what hecame to get; that it was his own--'ay bor'! it was his own, and God ordevil could not prevent the thing meant to be from the beginning of theworld. 

He did not hear Fleda approach the hut; he was singing to himself a songhe had learned in Montenegro. There the Romany was held in high regard, because of the help his own father had given to the Montenegrin people, fighting for their independence, by admirable weapons of Gipsyworkmanship, setting all the Gipsies in that part of the Balkansat work to supply them. 

This was the song he sang

 "He gave his soul for a thousand days, The sun was his in the sky, His feet were on the neck of the world He loved his Romany chi. 

 "He sold his soul for a thousand days, By her side to walk, in her arms to lie; His soul might burn, but her lips were his, And the heart of his Romany chi. "

He repeated the last two lines into a rising note of exultation:

 "His soul might burn, but her lips were his, And the heart of his Romany chi. "

The key suddenly turned in the lock, the door opened on the last words ofthe refrain, and, without hesitation, Fleda stepped inside, closing thedoor behind her. 

"'Mi Duvel', but who would think--ah, did you hear me call then?" heasked, rising from the plank couch where he had been sitting. He showedhis teeth in a smile which was meant to be a welcome, but it had aninvoluntary malice. 

"I heard you singing, " she answered composedly, "but I do not come herebecause I'm called. "

"But I do, " he rejoined. "You called me from over the seas, and I came. I was in the Balkans; there was trouble--Servia, Montenegro, and Austriawere rattling the fire-irons again, and there was I as my father wasbefore me. But I heard you calling, and I came. "

"You never heard me call, Jethro Fawe, " she returned quietly. "Mycalling of you is as silent as the singing of the stars, where you areconcerned. And the stars do not sing. "

"But the stars do sing, and you call just the same, " he responded with atwist to his moustache, and posing against the wall. "I've heard thestars sing. What's the noise they make in the heart, if it's notsinging? You don't hear with the ears only. The heart hears. It's onlya manner of speaking, this talk about the senses. One sense can do thesame as all can do and a Romany ought to know how to use one or all. When your heart called I heard it, and across the seas I came. And bylong and by last, but I was right in coming. "

His impudence at once irritated her and provoked her admiration. Sheknew by instinct how false he was, and how a lie was as common with himas the truth; but his submission to her father, his indifference to hisimprisonment, forced her interest, even as she was humiliated by the factthat he was sib to her, bound by ties of clan and blood apart from hismonstrous claim of marriage. He was indeed such a man as a brainless orsensual woman could yield to with ease. He had an insinuating animalgrace, that physical handsomeness which marks so many of the Tziganieswho fill the red coats of a Gipsy musical sextette! He was notdistinguished, yet there was an intelligence in his face, a daring athis lips and chin, which, in the discipline and conventions of organizedsociety, would have made him superior. Now, with all his sleekhandsomeness, he looked a cross between a splendid peasant and achevalier of industry. 

She compared him instinctively with Ingolby the Gorgio, as she looked athim. What was it made the difference between the two? It was the worldin a man--personality, knowledge of life, the culture of the thousandthings which make up civilization: it was personality got from life andpower in contest with the ordered world. 

Yet was this so after all? Tekewani was only an Indian brave who livedon the bounty of a government, and yet he had presence and an air ofcommand. Tekewani had been a nomad; he had not been bound to one place, settled in one city, held subservient to one flag. But, no, she waswrong: Tekewani had been the servant and child of a system which was asfixed and historical as that of Russia or Spain. He belonged to a peoplewho had traditions and laws of their own; organized communities movinghere and there, but carrying with them their system, their laws and theirnational feeling. 

There was the difference. This Romany was the child of irresponsibility, the being that fed upon life, that did not feed life; that left one placein the world to escape into another; that squeezed one day dry, threw itaway, and then went seeking another day to bleed; for ever fleeing fromyesterday, and using to-day only as a camping-ground. Suddenly, however, she came to a stop in her reflections. Her father, Gabriel Druse, was ofthe same race as this man, the same unorganized, irresponsible, uselessrace, with no weight of civic or social duty upon its shoulders--wheredid he stand? Was he no better than such as Jethro Fawe? Was heinferior to such as Ingolby, or even Tekewani?

She realized that in her father's face there was the look of one who hadno place in the ambitious designs of men, who was not a builder, but awayfarer. She had seen the look often of late, and had never read ituntil now, when Jethro Fawe stared at her with the boldness ofpossession, with the insolence of a soul of lust which had had itsvictories. 

She read his look, and while one part of her shrank from him as from somenoisome thing, another part of her--to her dismay and anger--understoodhim, and did not resent him. It was the Past dragging at her life. Itwas inherited predisposition, the unregulated passions of her forebears, the mating of the fields, the generated dominance of the body, which wasnot to be commanded into obscurity, but must taunt and tempt her whileher soul sickened. She put a hand on herself. She must make this manrealize once and for all that they were as far apart as Adam andCagliostro. "I never called to you, " she said at last. "I did not knowof your existence, and, if I had, then I certainly shouldn't havecalled. "

"The Gorgios have taken away your mind, or you'd understand, " he repliedcoolly. "Your soul calls and those that understand come. It isn't thatyou know who hears or who is coming--till he comes. "

"A call to all creation!" she answered disdainfully. "Do you think youcan impress me by saying things like that?"

"Why not? It's true. Wherever you went in all these years the memory ofyou kept calling me, my little 'rinkne rakli'--my pretty little girl, made mine by the River Starzke over in the Roumelian country. "

"You heard what my father said--"

"I heard what the Duke Gabriel said--'Mi Duvel', I heard enough what hesaid, and I felt enough what he did!"

He laughed, and began to roll a cigarette mechanically, keeping his eyesfixed on her, however. 

"You heard what my father said and what I said, and you will learn thatit is true, if you live long enough, " she added meaningly. 

A look of startled perception flashed into his eyes. If I live longenough, I'll turn you, my mad wife, into my Romany queen and the blessingof my 'tan'. "

"Don't mistake what I mean, " she urged. "I shall never be ruler of theRomanys. I shall never hear--"

"You'll hear the bosh played-fiddle, they call it in these heathenplaces--at your second wedding with Jethro Fawe, " he rejoined insolently, lighting his cigarette. "Home you'll come with me soon--'ay bor'!"

"Listen to me, " she answered with anger tingling in every nerve andfibre. "I come of your race, I was what you are, a child of the hedgeand the wood and the road; but that is all done. Home, you say! Home--in a tent by the roadside or--"

"As your mother lived--where you were bornwell, well, but here's a Romanylass that's forgot her cradle!"

"I have forgotten nothing. I have only moved on. I have only seen thatthere is a better road to walk than that where people, always lookingbehind lest they be followed, and always looking in front to find refuge, drop the patrin in the dust or the grass or the bushes for others tofollow after--always going on and on because they dare not go back. "

Suddenly he threw his cigarette on the ground, and put his heel upon itin fury real or assumed. "Great Heaven and Hell, " he exclaimed, "here'sa Romany has sold her blood to the devil! And this is the daughter ofGabriel Druse, King and Duke of all the Romanys, him with ancestor KingPanuel, Duke of Little Egypt, who had Sigismund, and Charles the Great, and all the kings for friends. By long and by last, but this is a taleto tell to the Romanys of the world!" For reply she went to the door andopened it wide. "Then go and tell it, Jethro Fawe, to all the world. Tell them I am the renegade daughter of Gabriel Druse, ruler of them all. Tell them there is no fault in him, and that he will return to his ownpeople in his own time, but that I, Fleda Druse, will never return--never! Now, get you gone from here. "

The sunlight broke through the trees, and fell in a narrow path of lightupon the doorway. A little grey bird fluttered into the radiance andcame tripping across the threshold; a whippoorwill called in theashtrees; and the sweet smell of the thick woodland, of the bracken andfern, crept into the room. The balm of a perfect evening of Summer wasupon the face of nature. The world seemed untroubled and serene; but inthis hidden but two stormy spirits broke the peace to which the place andthe time were all entitled. 

After Fleda's scornful words of release and dismissal, Jethro stood for amoment confounded and dismayed. He had not reckoned with this. Duringtheir talk it had come to him how simple it would be to overpower anycheck to his exit, how devilishly easy to put the girl at a disadvantage;but he drove the thought from him. In the first place, he was by nomeans sure that escape was what he wanted--not yet, at any rate; in thesecond place, if Gabriel Druse passed the word along the subterraneanwires of the Romany world that Jethro Fawe should vanish, he would notlong cumber the ground. 

Yet it was not cowardice or fear of consequences which had held him back;it was a staggering admiration for this girl who had been given to him inmarriage so many years ago. He had fared far and wide in his adventuresand amours when he had gold in plenty; and he had swung more than oneGorgio woman in the wild dance of sentiment, dazzling them by thesplendour of his passion. The fire gleaming in his dark eyes lighted aface which would have made memorable a picture by Guido. He had faredfar and wide, but he had never seen a woman who had seized hisimagination as this girl was doing; who roused in him, not the old hotdesire, but the hungry will to have a 'tan' of his own, and go travellingdown the world with one who alone could satisfy him for all his days. 

As he sat in this improvised woodland prison he had had visions of ahundred glades and valleys through which he had passed in days gone by--in England, in Spain, in Italy, in Roumania, in Austria, in Australia, in India--where his camp-fires had burned. In his visions he had seenher--Fleda Fawe, not Fleda Druse--laying the cloth and bringing out thesilver cups, or stretching the Turkey rugs upon the ground to make acouch for two bright-eyed lovers to whom the night was as the day, radiant and full of joy. He had shut his eyes and beheld hillsides whereabandoned castles stood, and the fox and the squirrel and the hawk gaveshade and welcome to the dusty pilgrims of the road; or, when the wildwinds blew in winter, gave shelter and wood for the fire, and a sense ofhomeliness among the companionable trees. 

He had seen himself and this beautiful Romany 'chi' at some village fair, while the lesser Romany folk told fortunes, or bought and sold horses, and the lesser still tinkered or worked in gold or brass; he had seenthem both in a great wagon with bright furnishings and brass-girt harnesson their horses, lording it over all, rich, dominant and admired. In hisvisions he had even seen a Romany babe carried in his arms to a Christianchurch and there baptized in grandeur as became the child of the head ofthe people. His imagination had also seen his own tombstone in someChristian churchyard near to the church porch, where he would not belonely when he was dead, but could hear the gossip of the people as theywent in and out of church; and on the tombstone some such inscription ashe had seen once at Pforzheim--"To the high-born Lord Johann, Earl ofLittle Egypt, to whose soul God be gracious and merciful. "

To be sure, it was a strange thing for a Romany to be buried in a Gorgiochurchyard; but it was what had chanced to many great men of the Romanys, such as the high-born Lord Panuel at Steinbrock, and Peter of Kleinschildat Mantua--all of whom had great emblazoned monuments in Christianchurches, just to show that in all-levelling death they condescended fromhigh estate to mingle their ashes with the dust of the Gorgio. 

He had sought out his chieftain here in the new world in a spirit ofadventure, cupidity and desire. He had come like one who betrays, but heacknowledged to a higher force than his own and to superior rights whenGabriel Druse's strong arm brought him low; and, waking to life andconsciousness again, he was aware that another force also had levelledhim to the earth. That force was this woman's spirit which now gave himhis freedom so scornfully; who bade him begone and tell their peopleeverywhere that she was no longer a Romany, while she would go, no doubt--a thousand times without doubt unless he prevented it--to theswaggering Gorgio who had saved her on the Sagalac. 

She stood waiting for him to go, as though he could not refuse hisfreedom. As a bone is tossed to a dog, she gave it to him. 

"You have no right to set me free, " he said coolly now. "I am not yourprisoner. You tell me to take that word to the Romany people--that youleave them for ever. I will not do it. You are a Romany, and a Romanyyou must stay. You belong nowhere else. If you married a Gorgio, youwould still sigh for the camp beneath the stars, for the tambourine andthe dance--"

"And the fortune-telling, " she interjected sharply, "and the snail-soup, and the dirty blanket under the hedge, and the constable on the roadbehind, always just behind, watching, waiting, and--"

"The hedge is as clean as the dirty houses where the low-class Gorgiossleep. In faith, you are a long way from the River Starzke!" he added. "But you are my mad wife, and I must wait till you've got sense again. "

He sat down on the plank couch, and began to roll a cigarette once more. 

"You come fitted out like a Gorgio lass now, and you look like a Gorgiocountess, and you have the manners of an Archduchess; but that's nothing;it will peel off like a blister when it's pricked. Underneath is theRomany. It's there, and it will show red and angry when we've strippedoff the Gorgio. It's the way with a woman, always acting, alwaysimagining herself something else than what she is--if she's a beggarfancying herself a princess; if she's a princess fancying herself aflower-girl. 'Mi Duvel', but I know you all!"

Every word he said went home. She knew that there was truth in what hesaid, and that beneath all was the Romany blood; but she meant to conquerit. She had made her vow to one in England that she loved, and she wouldnot change. Whatever happened, she had finished with Romany life, and togo back would only mean black tragedy in the end. A month ago it was avow and an inner desire which made her determined; to-day it was the vowand a man--a Gorgio whom she had but now left in the woods, gazing afterher with the look which a woman so well interprets. 

"You mean you won't go free from here? Because I was a Romany, and wishyou no harm, I have come here to-day to let you go where you will--to goback to the place where the patrins show where your people travel. I setyou free, and you say what you think will hurt and shame me. You have acruel soul. You would torture any woman till she died. You shall nottorture me. You are as far from me as the River Starzke. I could havelet you stay here for my father to deal with, but I have set you free. I open the door for you, though you are nothing to me, and I am no moreto you than one of the women you have fooled and left to eat the vilebread of the forsaken. You have been, you are a wolf--a wolf. "

He got to his feet again, and the blood rushed to his face, so that itseemed almost black. A torrent of mad words gathered in his throat, butthey choked him, and in the pause his will asserted itself. He becamecool and deliberate. 

"You are right, my girl, I have sucked the orange and thrown the skinaway, and I've picked flowers and cast them by, but that was before thefirst day I saw you as you now are. You were standing by the Sagalaclooking out to the west where the pack-trains were travelling into thesun over the mountains, and you had your hand on the neck of your pony. I was not ten feet away from you, behind a juniper-bush. I looked atyou, and I wished that I had never seen a woman before and could look atthe world as you did then--it was like water from a spring, that look. You are right in what you say. By long and by last I had a hard hand, and when I left what I'd struck down I never looked back. But I saw you, and I wished I had never seen a woman before. You have been here alonewith me with that door shut. Have I said or done anything that a Gorgioduke wouldn't do? Ah, God's love, but you were bold to come! I marriedyou by the River Starzke; I looked upon you as my wife; and here you werealone with me! I had my rights, and I had been trampled underfoot byyour father--"

"By your Chief. "

"'Ay bor', by my Chief! I had my wrongs, and I had my rights, and youwere mine by Romany law. It was for me here to claim you--here where aRomany and his wife were alone together!"

His eyes were fixed searchingly on hers, as though he would read theeffect of his words before he replied, and his voice had a curious, roughnote, as though with difficulty he quelled the tempest within him. "I have my rights, and you had spat upon me, " he said with ferocioussoftness. 

She did not blench, but looked him steadily in the eyes. 

"I knew what would be in your mind, " she answered, "but that did not keepme from coming. You would not bite the hand that set you free. "

"You called me a wolf a minute ago. "

"But a wolf would not bite the hand that freed it from the trap. Yet ifsuch shame could be, I still would have had no fear, for I should haveshot you as wolves are shot that come too near the fold. "

He looked at her piercingly, and the pupils of his eyes narrowed to apin-point. "You would have shot me--you are armed?" he questioned. 

"Am I the only woman that has armed herself against you and such as you?Do you not see?"

"Mi Duvel, but I do see now with a thousand eyes!" he said hoarsely. 

His senses were reeling. Down beneath everything had been the thoughtthat, as he had prevailed with other women, he could prevail with her;that she would come to him in the end. He had felt, but he had declinedto see, the significance of her bearing, of her dress, of her speech, ofher present mode of life, of its comparative luxury, its socialdistinction of a kind which lifted her above even the Gorgios by whom shewas surrounded. A fatuous belief in himself and in his personal powershad deluded him. He had told the truth when he said that no woman hadever appealed to him as she did; that she had blotted out all other womenfrom the book of his adventurous and dissolute life; and he had dreamed adream of conquest of her when Fortune should hand out to him the key ofthe situation. Did not the beautiful Russian countess on the Volga fleefrom her liege lord and share his 'tan'? When he played his fiddle tothe Austrian princess, did she not give him a key to the garden where shewalked of an evening? And this was a Romany lass, daughter of hisChieftain, as he was son of a great Romany chief; and what marvel couldthere be that she who had been made his child wife, should be conqueredas others had been!

"'Mi Duvel', but I see!" he repeated in a husky fierceness. "I am yourhusband, but you would have killed me if I had taken a kiss from yourlips, sealed to me by all our tribes and by your father and mine. "

"My lips are my own, my life is my own, and when I marry, I shall marry aman of my own choosing, and he will not be a Romany, " she replied with alook of resolution which her beating heart belied. "I'm not a pedlar'sbasket. "

"'Kek! Kek'! That's plain, " he retorted. "But the 'wolf' is no lambeither! I said I would not go till your father set me free, since youhad no right to do so, but a wife should save her husband, and herhusband should set himself free for his wife's sake"--his voice rose infierce irony--"and so I will now go free. But I will not take the wordto the Romany people that you are no more of them. I am a true Romany. I disobeyed my 'Ry' in coming here because my wife was here, and I wantedher. I am a true Romany husband who will not betray his wife to herpeople; but I will have my way, and no Gorgio shall take her to his home. She belongs to my tent, and I will take her there. "

Her gesture of contempt, anger and negation infuriated him. "If I do nottake you to my 'tan', it will be because I'm dead, " he said, and hiswhite teeth showed fiercely. 

"I have set you free. You had better go, " she rejoined quietly. 

Suddenly he turned at the doorway. A look of passion burned in his eyes. His voice became soft and persuasive. "I would put the past behind me, and be true to you, my girl, " he said. "I shall be chief over all theRomany people when Duke Gabriel dies. We are sib; give me what is mine. I am yours--and I hold to my troth. Come, beloved, let us go together. "

A sigh broke from her lips, for she saw that, bad as he was, there was amoment's truth in his words. "Go while you can, " she said. "You arenothing to me. "

For an instant he hesitated, then, with a muttered oath, sprang out intothe bracken, and was presently lost among the trees. 

For a long time she sat in the doorway, and again and again her eyesfilled with tears. She felt a cloud of trouble closing in upon her. Atlast there was the sound of footsteps, and a moment later Gabriel Drusecame through the trees towards her. His eyes were sullen and brooding. 

"You have set him free?" he asked. 

She nodded. "It was madness keeping him here, " she said. 

"It is madness letting him go, " he answered morosely. "He will do harm. 'Ay bor', he will! I might have known--women are chicken-hearted. Iought to have put him out of the way, but I have no heart any more--noheart; I have the soul of a rabbit. "

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Saw how futile was much competitionWhen you strike your camp, put out the fires