initial commit of ebook 6284HEADmain

2 files changed, 11561 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/old/gp11110.txt b/old/gp11110.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c5bb75f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/gp11110.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11561 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook The World For Sale, by Parker, Complete
+#111 in our series by Gilbert Parker
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
+copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
+this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
+
+This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
+Gutenberg file.  Please do not remove it.  Do not change or edit the
+header without written permission.
+                    
+Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
+eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file.  Included is
+important information about your specific rights and restrictions in
+how the file may be used.  You can also find out about how to make a
+donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
+
+
+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
+
+**EBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*****These EBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers*****
+
+
+Title: The World For Sale, Complete
+
+Author: Gilbert Parker
+
+Release Date: August, 2004  [EBook #6284]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on December 5, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+
+
+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORLD FOR SALE, PARKER, Entire ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WORLD FOR SALE
+
+By Gilbert Parker
+
+
+
+CONTENTS:
+
+PRELUDE
+
+BOOK I
+
+I.        "THE DRUSES ARE UP!"
+II.       THE WHISPER FROM BEYOND
+III.      CONCERNING INGOLBY AND THE TWO TOWNS
+IV.       THE COMING OF JETHRO FAWE
+V.        "BY THE RIVER STARZKE....IT WAS SO DONE"
+VI.       THE UNGUARDED FIRES
+VII.      IN WHICH THE PRISONER GOES FREE
+
+
+BOOK II
+
+VIII.     THE SULTAN
+IX.       MATTER AND MIND AND TWO MEN
+X.        FOR LUCK
+XI.       THE SENTENCE OF THE PATRIN
+XII.      "LET THERE BE LIGHT"
+XIII.     THE CHAIN OF THE PAST
+XIV.      SUCH THINGS MAY NOT BE
+XV.       THE WOMAN FROM WIND RIVER
+XVI.      THE MAYOR FILLS AN OFFICE
+XVII.     THE MONSEIGNEUR AND THE NOMAD
+XVIII.    THE BEACONS
+XIX.      THE BEEPER OF THE BRIDGE
+
+
+BOOK III
+
+XX.       TWO LIFE PIECES
+XXI.      THE SNARE OF THE FOWLER
+XXII.     THE SECRET MAN
+XXIII.    THE RETURN OF BELISARIUS
+XXIV.     AT LONG LAST
+XXV.      MAN PROPOSES
+XXVI.     THE SLEEPER
+XXVII.    THE WORLD FOR SALE
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+'The World for Sale' is a tale of the primitive and lonely West and
+North, but the primitiveness and loneliness is not like that to be found
+in 'Pierre and His People'.  Pierre's wanderings took place in a period
+when civilization had made but scant marks upon the broad bosom of the
+prairie land, and towns and villages were few and far scattered.  The
+Lebanon 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 post
+at which Indians, half-breeds, and chance settlers occasionally gathered
+for trade and exchange-furs, groceries, clothing, blankets, tobacco, and
+other things; and in the long winters the post was as isolated as an
+oasis in the Sahara.
+
+That old life was lonely and primitive, but it had its compensating
+balance of bright sun, wild animal life, and an air as vivid and virile
+as ever stirred the veins of man.  Sometimes the still, bright cold was
+broken by a terrific storm, which ravaged, smothered, and entombed the
+stray traveller in ravines of death.  That was in winter; but in summer,
+what had been called, fifty years ago, an alkali desert was an
+everlasting stretch of untilled soil, with unsown crops, and here and
+there 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 that
+time; the incidents in 'The World for Sale', and the whole narrative, are
+true to the life of a very few years ago.  Railways have pierced and
+opened up lonely regions of the Sagalae, and there are two thriving towns
+where, in the days of Pierre, only stood a Hudson's Bay Company's post
+with its store.  Now, as far as eye can see, vast fields of grain greet
+the eye, and houses and barns speckle the greenish brown or Tuscan yellow
+of the crop-covered lands, while towns like Lebanon and Manitou provide
+for the modern settler all the modern conveniences which science has
+given to civilized municipalities.  Today the motor-car and the telephone
+are as common in such places as they are in a thriving town of the United
+Kingdom.  After the first few days of settlement two things always
+appear--a school-house and a church.  Probably there is no country in the
+world where elementary education commands the devotion and the cash of
+the people as in English Canada; that is why the towns of Lebanon and
+Manitou had from the first divergent views.  Lebanon was English,
+progressive, and brazenly modern; Manitou was slow, reactionary, more or
+less indifferent to education, and strenuously Catholic, and was thus
+opposed to the militant Protestantism of Lebanon.
+
+It was my idea to picture a situation in the big new West where destiny
+is being worked out in the making of a nation and the peopling of the
+wastes.  I selected a very modern and unusual type of man as the central
+figure of my story.  He was highly educated, well born, and carefully
+brought up.  He possessed all the best elements of a young man in a new
+country--intelligent self-dependence, skill, daring, vision.  He had an
+original 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 in
+old countries have to face, namely the disturbance of rooted interests.
+Certainly rooted interests in towns but a generation old cannot be
+extensive or remarkable, but if they are associated with habits and
+principles, they may be as deadly as those which test the qualities and
+wreck the careers of men in towns as old as London.  The difference,
+however, between the old European town and the new Western town is that
+differences in the Western town are more likely to take physical form,
+as was the case in the life of Ingolby.  In order to accentuate the
+primitive and yet highly civilized nature of the life I chose my heroine
+from a race and condition more unsettled and more primitive than that of
+Lebanon 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 come
+I made her a convert to the settled life of civilization.  I had known
+such a woman, older, but with the same characteristics, the same
+struggles, temptations, and suffering the same restriction of her life
+and movements by the prejudice in her veins--the prejudice of racial
+predilection.
+
+Looking at the story now after its publication, I am inclined to think
+that the introduction of the gipsy element was too bold, yet I believe
+it was carefully worked out in construction, and was a legitimate,
+intellectual enterprise.  The danger of it was that it might detract from
+the 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 this
+doubt which has occurred to me.  They realize perhaps more faithfully
+than some of the English critics have done that these mad contrasts are
+by no means uncommon in the primitive and virile life of the West and
+North.  Just as California in the old days, just as Ballaret in Australia
+drew the oddest people from every corner of the world, so Western towns,
+with new railways, brought strange conglomerations into the life.  For
+instance, a town like Winnipeg has sections which represent the life of
+nearly every race of Europe, and towns like Lebanon and Manitou, with
+English and French characteristics controlling them mainly, are still as
+subject to outside racial influences as to inside racial antagonisms.
+
+I believe The World for Sale shows as plainly as anything can show the
+vexed and conglomerate life of a Western town.  It shows how racial
+characteristics may clash, disturb, and destroy, and yet how wisdom,
+tact, and lucky incident may overcome almost impossible situations.  The
+antagonisms between Lebanon and Manitou were unwillingly and unjustly
+deepened by the very man who had set out to bring them together, as one
+of 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 his
+own 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 chief
+characters in the book are lifted out of the life as one has seen it.
+Men like Osterhaut and Jowett, Indians like Tekewani, doctors like
+Rockwell, priests like Monseigneur Fabre, ministers like Mr. Tripple, and
+ne'er-do-weels like Marchand may be found in many a town of the West and
+North.  Naturally the book must lack in something of that magnetic
+picturesqueness and atmosphere which belongs to the people in the
+Province of Quebec.  Western and Northern life has little of the settled
+charm which belongs to the old civilization of the French province.  The
+only way to recapture that charm is to place Frenchmen in the West, and
+have 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 and
+His People, but with the exception of Monseigneur Fabre there is no
+Frenchman in this book who fulfils, or could fulfil, the temperamental
+place which I have indicated.  Men like Monseigneur Fabre have lived in
+the West, and worked and slaved like him, blest and beloved by all
+classes, creeds, and races.  Father Lacombe was one of them.  The part he
+played in the life of Western Canada will be written some day by one who
+understands how such men, celibate, and dedicated to religious life, may
+play a stupendous part in the development of civilization.  Something of
+him 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 broke
+out.  It was published serially in the year 1915 and the beginning of
+1916.  It must, therefore, go to the public on the basis of its merits
+alone, 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 under
+coverlets of gold.  From the rise above the town of Lebanon, there
+stretched out ungarnered wheat in the ear as far as sight could reach,
+and the place itself and the neighbouring town of Manitou on the other
+side of the Sagalac River were like islands washed by a topaz sea.
+
+Standing upon the Rise, lost in the prospect, was an old, white-haired
+man in the cassock of a priest, with grey beard reaching nearly to the
+waist.
+
+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 this
+expanse of teeming life when it was thought to be an alkali desert, fit
+only to be invaded by the Blackfeet and the Cree and the Blood Indians on
+a foray for food and furs.  Here he had come fifty years before, and had
+gone West and North into the mountains in the Summer season, when the
+land was tremulous with light and vibrating to the hoofs of herds of
+buffalo 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 said
+mass now and then, and heard the sorrows and sins of men and women, and
+gave them "ghostly comfort," while priests younger than himself took the
+burden of parish-work from his shoulders.
+
+For a lifetime he had laboured among the Indians and the few whites and
+squaw-men and half-breeds, with neither settlement nor progress.  Then,
+all at once, the railway; and people coming from all the world, and
+cities springing up!  Now once more he was living the life of
+civilization, exchanging raw flesh of fish and animals and a meal of
+tallow or pemmican for the wheaten loaf; the Indian tepee for the warm
+house with the mansard roof; the crude mass beneath the trees for the
+refinements 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 memory
+of the countless times he had watched such flights, had seen thousands
+of wild ducks hurrying down a valley, had watched a family of herons
+stretching away to some lonely water-home.  And then another sound
+greeted his ear.  It was shrill, sharp and insistent.  A great serpent
+was stealing out of the East and moving down upon Lebanon.  It gave
+out puffs of smoke from its ungainly head.  It shrieked in triumph as
+it came.  It was the daily train from the East, arriving at the Sagalac
+River.
+
+"These things must be," he said aloud as he looked.  While he lost
+himself again in reminiscence, a young man came driving across the
+plains, passing beneath where he stood.  The young man's face and figure
+suggested power.  In his buggy was a fishing-rod.
+
+His hat was pulled down over his eyes, but he was humming cheerfully to
+himself.  When he saw the priest, he raised his hat respectfully, yet
+with an air of equality.
+
+"Good day, Monseigneur" (this honour of the Church had come at last to
+the aged missionary), he said warmly.  "Good day--good day!"
+
+The priest raised his hat and murmured the name, "Ingolby."  As the
+distance grew between them, he said sadly: "These are the men who change
+the 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 Truth
+before the trader."
+
+Now another traveller came riding out of Lebanon towards him, galloping
+his horse up-hill and down.  He also was young, but nothing about him
+suggested power, only self-indulgence.  He, too, raised his hat, or
+rather swung it from his head in a devil-may-care way, and overdid his
+salutation.  He did not speak.  The priest's face was very grave, if not
+a little resentful.  His salutation was reserved.
+
+"The tyranny of gold," he murmured, "and without the mind or energy that
+created it.  Felix was no name for him.  Ingolby is a builder, perhaps a
+jerry-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, and
+plans big things.  But Felix Marchand there--"
+
+He stopped short.
+
+"Such men must be, perhaps," he added.  Then, after a moment, as he gazed
+round again upon the land of promise which he had loved so long, he
+murmured 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 BEYOND
+III.  CONCERNING INGOLBY AND THE TWO TOWNS
+IV.  THE COMING OF JETHRO FAWE
+V.  "BY THE RIVER STARZKE....IT WAS SO DONE"
+VI.  THE UNGUARDED FIRES
+VII.  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 !" exclaimed
+Osterhaut, the Jack-of-all-trades at Lebanon.
+
+"She ain't such a fool as all that.  Why, no one ever done it alone.  Low
+water, too, when every rock's got its chance at the canoe.  But, my
+gracious, 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 tribe
+an' 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 bank
+if she wanted to.  She's got to run 'em.  Holy smoke, see her wavin' the
+paddle at Tekewani!  Osterhaut, she's the limit, that petticoat--so quiet
+and 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 up
+some day-by gorry, she'll make Manitou and Lebanon sit up to-day if she
+runs 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 waving
+his arms towards the adventurous girl.
+
+The girl had reached the angry, thrashing waters where the rocks rent and
+tore into white ribbons the onrushing current, and her first trial had
+come on the instant the spitting, raging panthers of foam struck the bow
+of her canoe.  The waters were so low that this course, which she had
+made once before with her friend Tekewani the Blackfeet chief, had perils
+not met on that desperate journey.  Her canoe struck a rock slantwise,
+shuddered and swung round, but by a dexterous stroke she freed the frail
+craft.  It righted and plunged forward again into fresh death-traps.
+
+It was these new dangers which had made Tekewani try to warn her from the
+shore--he and the dozen braves with him: but it was characteristic of his
+race that, after the first warning, when she must play out the game to
+the bitter end, he made no further attempt to stop her.  The Indians ran
+down 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 as
+fast as they could, over fences, through the trees, stumbling and
+occasionally cursing, but watching with fascinated eyes this adventuress
+of 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 the
+lure.  Why should she do it?
+
+"Women folks are sick darn fools when they git goin'," gasped Osterhaut
+as he ran.  "They don't care a split pea what happens when they've got
+the pip.  Look at her--my hair's bleachin'."
+
+"She's got the pip all right," stuttered Jowett as he plunged along; "but
+she'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'd
+let her be, Osterhaut.  What's the good of havin' your own way with one
+that's the apple of your eye, if it turns her agin you?  You want her to
+kiss 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 at
+her, son!  What are the wild waves saying?  They're sayin', 'This is a
+surprise, Miss Druse.  Not quite ready for ye, Miss Druse.'   My, ain't
+she 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 the
+paddle made swift play, and again the cockle-shell swung clear.  But now
+Fleda Druse was no longer on her feet.  She knelt, her strong, slim brown
+arms bared to the shoulder, her hair blown about her forehead, her daring
+eyes flashing to left and right, memory of her course at work under such
+a strain as few can endure without chaos of mind in the end.  A hundred
+times since the day she had run these Rapids with Tekewani, she had gone
+over the course in her mind, asleep and awake, forcing her brain to see
+again every yard of that watery way; because she knew that the day must
+come when she would make the journey alone.  Why she would make it she
+did not know; she only knew that she would do it some day; and the day
+had come.  For long it had been an obsession with her--as though some
+spirit whispered in her ear--"Do you hear the bells ringing at Carillon?
+Do you hear the river singing towards Carillon?  Do you see the wild
+birds flying towards Carillon?  Do you hear the Rapids calling--the
+Rapids 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 a
+token of her gratitude--night and day she had heard this spirit murmuring
+in 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 the
+things beyond the why of the human mind.  Sometimes all our lives, if we
+keep our souls young, and see the world as we first saw it with eyes and
+heart unsoiled, we hear the murmuring of the Other Self, that Self from
+which we separated when we entered this mortal sphere, but which followed
+us, invisible yet whispering inspiration to us.  But sometimes we only
+hear It, our own soul's oracle, while yet our years are few, and we have
+not passed that frontier between innocence and experience, reality and
+pretence.  Pretence it is which drives the Other Self away with wailing
+on its lips.  Then we hear It cry in the night when, because of the
+trouble of life, we cannot sleep; or at the play when we are caught away
+from ourselves into another air than ours; when music pours around us
+like a soft wind from a garden of pomegranates; or when a child asks a
+question which brings us back to the land where everything is so true
+that 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 at
+Manitou, and it said simply the one word, "Now!"  She knew that she must
+do it; she had driven her canoe out into the resistless current to ride
+the Rapids of Carillon.  Her Other Self had whispered to her.
+
+Yonder, thousands of miles away in Syria, there were the Hills of
+Lebanon; and there was one phrase which made every Syrian heart beat
+faster, if he were on the march.  It was, "The Druses are up!"  When
+that wild tribe took to the saddle to war upon the Caravans and against
+authority, from Lebanon to Palmyra, from Jerusalem to Damascus men looked
+anxiously about them and rode hard to refuge.
+
+And here also in the Far North where the River Sagalac ran a wild race to
+Carillon, leaving behind the new towns of Lebanon and Manitou, "the
+Druses were up."
+
+The daughter of Gabriel Druse, the giant, was riding the Rapids of the
+Sagalac.  The suspense to her and to those who watched her course--to
+Tekewani and his braves, to Osterhaut and Jowett--could not be long.
+It was a matter of minutes only, in which every second was a miracle
+and 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 next
+test of skill and courage--on, on, till at last there was only one
+passage to make before the canoe would plunge into the smooth water
+running with great swiftness till it almost reached Carillon.
+
+Suddenly, as she neared the last dangerous point, round which she must
+swing between jagged and unseen barriers of rock, her sight became for an
+instant dimmed, as though a cloud passed over her eyes.  She had never
+fainted in her life, but it seemed to her now that she was hovering on
+unconsciousness.  Commending the will and energy left, she fought the
+weakness down.  It was as though she forced a way through tossing,
+buffeting shadows; as though she was shaking off from her shoulders
+shadowy hands which sought to detain her; as though smothering things
+kept choking back her breath, and darkness like clouds of wool gathered
+about her face.  She was fighting for her life, and for years it seemed
+to be; though indeed it was only seconds before her will reasserted
+itself, and light broke again upon her way.  Even on the verge of the
+last ambushed passage her senses came back; but they came with a stark
+realization of the peril ahead: it looked out of her eyes as a face shows
+itself at the window of a burning building.
+
+Memory shook itself free.  It pierced the tumult of waters, found the
+ambushed rocks, and guided the lithe brown arms and hands, so that the
+swift paddle drove the canoe straight onward, as a fish drives itself
+through a flume of dragon's teeth beneath the flood.  The canoe quivered
+for an instant at the last cataract, then responding to Memory and Will,
+sped through the hidden chasm, tossed by spray and water, and swept into
+the swift current of smooth water below.
+
+Fleda Druse had run the Rapids of Carillon.  She could hear the bells
+ringing for evening service in the Catholic Church of Carillon, and
+bells-soft, booming bells-were ringing in her own brain.  Like muffled
+silver these brain-bells were, and she was as one who enters into a deep
+forest, and hears far away in the boscage the mystic summons of forest
+deities.  Voices from the banks of the river behind called to her--
+hilarious, approving, agitated voices of her Indian friends, and of
+Osterhaut and Jowett, those wild spectators of her adventure: but they
+were not wholly real.  Only those soft, booming bells in her brain were
+real.
+
+Shooting the Rapids of Carillon was the bridge by which she passed from
+the world she had left to this other.  Her girlhood was ended--wondering,
+hovering, unrealizing girlhood.  This adventure was the outward sign, the
+rite in the Lodge of Life which passed her from one degree of being to
+another.
+
+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, again
+her face was muffled in smothering folds; again great hands reached out
+towards her; again her eyes were drawn into a stupefying darkness; but
+now there was no will to fight, no energy to resist.  The paddle lay
+inert in her fingers, her head drooped.  She slowly raised her head once,
+twice, as though the call of the exhausted will was heard, but suddenly
+it fell heavily upon her breast.  For a moment so, and then as the canoe
+shot forward on a fresh current, the lithe body sank backwards in the
+canoe, and lay face upward to the evening sky.
+
+The canoe sped on, but presently it swung round and lay athwart the
+current, dipping and rolling.
+
+From the banks on either side, the Indians of the Manitou Reservation and
+the two men from Lebanon called out and hastened on, for they saw that
+the girl had collapsed, and they knew only too well that her danger was
+not yet past.  The canoe might strike against the piers of the bridge at
+Carillon and overturn, or it might be carried to the second cataract
+below the town.  They were too far away to save her, but they kept
+shouting as they ran.
+
+None responded to their call, but that defiance of the last cataract of
+the Rapids of Carillon had been seen by one who, below an eddy on the
+Lebanon side of the river, was steadily stringing upon maple-twigs black
+bass and long-nosed pike.  As he sat in the shade of the trees, he had
+seen the plunge of the canoe into the chasm, and had held his breath in
+wonder and admiration.  Even at that distance he knew who it was.  He had
+seen Fleda only a few times before, for she was little abroad; but when
+he had seen her he had asked himself what such a face and form were doing
+in the Far North.  It belonged to Andalusia, to the Carpathians, to
+Syrian villages.
+
+"The pluck of the very devil!" he had exclaimed, as Fleda's canoe swept
+into the smooth current, free of the dragon's teeth; and as he had
+something of the devil in himself, she seemed much nearer to him than the
+hundreds of yards of water intervening.  Presently, however, he saw her
+droop and sink away out of sight.
+
+For an instant he did not realize what had happened, and then, with angry
+self-reproach, he flung the oars into the rowlocks of his skiff and drove
+down and athwart the stream with long, powerful strokes.
+
+"That's like a woman!" he said to himself as he bent to the oars, and
+now 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 great
+interests, disturber of the peace of slow minds, who had come to Lebanon
+with the avowed object of amalgamating three railways, of making the
+place the swivel of all the trade and interests of the Western North; but
+also with the declared intention of uniting Lebanon and Manitou in one
+municipality, one centre of commercial and industrial power.
+
+Men said he had bitten off more than he could chew, but he had replied
+that his teeth were good, and he would masticate the meal or know the
+reason why.  He was only thirty-three, but his will was like nothing the
+West had seen as yet.  It was sublime in its confidence, it was free from
+conceit, and it knew not the word despair, though once or twice it had
+known 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" the
+financier in a horsedeal, and had been done instead, and was now a devout
+admirer and adherent of the Master Man.  "I saw him driving down there
+this morning from Lebanon.  He's been fishing at Seely's Eddy."
+
+"When Ingolby goes fishing, there's trouble goin' on somewhere and he's
+stalkin' it," rejoined Osterhaut.  "But, by gol, he's goin' to do this
+trump trick first; he's goin' to overhaul her before she gits to the
+bridge.  Look at him swing!  Hell, ain't it pretty!  There you go, old
+Ingolby.  You're right on it, even when you're fishing."
+
+On the other-the Manitou-shore Tekewani and his braves were less
+talkative, but they were more concerned in the incident than Osterhaut
+and Jowett.  They knew little or nothing of Ingolby the hustler, but they
+knew more of Fleda Druse and her father than all the people of Lebanon
+and Manitou put together.  Fleda had won old Tekewani's heart when she
+had asked him to take her down the Rapids, for the days of adventure for
+him and his tribe were over.  The adventure shared with this girl had
+brought back to the chief the old days when Indian women tanned bearskins
+and deerskins day in, day out, and made pemmican of the buffalo-meat;
+when the years were filled with hunting and war and migrant journeyings
+to 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 the
+Indian Commissioner for being drunk.  Danger faced had restored it, and
+Fleda Druse had brought the danger to him as a gift.
+
+If the canoe should crash against the piers of the bridge, if it should
+drift to the cataract below, if anything should happen to this white girl
+whom 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 watch
+an enemy a hundred times stronger than one's self.  The white man's skiff
+was near the derelict canoe; the bridge was near also.  Carillon now
+lined 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, Ingolby
+got possession of the rolling canoe; where Fleda Druse lay waiting like a
+princess to be waked by the kiss of destiny.
+
+Only five hundred yards below the bridge was the second cataract, and she
+would 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 with
+white face upturned, the paddle still in her hand.
+
+"Drowning isn't good enough for her," he said, as he fastened her canoe
+to his skiff.
+
+"It's been a full day's work," he added; and even in this human crisis he
+thought of the fish he had caught, of "the big trouble," he had been
+thinking out as Osterhaut had said, as well as of the girl that he was
+saving.
+
+"I always have luck when I go fishing," he added presently.  "I can take
+her back to Lebanon," he continued with a quickening look.  "She'll be
+all right in a jiffy.  I've got room for her in my buggy--and room for
+her in any place that belongs to me," he hastened to reflect with a
+curious, bashful smile.
+
+"It's like a thing in a book," he murmured, as he neared the waiting
+people on the banks of Carillon, and the ringing of the vesper bells came
+out to him on the evening air.
+
+"Is she dead?" some one whispered, as eager hands reached out to secure
+his skiff to the bank.
+
+"As dead as I am," he answered with a laugh, and drew Fleda's canoe up
+alongside 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 tried
+against a woman's will.  It was, however, tried sorely when Fleda came to
+consciousness again in his arms and realized that a man's face was nearer
+to hers than any man's had ever been except that of her own father.  Her
+eyes opened slowly, and for the instant she did not understand, but when
+she 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 to
+Lebanon."  He spoke as calmly as he could, for there was a strange
+fluttering 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, caught
+her.
+
+"Give her air, and stand back!" called the sharp voice of the constable
+of Carillon, and he heaved the people back with his powerful shoulders.
+
+A space was cleared round the place where Fleda sat with her head
+against the shoulder of the stately woman in black who had come to her
+assistance.  A dipper of water was brought, and when she had drunk it
+she raised her head slowly and her eyes sought those of Ingolby.
+
+"One cannot pay for such things," she said to him, meeting his look
+firmly and steeling herself to thank him.  Though deeply grateful, it was
+a trial beyond telling to be obliged to owe the debt of a life to any
+one, and in particular to a man of the sort to whom material gifts could
+not 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 evidently
+desired him to feel.  He had intuition, if not enough of it, for the
+regions where the mind of Fleda Druse dwelt.
+
+"I couldn't very well decline, could I?" she rejoined, quick humour
+shooting into her eyes.  "I was helpless.  I never fainted before in my
+life."
+
+"I am sure you will never faint again," he remarked.  "We only do such
+things when we are very young."
+
+She was about to reply, but paused reflectively.  Her half-opened lips
+did not frame the words she had been impelled to speak.
+
+Admiration was alive in his eyes.  He had never seen this type of
+womanhood 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, sweeping
+over 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 classic
+in its intellectual fulness; but the skin was so fresh, even when pale as
+now, and with such an underglow of vitality, that the woman in her, sex
+and the possibilities of sex, cast a glamour over the intellect and
+temperament showing in every line of her contour.  In contrast to the
+light brown of the hair was the very dark brown of the eyes and the still
+darker brown of the eyelashes.  The face shone, the eyes burned, and the
+piquancy of the contrast between the soft illuminating whiteness of the
+skin and the flame in the eyes had fascinated many more than Ingolby.
+
+Her figure was straight yet supple, somewhat fuller than is modern
+beauty, with hints of Juno-like stateliness to come; and the curves of
+her bust, the long lines of her limbs, were not obscured by her
+absolutely plain gown of soft, light-brown linen.  She was tall, but not
+too commanding, and, as her hand was raised to fasten back a wisp of
+hair, there was the motion of as small a wrist and as tapering a bare arm
+as ever made prisoner of a man's neck.
+
+Impulse was written in every feature, in the passionate eagerness of
+her body; yet the line from the forehead to the chin, and the firm
+shapeliness 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 a
+slim foot it was altogether a personality which hinted at history--at
+tragedy, 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, happenings
+which had nothing to do with the life she was living.  So this duenna of
+Gabriel Druse's household, this aristocratic, silent woman was ever on
+the watch for some sudden revelation of a being which had not found
+itself, and which must find itself through perils and convulsions.
+
+That was why, to-day, she had hesitated to leave Fleda alone and come to
+Carillon, to be at the bedside of a dying, friendless woman whom by
+chance she had come to know.  In the street she had heard of what was
+happening on the river, and had come in time to receive Fleda from the
+arms 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 with
+a reproachful look.  "Did you fly?  You are so light, so thin, you could
+breathe yourself here," rejoined the girl, with a gentle, quizzical
+smile.  "But, no," she added, "I remember, you were to be here at
+Carillon."
+
+"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 her
+with respectful admiration from a decent distance.  They had the chivalry
+towards woman so characteristic of the West.  There was no vulgarity in
+their curiosity, though most of them had never seen her before.  All,
+however, had heard of her and her father, the giant greybeard who moved
+and lived in an air of mystery, and apparently secret wealth, for more
+than once he had given large sums--large in the eyes of folks of moderate
+means, when charity was needed; as in the case of the floods the year
+before, and in the prairie-fire the year before that, when so many people
+were made homeless, and also when fifty men had been injured in one
+railway accident.  On these occasions he gave disproportionately to his
+mode of life.
+
+Now, when they saw that Fleda was about to move away, they drew just a
+little nearer, and presently one of the crowd could contain his
+admiration 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 boisterous
+but 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 the
+antiphon.
+
+"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 wagon
+which they had commandeered, and, about the same time, from across the
+bridge, came running Tekewani and his braves.
+
+"She done it like a kingfisher," cried Osterhaut.  "Manitou's got the
+belt."
+
+Fleda Druse's friendly eyes were given only for one instant to Osterhaut
+and his friend.  Her gaze became fixed on Tekewani who, silent, and with
+immobile face, stole towards her.  In spite of the civilization which
+controlled him, he wore Indian moccasins and deerskin breeches, though
+his coat was rather like a shortened workman's blouse.  He did not belong
+to the life about him; he was a being apart, the spirit of vanished and
+vanishing days.
+
+"Tekewani--ah, Tekewani, you have come," the girl said, and her eyes
+smiled at him as they had not smiled at Ingolby or even at the woman in
+black beside her.
+
+"How!" the chief replied, and looked at her with searching, worshipping
+eyes.
+
+"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 a
+gesture of awe.
+
+"I remembered all--all.  You were my master, Tekewani."
+
+"But only once with me it was, Summer Song," he persisted.  Summer Song
+was his name for her.
+
+"I saw it--saw it, every foot of the way," she insisted.  "I thought
+hard, oh, hard as the soul thinks.  And I saw it all."  There was
+something singularly akin in the nature of the girl and the Indian.  She
+spoke to him as she never spoke to any other.
+
+"Too much seeing, it is death," he answered.  "Men die with too much
+seeing.  I have seen them die.  To look hard through deerskin curtains,
+to see through the rock, to behold the water beneath the earth, and the
+rocks 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 black
+water," 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 tempt
+us to death.  It matters not what comes to Tekewani; he is as the leaf
+that falls from the stem; but for Summer Song that has far to go, it is
+the 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 this
+world.
+
+"I don't know why I did it," she added meaningly.  "It was selfish.  I
+feel 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 whispers
+over 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 the
+Few.  It whispers, and the whisper must be obeyed.  So it was from the
+beginning."
+
+"Yes, you understand, Tekewani," she answered softly.  "I did it because
+something 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, this
+dispossessed, illiterate Indian chieftain.  Yet, was he so illiterate?
+Had he not read in books which so few have learned to read?  His life had
+been broken on the rock of civilization, but his simple soul had learned
+some elemental truths--not many, but the essential ones, without which
+there is no philosophy, no understanding.  He knew Fleda Druse was
+thinking 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?  She
+raised 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 the
+street, 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 dandified
+dress.  His glossy black hair fell carelessly over his smooth forehead
+from under a soft, wide-awake hat.
+
+"Manitou for ever!" he cried, with a flourish of his hand.  "I salute
+the brave.  I escort the brave to the gates of Manitou.  I escort the
+brave.  I escort the brave.  Salut!  Salut!  Salut!  Well done, Beauty
+Beauty--Beauty--Beauty, well done again!"
+
+He held out his hand to Fleda, but she drew back with disgust.  Felix
+Marchand, the son of old Hector Marchand, money-lender and capitalist of
+Manitou, had pressed his attentions upon her during the last year since
+he had returned from the East, bringing dissoluteness and vulgar pride
+with him.  Women had spoiled him, money had corrupted and degraded him.
+
+"Come, beautiful brave, it's Salut!  Salut!  Salut!" he said, bending
+towards 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 flung
+him at the feet of Tekewani and his braves.
+
+At this moment Tekewani's eyes had such a fire as might burn in Wotan's
+smithy.  He was ready enough to defy the penalty of the law for
+assaulting a white man, but Felix Marchand was in the dust, and that
+would do for the moment.
+
+With grim face Ingolby stood over the begrimed figure.  "There's the
+river if you want more," he said.  "Tekewani knows where the water's
+deepest."  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, amid
+the jeers of the crowd, he went back to the tavern where he had been
+carousing.
+
+
+
+
+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, yet
+whose 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 the
+impossible things.  From her had come the spirit which would not be
+denied.
+
+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 most
+prizes 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 a
+picnic, or the sports of the school or town--at no cost to himself.  His
+finance in even this limited field had been brilliant.  Other people
+paid, and he did the work; and he did it with such ease that the others
+intriguing to crowd him out, suffered failure and came to him in the end
+to put things right.
+
+He became the village doctor's assistant and dispenser at seventeen and
+induced his master to start a drug-store.  He made the drug-store a
+success within two years, and meanwhile he studied Latin and Greek
+and mathematics in every spare hour he had--getting up at five in the
+morning, and doing as much before breakfast as others did in a whole day.
+His doctor loved him and helped him; a venerable Archdeacon, an Oxford
+graduate, gave him many hours of coaching, and he went to the University
+with three scholarships.  These were sufficient to carry him through in
+three years, and there was enough profit-sharing from the drug-business
+he 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 last
+by the Bursar of his college to reorganize the commissariat, which he did
+with such success that the college saved five thousand dollars a year.
+He had genius, the college people said, and after he had taken his degree
+with honours in classics and mathematics they offered him a professorship
+at two thousand dollars a year.
+
+He laughed ironically, but yet with satisfaction, when the professorship
+was offered.  It was all so different from what was in his mind for the
+future.  As he looked out of the oriel window in the sweet gothic
+building, to the green grass and the maples and elms which made the
+college grounds like an old-world park, he had a vision of himself
+permanently in these surroundings of refinement growing venerable with
+years, 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 that
+such a life would act like a narcotic to his real individuality.  He
+thirsted for contest, for the control of brain and will; he wanted to
+construct; he was filled with the idea of simplifying things, of
+economizing strength; he saw how futile was much competition, and how the
+big brain could command and control with ease, wasting no force, saving
+labour, making the things controlled bigger and better.
+
+So it came that his face was seen no more in the oriel window.  With a
+mere handful of dollars, and some debts, he left the world of scholarship
+and superior pedagogy, and went where the head offices of railways were.
+Railways were the symbol of progress in his mind.  The railhead was the
+advance post of civilization.  It was like Cortez and his Conquistadores
+overhauling and appropriating the treasures of long generations.  So
+where should he go if not to the Railway?
+
+His first act, when he got to his feet inside the offices of the
+President of a big railway, was to show the great man how two "outside"
+proposed lines could be made one, and then further merged into the
+company controlled by the millionaire in whose office he sat.  He got his
+chance by his very audacity--the President liked audacity.  In attempting
+this merger, however, he had his first failure, but he showed that he
+could think for himself, and he was made increasingly responsible.  After
+a few years of notable service, he was offered the task of building a
+branch line of railway from Lebanon and Manitou north, and northwest, and
+on to the Coast; and he had accepted it, at the same time planning to
+merge certain outside lines competing with that which he had in hand.
+For over four years he worked night and day, steadily advancing towards
+his goal, breaking down opposition, manoeuvring, conciliating, fighting.
+
+Most men loved his whimsical turn of mind, even those who were the agents
+of the financial clique which had fought him in their efforts to get
+control of the commercial, industrial, transport and banking resources of
+the junction city of Lebanon.  In the days when vast markets would be
+established for Canadian wheat in Shanghai and Tokio, then these two
+towns of Manitou and Lebanon on the Sagalac would be like the swivel to
+the organization of trade of a continent.
+
+Ingolby had worked with this end in view.  In doing so he had tried to
+get what he wanted without trickery; to reach his goal by playing the
+game according to the rules, and this policy nonplussed his rivals and
+associates.  They expected secret moves, and he laid his cards on the
+table.  Sharp, quick, resolute and ruthless he was, however, if he knew
+that he was being tricked.  Then he struck, and struck hard.  The war of
+business was war and not "gollyfoxing," as he said.  Selfish, stubborn
+and self-centred he was in much, but he had great joy in the natural and
+sincere, and he had a passionate love of Nature.  To him the flat prairie
+was never ugly.  Its very monotony had its own individuality.  The
+Sagalac, even when muddy, had its own deep interest, and when it was full
+of logs drifting down to the sawmills, for which he had found the money
+by interesting capitalists in the East, he sniffed the stinging smell of
+the pines with elation.  As the great saws in the mills, for which he had
+secured the capital, throwing off the spray of mangled wood, hummed and
+buzzed and sang, his mouth twisted in the droll smile it always wore when
+he talked with such as Jowett and Osterhaut, whose idiosyncrasies were
+like a meal to him; as he described it once to some of the big men from
+the 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 loyal
+to those who had backed him, he vowed that he would be independent of
+these wooden souls in the end.  They and the great bankers behind them
+were for monopoly; he was for organization and for economic prudence.  So
+far they were necessary to all he did; but it was his intention to shake
+himself free of all monopoly in good time.  One or two of his colleagues
+saw the drift of his policy and would have thrown him over if they could
+have replaced him by a man as capable, who would, at the time, consent to
+grow rich on their terms.
+
+They could not understand a man who would stand for a half-hour watching
+a sunset, or a morning sky dappled with all the colours that shake from a
+prism; they were suspicious of a business-mind which could gloat over the
+light falling on snow-peaked mountains, while it planned a great bridge
+across a gorge in the same hour; of a man who would quote a verse of
+poetry while a flock of wild pigeons went whirring down a pine-girt
+valley in the shimmer of the sun.
+
+On the occasion when he had quoted a verse of poetry to them, one of them
+said to him with a sidelong glance: "You seem to be dead-struck on
+Nature, Ingolby."
+
+To that, with a sly quirk of the mouth, and meaning to mystify his
+wooden-headed questioner still more, he answered: "Dead-struck?  Dead-
+drunk, you mean.  I'm a Nature's dipsomaniac--as you can see," he added
+with a sly note of irony.
+
+Then instantly he had drawn the little circle of experts into a
+discussion upon technical questions of railway-building and finance,
+which made demands upon all their resources and knowledge.  In that
+conference he gave especial attention to the snub-souled financier who
+had sneered at his love of Nature.  He tied his critic up in knots of
+self-assertion and bad logic which presently he deftly, deliberately and
+skilfully untied, to the delight of all the group.
+
+"He's got as much in his ten years in the business as we've got out
+of half a life-time," said the chief of his admirers.  This was the
+President who had first welcomed him into business, and introduced him to
+his 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 in
+check by the fact that on Ingolby, for the moment, depended the safety
+of the hard cash he had invested.
+
+But the qualities which alienated an expert here and there caught the
+imagination of the pioneer spirits of Lebanon.  Except those who, for
+financial reasons, were opposed to him, and must therefore pit themselves
+against him, as the representatives of bigger forces behind them, he was
+a leader of whom Lebanon was combatively proud.  At last he came to the
+point where his merger was practically accomplished, and a problem
+arising out of it had to be solved.  It was a problem which taxed every
+quality of an able mind.  The situation had at last become acute, and
+Time, the solvent of most complications, had not quite eased the strain.
+Indeed, on the day that Fleda Druse had made her journey down the
+Carillon Rapids, Time's influence had not availed.  So he had gone
+fishing, with millions at stake--to the despair of those who were risking
+all on his skill and judgment.
+
+But that was Ingolby.  Thinking was the essence of his business, not
+Time.  As fishing was the friend of thinking, therefore he fished in
+Seely's Eddy, saw Fleda Druse run the Carillon Rapids, saved her from
+drowning, 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 the
+town of Manitou, backed by a grove of pines.  Its front windows faced the
+Sagalac, and the windows behind looked into cool coverts where in old
+days many Indian tribes had camped; where Hudson's Bay Company's men had
+pitched their tents to buy the red man's furs.  But the red man no longer
+set up his tepee in these secluded groves; the wapiti and red deer had
+fled to the north never to return, the snarling wolf had stolen into
+regions more barren; the ceremonial of the ancient people no longer made
+weird the lonely nights; the medicine-man's incantations, the harvest-
+dance, the green-corn-dance, the sun-dance had gone.  The braves, their
+women, and their tepees had been shifted to reservations where
+Governments solemnly tried to teach them to till the field, and grow
+corn, and drive the cart to market; while yet they remembered the herds
+of buffalo which had pounded down the prairie like storm-clouds and given
+their hides for the tepee; and the swift deer whose skins made the wigwam
+luxurious.
+
+Originally Manitou had been the home of Icelanders, Mennonites, and
+Doukhobors; settlers from lands where the conditions of earlier centuries
+prevailed, who, simple as they were in habits and in life, were
+ignorant, primitive, coarse, and none too cleanly.
+
+They had formed an unprogressive polyglot settlement, and the place
+assumed a still more primeval character when the Indian Reservation was
+formed near by.  When French Canadian settlers arrived, however, the
+place became less discordant to the life of a new democracy, though they
+did 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 thrown
+up.
+
+Manitou showed itself antagonistic to progress; it was old-fashioned, and
+primitively agricultural.  It looked with suspicion on the factories
+built after Ingolby came and on the mining propositions, which circled
+the place with speculation.  Unlike other towns of the West, it was
+insanitary and uneducated; it was also given to nepotism and a primitive
+kind of jobbery; but, on the whole, it was honest.  It was a settlement
+twenty years before Lebanon had a house, though the latter exceeded the
+population of Manitou in five years, and became the home of all
+adventuring spirits--land agents, company promoters, mining prospectors,
+railway men, politicians, saloon keepers, and up to-date dissenting
+preachers.  Manitou was, however, full of back-water people, religious
+fanatics, little farmers, guides, trappers, old coureurs-de-bois,
+Hudson's Bay Company factors and ex-factors, half-breeds; and all the
+rest.
+
+The real feud between the two towns began about the time of the arrival
+of Gabriel Druse, his daughter, and Madame Bulteel, the woman in black,
+and it had grown with great rapidity and increasing intensity.  Manitou
+condemned the sacrilegiousness of the Protestants, whose meeting-houses
+were used for "socials," "tea-meetings," "strawberry festivals," and
+entertainments of many kinds; while comic songs were sung at the table
+where the solemn Love Feast was held at the quarterly meetings.  At last
+when attempts were made to elect to Parliament an Irish lawyer who added
+to 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 bridge
+built by Ingolby between the two towns might have been ten thousand yards
+long, so deep was the estrangement between the two places.  They had only
+one thing in common--a curious compromise--in the person of Nathan
+Rockwell, an agnostic doctor, who had arrived in Lebanon with a
+reputation for morality somewhat clouded; though, where his patients in
+Manitou and Lebanon were concerned, he had been the "pink of propriety."
+
+Rockwell had arrived in Lebanon early in its career, and had remained
+unimportant until a railway accident occurred at Manitou and the resident
+doctors were driven from the field of battle, one by death, and one by
+illness.  Then it was that the silent, smiling, dark-skinned, cool-headed
+and cool-handed Rockwell stepped in, and won for himself the gratitude of
+all--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 where
+she had been at school for one memorable and terrible six months, pining
+for her father, defying rules, and crying the night through for "the open
+world," as she called it.  So it was that, to her father's dismay and joy
+in one, she had fled from school, leaving all her things behind her; and
+had reached home with only the clothes on her back and a few cents in her
+pocket.
+
+Instantly on her return she had gone among the stricken people as
+fearlessly as Rockwell had done, but chiefly among the women and
+children; and it was said that the herbal medicine she administered was
+marvellous in its effect--so much so that Rockwell asked for the
+prescription, 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 toleration
+the girl who took their children away for picnics down the river or into
+the 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 Indian
+pony, 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, these
+grateful mothers of Manitou, they could not get as near to Fleda Druse as
+their children did, and they were vast distances from her father.
+
+"There, there, look at him," said old Madame Thibadeau to her neighbour
+Christine Brisson--"look at him with his great grey-beard, and his eyes
+like black fires, and that head of hair like a bundle of burnt flax!  He
+comes from the place no man ever saw, that's sure."
+
+"Ah, surelee, men don't grow so tall in any Christian country," announced
+Christine Brisson, her head nodding sagely.  "I've seen the pictures in
+the books, and there's nobody so tall and that looks like him--not
+anywhere since Adam."
+
+"Nom de pipe, sometimes-trulee, sometimes, I look up there at where he
+lives, and I think I see a thousand men on horses ride out of the woods
+behind his house and down here to gobble us all up.  That's the way I
+feel.  It's fancy, but I can't help that."  Dame Thibadeau rested her
+hands--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, but
+then as kind as kind to the children--of a good heart, surelee.  They say
+she 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't
+Ma'm'selle wear them?"
+
+Christine looked wise and smoothed out her apron as though it was a
+parchment.  "With such queer ones, who knows?  But, yes, as you say, she
+has a kind heart.  The children, well, they follow her everywhere."
+
+"Not the children only," sagely added the other.  "From Lebanon they
+come, the men, and plenty here, too; and there's that Felix Marchand, the
+worst 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 over
+in Lebanon--!"  She whispered darkly to her friend, and they nodded
+knowingly.
+
+"If he plays pranks in Manitou he'll get his throat cut, for sure.  Even
+with 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 Christine
+whispered, and again that ugly look came to their faces which belongs to
+the thought of forbidden things.
+
+"Felix Marchand'll have much money--bad penny as he is," continued
+Christine in her normal voice.  "He'll have more money than he can put in
+all the trouser legs he has.  Old Hector, his father, has enough for a
+gover'ment.  But that M'sieu' Felix will get his throat cut if he follows
+Ma'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," murmured
+Christine, and waved a hand to a friend in the street.
+
+This conversation happened on the evening of the day that Fleda Druse
+shot the Carillon Rapids alone.  An hour after the two gossips had had
+their say Gabriel Druse paced up and down the veranda of his house,
+stopping now and then to view the tumbling, hurrying Sagalac, or to dwell
+upon the sunset which crimsoned and bronzed the western sky.  His walk
+had an air of impatience; he seemed disturbed of mind and restless of
+body.
+
+He gave an impression of great force.  He would have been picked out of a
+multitude, not alone because of his remarkable height, but because he had
+an air of command and the aloofness which shows a man sufficient unto
+himself.
+
+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 the
+woods behind the house.  He did not stir, and his eyes half-closed, as
+though he hesitated what to do.  The call was not that of a bird familiar
+to the Western world.  It had a melancholy softness like that of the
+bell-bird of the Australian bush.  Yet, in the insistence of the note, it
+was, too, a challenge or a summons.
+
+Three times during the past week he had heard it--once as he went by the
+market-place of Manitou; once as he returned in the dusk from Tekewani's
+Reservation, and once at dawn from the woods behind the house.  His
+present restlessness and suppressed agitation had been the result.
+
+It was a call he knew well.  It was like a voice from a dead world.  It
+asked, he knew, for an answering call, yet he had not given it.  It was
+seven days since he first heard it in the market-place, and in that seven
+days he had realized that nothing in this world which has ever been,
+really ceases to be.  Presently, the call was repeated.  On the three
+former occasions there had been no repetition.  The call had trembled in
+the 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 its
+vanished mate.
+
+With sudden resolution Druse turned.  Leaving the veranda, he walked
+slowly behind the house into the woods and stood still under the branches
+of a great cedar.  Raising his head, a strange, solemn note came from his
+lips; but the voice died away in a sharp broken sound which was more
+human than birdlike, which had the shrill insistence of authority.  The
+call to him had been almost ventriloquial in its nature.  His lips had
+not moved at all.
+
+There was silence for a moment after he had called into the void, as it
+were, and then there appeared suddenly from behind a clump of juniper, a
+young man of dark face and upright bearing.  He made a slow obeisance
+with a gesture suggestive of the Oriental world, yet not like the usual
+gesture of the East Indian, the Turk or the Persian; it was composite of
+all.
+
+He could not have been more than twenty-five years of age.  He was so
+sparely made, and his face being clean-shaven, he looked even younger.
+His clothes were the clothes of the Western man; and yet there was a
+manner of wearing them, there were touches which were evidence to the
+watchful observer that he was of other spheres.  His wide, felt, Western
+hat had a droop on one side and a broken treatment of the crown, which of
+itself was enough to show him a stranger to the prairie, while his brown
+velveteen jacket, held by its two lowest buttons, was reminiscent of an
+un-English life.  His eyes alone would have announced him as of some
+foreign race, though he was like none of the foreigners who had been the
+pioneers 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 a
+voice rougher than his looks would have suggested.
+
+The old man made a haughty gesture of impatience.  "What do you want with
+me, my Romany 'chal'?" he asked sharply.--[A glossary of Romany words
+will be found at the end of the book.]
+
+The young man replied hastily.  He seemed to speak by rote.  His manner
+was too eager to suit the impressiveness of his words.  "The sheep are
+without a shepherd," he said.  "The young men marry among the Gorgios, or
+they are lost in the cities and return no more to the tents and the
+fields and the road.  There is disorder in all the world among the
+Romanys.  The ancient ways are forgotten.  Our people gather and settle
+upon the land and live as the Gorgios live.  They forget the way beneath
+the 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 the
+trees!" he growled.  "The way of the open road is enough.  The way
+beneath the trees is the way of the thief, and the skill of the horse is
+the skill to cheat."
+
+"There is no other way.  It has been the way of the Romany since the time
+of Timur Beg and centuries beyond Timur, so it is told.  One man and all
+men 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 on
+what was to come to me, I read in the books as the Gorgio reads.  I sat
+in my tent and worked with a pen; I saw in the printed sheets what the
+world 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 where
+I was to be found?" Gabriel Druse's eyes were angry, his manner was
+authoritative.
+
+The young man stretched out his hands eloquently.  "Hail and blessing, my
+Ry, was there need of printed pages to tell me that?  Is not everything
+known of the Ry to the Romany people without the written or printed
+thing?  How does the wind go?  How does the star sweep across the sky?
+Does not the whisper pass as the lightning flashes?  Have you forgotten
+all, my Ry?  Is there a Romany camp at Scutari?  Shall it not know what
+is the news of the Bailies of Scotland and the Caravans by the Tagus?  It
+is known always where my lord is.  All the Romanys everywhere know it,
+and many hundreds have come hither from overseas.  They are east, they
+are south, they are west."
+
+He made gesture towards these three points of the compass.  A dark frown
+came upon the old man's forehead.  "I ordered that none should seek to
+follow, that I be left in peace till my pilgrimage was done.  Even as the
+first pilgrims of our people in the days of Timur Beg in India, so I have
+come 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 of
+dubious reasoning and purpose showed in their velvet depths.
+
+"No one has sought me but you in all these years," he continued.  "Who
+are you that you should come?  I did not call, and there was my command
+that 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 bowed
+low--"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.  You
+are vanished, my lord, and the body dies."
+
+The old man plucked his beard again fiercely and his words came with
+guttural force.  "That is fool's talk.  In the past I was never
+everywhere at once.  When I was in Russia, I was not in Greece; when I
+was in England, I was not in Portugal.  I was always 'vanished' from one
+place to another, yet the body lived."
+
+"But your word was passed along the roads everywhere, my Ry.  Your tongue
+was not still from sunrise to the end of the day.  Your call was heard
+always, now here, now there, and the Romanys were one; they held
+together."
+
+The old man's face darkened still more and his eyes flashed fire.  "These
+are lies you are telling, and they will choke you, my Romany 'chal'.  Am
+I deceived, I who have known more liars than any man under the sky?  Am I
+to be fooled, who have seen so many fools in their folly?  There is
+roguery in you, or I have never seen roguery."
+
+"I am a true Romany, my Ry," the other answered with an air of courage
+and 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 I
+am silent, my people will wait until I speak again; if they see me not
+they 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 the
+youth, towered above him commandingly.  It almost seemed as though he
+would do him bodily harm, so threatening was his attitude, but the young
+Romany 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 his
+mind suddenly read the truth behind the young man's confident words.
+
+"What is mine is always mine," he answered roughly.  "Speak!  What is it
+I have that you come for?"
+
+The young man braced himself and put a hand upon his lips.  "I come for
+your daughter, my Ry."  The old man suddenly regained his composure, and
+authority spoke in his bearing and his words.  "What have you to do with
+my 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 thousand
+pounds it was so arranged.  On his death-bed three thousand pounds did
+my father give to you for this betrothal.  I was but a child, yet I
+remembered, and my kinsmen remembered, for it is their honour also.  I am
+the 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, but
+the anger in his face did not pass, and a rigid pride made the distance
+between them endless.  He looked like a patriarch giving judgment as he
+raised his hand and pointed with a menacing finger at Jethro Fawe, his
+Romany 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 it
+happened--had no memory of the day when the chiefs and great people
+assembled outside the tent of Lemuel Fawe when he lay dying, and, by the
+simple act of stepping over a branch of hazel, the two children were
+married: if Romany law and custom were to abide, then the two now were
+man and wife.  Did not Lemuel Fawe, the old-time rival of Gabriel Druse
+for the kinship of the Romanys, the claimant whose family had been rulers
+of the Romanys for generations before the Druses gained ascendancy--did
+not Fawe, dying, seek to secure for his son by marriage what he had
+failed to get for himself by other means?
+
+All these things had at one time been part of Gabriel Druse's covenant of
+life, until one year in England, when Fleda, at twelve years of age, was
+taken ill and would have died, but that a great lady descended upon their
+camp, 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 girl
+lived, and with her passionate nature loved the Lady Barrowdale as she
+might have loved her own mother, had that mother lived and she had ever
+known her.  And when the Lady Barrowdale sickened and died of the same
+sickness which had nearly been her own death, the promise she made then
+overrode all other covenants made for her.  She had promised the great
+lady who had given her own widowed, childless life for her own, that she
+would not remain a Gipsy, that she would not marry a Gipsy, but that if
+ever she gave herself to any man it would be to a Gorgio, a European, who
+travelled oftenest "the open road" leading to his own door.  The years
+which had passed since those tragic days in Gloucestershire had seen the
+shadows of that dark episode pass, but the pledge had remained; and
+Gabriel Druse had kept his word to the dead, because of the vow made to
+the 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 hidden
+himself in the New World; they did not know that the girl had for ever
+forsworn their race, and would never become head of all the Romanys,
+solving the problem of the rival dynasties by linking her life with that
+of Jethro Fawe.  But Jethro Fawe had come to claim his own.
+
+Now Gabriel Druse's eyes followed his own menacing finger with sharp
+insistence.  In the past such a look had been in his eyes when he had
+sentenced men to death.  They had not died by the gallows or the sword or
+the bullet, but they had died as commanded, and none had questioned his
+decree.  None asked where or how the thing was done when a fire sprang up
+in a field, or a quarry, or on a lonely heath or hill-top, and on the
+pyre were all the belongings of the condemned, being resolved into dust
+as 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 I
+are as those who have no people.  Begone!  Nothing that is here belongs
+to you.  Begone, and come no more!"
+
+"I have come for my own--for my Romany 'chi', and I will not go without
+her.  I am blood of the Blood, and she is mine."
+
+"You have not seen her," said the old man craftily, and fighting hard
+against 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 now
+seventeen 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 an
+hour 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.  At
+Carillon 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 terrible
+in their intensity.  For the first time since they had met the young man
+blanched.  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 run
+all the way--four miles--from Carillon, arriving before Fleda and her
+Indian escort.
+
+He had hardly finished his tale, shrinking, as he told it, from the
+fierceness of his chief, when a voice called from the direction of the
+house.
+
+"Father--father," it cried.
+
+A change passed over the old man's face.  It cleared as the face of the
+sun clears when a cloud drives past and is gone.  The transformation was
+startling.  Without further glance at his companion, he moved swiftly
+towards the house.  Once more Fleda's voice called, and before he could
+answer they were face to face.
+
+She stood radiant and elate, and seemed not apprehensive of disfavour or
+reproach.  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 had
+drowned 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 had
+held her in his arms left no shadow on her face.  Ingolby was now only
+part of her triumph of the Rapids.  She tossed a hand affectionately
+towards Tekewani and his braves.
+
+"How!" said Gabriel Druse, and made a gesture of salutation to the
+Indian chief.
+
+"How!" answered Tekewani, and raised his arm high in response.  An
+instant afterwards Tekewani and his followers were gone their ways.
+
+Suddenly Fleda's eyes rested on the young Romany who was now standing at
+a little distance away.  Apprehension came to her face.  She felt her
+heart stand still and her hands grow cold, she knew not why.  But she saw
+that the man was a Romany.
+
+Her father turned sharply.  A storm gathered in his face once more, and a
+murderous look came into his eyes.
+
+"Who is he?" Fleda asked, scarce above a whisper, and she noted the
+insistent, 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 gaze
+upon the girl.  The fear which had first come to her face passed
+suddenly, and a will, new-born and fearless, possessed it.  Yesterday
+this will had been only a trembling, undisciplined force, but since then
+she had been passed through the tests which her own soul, or Destiny, had
+set for her, and she had emerged a woman, confident and understanding, if
+tremulous.  In days gone by her adventurous, lonely spirit had driven her
+to the prairies, savagely riding her Indian pony through the streets of
+Manitou and out on the North Trail, or south through coulees, or westward
+into the great woods, looking for what: she never found.
+
+Her spirit was no longer the vague thing driving here and there with
+pleasant torture.  It had found freedom and light; what the Romany folk
+call 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 if
+uncompleted way.  It was a sword free from its scabbard.
+
+The adventure of the Carillon Rapids had been a kind of deliverance of an
+unborn thing which, desiring the overworld, had found it.  A few hours
+ago the face of Ingolby, as she waked to consciousness in his arms, had
+taught her something suddenly; and the face of Felix Marchand had taught
+her even more.  Something new and strange had happened to her, and her
+father's uncouth but piercing mind saw the change in her.  Her quick,
+fluttering moods, her careless, undirected energy, her wistful
+waywardness, had of late troubled and vexed him, called on capacities in
+him which he did not possess; but now he was suddenly aware that she had
+emerged from passionate inconsistencies and in some good sense had found
+herself.
+
+Like a wind she had swept out of childhood into a woman's world where the
+eyes saw things unseen before, a world how many thousand leagues in the
+future; and here in a flash, also, she was swept like a wind back again
+to a time before there was even conscious childhood--a dim, distant time
+when she lived and ate and slept for ever in the field or the vale, in
+the quarry, beside the hedge, or on the edge of harvest-fields; when she
+was carried in strong arms, or sat in the shelter of a man's breast as a
+horse cantered down a glade, under an ardent sky, amid blooms never seen
+since then.  She was whisked back into that distant, unreal world by the
+figure of a young Romany standing beside a spruce-tree, and by her
+father's voice which uttered the startling words: "He says he is your
+husband!"
+
+Indignation and a bitter pride looked out of her eyes, as she heard the
+preposterous claim--as though she were some wild dweller of the jungle
+being 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 to
+whom anger and passion were part of every relationship of life, its
+stimulus and its recreation, its expression of the individual.
+
+His eyelids trembled, but he drew himself together.  "Seventeen years ago
+by the River Starzke in the Roumelian country, it was so done," he
+replied stubbornly.  "You were sealed to me, as my Ry here knows, and as
+you will remember, if you fix your mind upon it.  It was beyond the city
+of 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.  It
+happened before my father's tent, the tent of Lemuel Fawe.  There you and
+I were sealed before our Romany folk.  For three thousand pounds which my
+father gave to your father, you--"
+
+With a swift gesture she stopped him.  Walking close up to him, she
+looked him full in the eyes.  There was a contemptuous pride in her face
+which forced him to lower his eyelids sulkily.
+
+He would have understood a torrent of words--to him that would have
+regulated the true value of the situation; but this disdainful composure
+embarrassed him.  He had come prepared for trouble and difficulty, but he
+had rather more determination than most of his class and people, and his
+spirit of adventure was high.  Now that he had seen the girl who was his
+own according to Romany law, he felt he had been a hundred times
+justified in demanding her from her father, according to the pledge and
+bond of so many years ago.  He had nothing to lose but his life, and he
+had risked that before.  This old man, the head of the Romany folk, had
+the bulk of the fortune which had been his own father's and he had the
+logic of lucre which is the most convincing of all logic.  Yet with the
+girl holding his eyes commandingly, he was conscious that he was asking
+more than a Romany lass to share his 'tan', to go wandering from Romany
+people to Romany people, king and queen of them all when Gabriel Druse
+had passed away.  Fleda Druse would be a queen of queens, but there was
+that queenliness in her now which was not Romany--something which was
+Gorgio, 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 had
+filmy impressions floated before her mind of a swift-flowing river and
+high crags, and wooded hills and tents and horsemen and shouting, and a
+lad that held her hand, and banners waved over their heads, and galloping
+and shouting, and then a sudden quiet, and many men and women gathered
+about a tent, and a wailing thereafter.  After which, in her faint
+remembrance, there seemed to fall a mist, and a space of blankness, and
+then 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 the
+heavens, and seemed to devour a Romany tent standing alone with a Romany
+wagon full of its household things.
+
+As Jethro Fawe had spoken, the misty, elusive visions had become living
+memories, and she knew that he had spoken the truth, and that these
+fleeting things were pictures of her sealing to Jethro Fawe and the death
+of Lemuel Fawe, and the burning of all that belonged to him in that last
+ritual of Romany farewell to the dead.
+
+She knew now that she had been bargained for like any slave--for three
+thousand 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 away
+into a past with its sordidness and vagabondage, however gilded and
+graded above the lowest vagabondage.
+
+Here at Manitou she had tasted a free life which was not vagabondage, the
+passion of the open road which was not an elaborate and furtive evasion
+of the law and a defiance of social ostracism.  Here she and her father
+moved in an atmosphere of esteem touched by mystery, but not by
+suspicion; here civilization in its most elastic organization and
+flexible conventions, had laid its hold upon her, had done in this
+expansive, loosely knitted social system what could never have been
+accomplished in a great city--in London, Vienna, Rome, or New York.  She
+had had here the old free life of the road, so full of the scent of deep
+woods--the song of rivers, the carol of birds, the murmuring of trees,
+the mysterious and devout whisperings of the night, the happy communings
+of stray peoples meeting and passing, the gaiety and gossip of the
+market-place, the sound of church bells across a valley, the storms and
+wild lightnings and rushing torrents, the cries of frightened beasts, the
+wash and rush of rain, the sharp pain of frost, and the agonies of some
+lost traveller rescued from the wide inclemency, the soft starlight
+after, the balm of the purged air, and "rosy-fingered morn" blinking
+blithely at the world.  The old life of the open road she had had here
+without anything of its shame, its stigma, and its separateness, its
+discordance with the stationary forces of law and organized community.
+
+Wild moments there had been of late years when she longed for the faces
+of Romany folk gathered about the fire, while some Romany 'pral' drew all
+hearts with the violin or the dulcimer.  When Ambrose or Gilderoy or
+Christo responded to the pleadings of some sentimental lass, and sang to
+the 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 war
+with the law, in the true Gipsy rant which is sung from Transylvania to
+Yetholm 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 Fawe
+would not have been so acute yesterday; but to-day--she had lain in a
+Gorgio's arms to-day; and though he was nothing to her, he was still a
+Gorgio of Gorgios; and this man before her--her husband--was at best but
+a man of the hedges and the byre and the clay-pit, the quarry and the
+wood; a nomad with no home, nothing that belonged to what she was now a
+part 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 at
+last "not for three thousand pounds, not in three thousand years.  Look
+at 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, but
+her eyes forced his to look at her, when they turned away as though their
+light hurt him.
+
+"It is no matter," he rejoined.  "It is the way of our people.  It has
+been so, and it will be so while there is a Romany tent standing or
+moving on."
+
+In his rage Gabriel Druse could keep silence no longer.
+
+"Rogue, what have you to say of such things?" he growled.  "I am the
+head of all.  I pass the word, and things are so and so.  By long and by
+last, 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 her
+father--"Hush!" she said maliciously, "he has come a long way for
+naught.  It will be longer going back.  Let him have his say.  It is his
+capital.  He has only breath and beauty."
+
+Jethro shrank from the sharp irony of her tongue as he would not have
+shrunk before her father's violence.  Biting rejection was in her tones.
+He knew dimly that the thing he shrank from belonged to nothing Romany in
+her, but to that scornful pride of the Gorgios which had kept the Romany
+outside the social pale.
+
+"Only breath and beauty!" she had said, and that she could laugh at his
+handsomeness was certain proof that it was not wilfulness which rejected
+his claims.  Now there was rage in his heart greater than had been in
+that 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 my
+father had in his purse has made my 'Ry' rich"--he flung a hand out
+towards Gabriel Druse--"and because I keep to the open road as my father
+did, true to my Romany blood.  The wind and the sun and the fatness of
+the field have made me what I am, and never in my life had I an ache or
+a pain.  You have the breath and the beauty, too, but you have the gold
+also; and what you are and what you have is mine by the Romany law, and
+it will come to me, by long and by last."
+
+Fleda turned quietly to her father.  "If it is true concerning the three
+thousand pounds, give it to him and let him go.  It will buy him what he
+would never get by what he is."
+
+The old man flashed a look of anger upon her.  "He came empty, he shall
+go empty.  Against my commands, his insolence has brought him here.  And
+let him keep his eyes skinned, or he shall have no breath with which to
+return.  I am Gabriel Druse, lord over all the Romany people in all the
+world from Teheran to San Diego, and across the seas and back again; and
+my will shall be done."
+
+He paused, reflecting for a moment, though his fingers opened and shut in
+anger.  "This much I will do," he added.  "When I return to my people I
+will deal with this matter in the place where Lemuel Fawe died.  By the
+place 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."  Then
+suddenly 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 to
+be bartered by any will except my own?  I will have naught to do with any
+Romany law.  Not by Starzke shall the matter be dealt with, but here by
+the 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 a
+Romany."
+
+The young man's eyes suddenly took on a dreaming, subtle look, submerging
+the sulkiness which had filled him.  Twice he essayed to speak, but
+faltered.  At last, with an air, he said:
+
+"For seventeen years I have kept the faith.  I was sealed to you, and
+I hold by the sealing.  Wherever you went, it was known to me.  In my
+thoughts 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 the
+nest; and the thought of it was with me always.  I knew that when I saw
+you again the brown eyes would be browner, the words at the lips would be
+sweeter--and so it is.  All is as I dreamed for these long years.  I was
+ever faithful.  By night and day I saw you as you were when Romany law
+made you mine for ever.  I looked forward to the day when I would take
+you to my 'tan', and there we two would--"
+
+A flush sprang suddenly to Fleda Druse's face, then slowly faded, leaving
+it pale and indignant.  Sharply she interrupted him.
+
+"They should have called you Ananias," she said scornfully.  "My father
+has 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 to
+none.  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 she
+proceeded, a flush swept across his face and his eyes filled up again
+with sullenness.  She had read the real truth concerning him.  He had
+gone 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 had
+pierced to the core of his life--a vagabondage, a little more gilded than
+was common among his fellows, made possible by his position as the
+successor to her father, and by the money of Lemuel Fawe which he had
+dissipated.
+
+He had come when all his gold was gone to do the one bold thing which
+might at once restore his fortunes.  He had brains, and he knew now that
+his 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 the
+way 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 tight
+to his body that his swift motion to draw a weapon was frustrated.  The
+old man put out all his strength, a strength which in his younger days
+was greater than any two men in any Romany camp, and the "breath and
+beauty" of Jethro Fawe grew less and less.  His face became purple and
+distorted, his body convulsed, then limp, and presently he lay on the
+ground with a knee on his chest and fierce, bony hands at his throat.
+
+"Don't kill him--father, don't!" cried the girl, laying restraining
+hands on the old man's shoulders.  He withdrew his hands and released the
+body from his knee.  Jethro Fawe lay still.
+
+"Is he dead?" she whispered, awestricken.  "Dead?"  The old man felt the
+breast of the unconscious man.  He smiled grimly.  "He is lucky not to be
+dead."
+
+"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 though
+it was that of a child.  "Where are you going?" she asked anxiously, as
+he moved away.
+
+"To the hut in the juniper wood," he answered.  She watched till he had
+disappeared with his limp burden into the depths of the trees.  Then she
+turned and went slowly towards the house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE UNGUARDED FIRES
+
+The public knew well that Ingolby had solved his biggest business
+problem, because three offices of three railways--one big and two small--
+suddenly became merged under his control.  At which there was rejoicing
+at Lebanon, followed by dismay and indignation at Manitou, for one of the
+smaller merged railways had its offices there, and it was now removed to
+Lebanon; while several of the staff, having proved cantankerous, were
+promptly retired.  As they were French Canadians, their retirement became
+a public matter in Manitou and begot fresh quarrel between the rival
+towns.
+
+Ingolby had made a tactical mistake in at once removing the office of the
+merged railway from Manitou, and he saw it quickly.  It was not possible
+to put the matter right at once, however.
+
+There had already been collision between his own railway-men and the
+rivermen from Manitou, whom Felix Marchand had bribed to cause trouble:
+two Manitou men had been seriously hurt, and feeling ran high.  Ingolby's
+eyes opened wide when he saw Marchand's ugly game.  He loathed the
+dissolute fellow, but he realized now that his foe was a factor to be
+reckoned 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 it
+out.
+
+So this time he went pigeon-shooting.
+
+He got his pigeons, and the slaughter did him good.  As though in keeping
+with the situation, he shot on both sides of the Sagalac with great good
+luck, and in the late afternoon sent his Indian lad on ahead to Lebanon
+with the day's spoil, while he loitered through the woods, a gun slung in
+the hollow of his arm.  He had walked many miles, but there was still a
+spring to his step and he hummed an air with his shoulders thrown back
+and his hat on the back of his head.  He had had his shooting, he had
+done his thinking, and he was pleased with himself.  He had shaped his
+homeward 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 her
+only once, and that was but for a moment at a Fete for the hospital at
+Manitou, and with other people present--people who lay in wait for crumbs
+of gossip.
+
+Since the running of the Rapids, Fleda had filled a larger place in the
+eyes of Manitou and Lebanon.  She had appealed to the Western mind: she
+had done a brave physical thing.  Wherever she went she was made
+conscious of a new attitude towards herself, a more understanding
+feeling.  At the Fete when she and Ingolby met face to face, people had
+immediately drawn round them curious and excited.  These could not
+understand why the two talked so little, and had such an every-day manner
+with 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 sudden
+embarrassment, which she knew how to interpret.
+
+"See now, monseigneur," she said to Monseigneur Lourde, nodding towards
+Fleda and Ingolby, "there would be work here soon for you or Father
+Bidette if they were not two heretics."
+
+"Is she a heretic, then, madame?" asked the old white-headed priest, his
+eyes quizzically following Fleda.
+
+She is not a Catholic, and she must be a heretic, that's certain," was
+the reply.
+
+"I'm not so sure," mused the priest.  Smiling, he raised his hat as he
+caught Fleda's eyes.  He made as if to go towards her, but something in
+her look held him back.  He realized that Fleda did not wish to speak
+with him, and that she was even hurrying away from her father, who
+lumbered through the crowd as though unconscious of them all.
+
+Presently Monseigneur Lourde saw Fleda leave the Fete and take the road
+towards home.  There was a sense of excitement in her motions, and he
+also had seen that tremulous, embarrassed look in her eyes.  It puzzled
+him.  He did not connect it wholly with Ingolby as Madame Thibadeau had
+done.  He had lived so long among primitive people that he was more
+accustomed to study faces than find the truth from words, and he had
+always been conscious that this girl, educated and even intellectual, was
+at 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 the
+universal itinerary--that cosmopolitan something which is the native
+human.
+
+"She has far to go," the priest said to himself as he turned to greet
+Ingolby with a smile, bright and shy, but gravely reproachful, too.
+
+This happened on the day before the collision between the railway-men and
+the river-drivers, and the old priest already knew what trouble was
+afoot.
+
+There was little Felix Marchand did which was hidden from him.  He made
+his way to Ingolby to warn him.
+
+As Ingolby now walked in the woods towards Gabriel Druse's house, he
+recalled one striking phrase used by the aged priest in reference to the
+closing 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 uplifted
+head.  "I struck camp, but I didn't put out the fires.  There's a lot of
+that 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 which
+had been done by the River Starzke came again in its appointed time.
+The untended, unguarded fire may spread devastation and ruin, following
+with 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 opening
+greenery, beyond which lay Gabriel Druse's home.  Where he was the woods
+were thick, and here and there on either side it was almost impenetrable.
+Few people ever came through this wood.  It belonged in greater part to
+Gabriel Druse, and in lesser part to the Hudson's Bay Company and the
+Government; and as the land was not valuable till it was cleared, and
+there was plenty of prairie land to be had, from which neither stick nor
+stump must be removed, these woods were very lonely.  Occasionally a
+trapper or a sportsman wandered through them, but just here where Ingolby
+was none ever loitered.  It was too thick for game, there was no roadway
+leading anywhere, but only an overgrown path, used in the old days by
+Indians.  It was this path which Ingolby trod with eager steps.
+
+Presently, as he stood still at sight of a ground-hog making for its
+hiding-place, he saw a shadow fall across the light breaking through the
+trees some distance in front of him.  It was Fleda.  She had not seen
+him, and she came hurrying towards where he was with head bent, a
+brightly-ribboned hat swinging in her fingers.  She seemed part of the
+woods, its wild simplicity, its depth, its colour-already Autumn was
+crimsoning the leaves, touching them with amber tints, making the
+woodland warm and kind.  She wore a dress of golden brown which matched
+her hair, and at her throat was a black velvet ribbon with a brooch of
+antique paste which flashed the light like diamonds, but more softly.
+
+Suddenly, as she came on, she stopped and raised her head in a listening
+attitude, her eyes opening wide as if listening, too--it was as though
+she 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 and
+immemorial history which the world could never know.  There was that in
+her face which did not belong to civilization or to that fighting world
+of which Ingolby was so eager a factor.  All the generations of the wood
+and road, the combe and the river, the quarry and the secluded boscage
+were in her look.  There was that about her which was at once elusive and
+primevally real.
+
+She was not of those who would be lost in the dust of futility.  Whatever
+she 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, her
+nearness 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 of
+a false passion or purpose which she thought a true one, then tragedy
+would await her.  Yet in this quiet wood so near to the centuries that
+were before Adam was, she looked like a spirit of comedy listening till
+the Spirit of the Wood should break the silence.
+
+Ingolby felt his blood beat faster.  He had a feeling that he was looking
+at a wood-nymph who might flash out of his vision as a mere fantasy of
+the mind.  There shot through him the strangest feeling that if she were
+his, he would be linked with something alien to the world of which he
+was.
+
+Yet, recalling the day at Carillon when her cheek lay on his shoulder and
+her warm breast was pressed unresistingly against him, as he lifted her
+from his boat, he knew that he would have to make the hardest fight of
+his life if he meant not to have more of her than this brief
+acquaintance, so touched by sensation and romance.  He was, maybe,
+somewhat sensational; his career had, even in its present restricted
+compass, been spectacular; but romance, with its reveries and its
+moonshinings, its impulses and its blind adventures, had not been any
+part of his existence.
+
+Hers were not the first red lips which, voluntarily or involuntarily, had
+invited 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 and
+warm and fine, had folded round his own with a singular confidence, an
+involuntary enclosing friendliness; and now as he watched her listening
+--did she hear something?--he saw her hand stretch out as though
+commanding silence, the "hush!" of an alluring gesture.
+
+This assuredly was not the girl who had run the Carillon Rapids, for that
+adventuress was full of a vital force like a man's, and this girl had the
+evanishing charm of a dryad.
+
+Suddenly a change passed over her.  She was as one who had listened and
+had 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 the
+wood-nymph underwent translation in Ingolby's mind; she was now like a
+mortal, who, having been transformed, at immortal dictate was returning
+to mortal state again.
+
+To heighten the illusion, he thought he heard faint singing in the depths
+of the wood.  He put his hands to his ears for a moment, and took them
+away again to make sure that it was really singing and not his
+imagination; and when he saw Fleda's face again, there was fresh evidence
+that his senses had not deceived him.  After all, it was not strange that
+some one should be singing in that deepest wood beyond.
+
+Now Fleda moved forward towards where he stood, quickening her footsteps
+as though remembering something she must do.  He stepped out into the
+path and came to meet her.  She heard his footsteps, saw him, and stood
+still abruptly.
+
+She did not make a sound, but a hand went to her bosom quickly, as though
+to quiet her heart or to steady herself.  He had broken suddenly upon her
+intent thoughts, he had startled her as she had been seldom startled, for
+all her childhood training had been towards self-possession before
+surprise 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 sides
+of the Sagalac, I want both sides to belong to each other so that either
+side 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 ribbons
+loosely 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?" he
+added quickly, in a more sprightly tone, for he saw she was about to move
+on.  He motioned towards a log lying beside the path and kicked some
+branches out of the way.
+
+After slight hesitation she sat down, burying her shoes in the fallen
+leaves.
+
+"You don't like Felix Marchand?" she remarked presently.
+
+"No.  Do you?"
+
+She met his eyes squarely--so squarely that his own rather lost their
+courage, 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," she
+answered firmly; yet her colour rose slightly, and he thought he had
+never 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 is
+for forgetting--always."
+
+"Always!  Have you seen many men drunk?" he asked quickly.  He did not
+mean 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 listening
+like 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 Manitou
+when men get drunk, the people get astigmatism and can't see the
+tangledfooted stagger."
+
+"It means that the pines of Manitou are straighter than the cedars of
+Lebanon," she remarked.
+
+"And the pines of Manitou have needles," he rejoined, meaning to give her
+the 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.  "Of
+course 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--only
+to 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 can
+be given in exchange for a life, I cannot pay you."
+
+"But like may be given for like," he rejoined in a tone suddenly full of
+meaning.
+
+"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 he
+could say a thing of that sort to her--when he pleased?  Did he think
+that because he had done her a great service, he could say casually what
+belonged only to the sacred moments of existence?  She looked at him with
+rising indignation, but there suddenly came to her the conviction that he
+had not spoken with affronting gallantry, but that for him the moment had
+a gravity not to be marred by the place or the circumstance.
+
+"I beg your pardon if I spoke hastily," he answered presently.  "Yet
+there's many a true word spoken in jest."
+
+There was a moment's silence.  She realized that he was drawn to her, and
+that the attraction was not alone due to his having saved her at
+Carillon; that he was not taking advantage of the thing which must ever
+be a bond between them, whatever came of life.  When she had seen him at
+the Hospital Fete, a feeling had rushed over her that he had got nearer
+to her than any man had ever done.  Then--even then, she felt the thing
+which all lovers, actual, or in the making, feel--that they must do
+something 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 man
+she had seen but a few times--this Gorgio.  Why was it that even as they
+talked together now, she felt the real, true distance between them--of
+race, of origin, of history, of life, of circumstance?  The hut in the
+wood where Gabriel Druse had carried Jethro Fawe was not three hundred
+yards away.
+
+She sighed, stirred, and a wild look came in her eyes--a look of
+rebellion or of protest.  Presently she recovered herself.  She was a
+creature of sudden moods.
+
+"What is it you want to do with Manitou and Lebanon?" she asked after a
+pause in which the thoughts of both had travelled far.
+
+"You really wish to know--you don't know?" he asked with sudden
+intensity.
+
+She regarded him frankly, smiled, then she laughed outright, showing her
+teeth very white and regular and handsome.  The boyish eagerness of his
+look, the whimsical twist of his mouth, which always showed when he was
+keenly roused--as though everything that really meant anything was part
+of a comet-like comedy--had caused her merriment.  All the hidden things
+in his face seemed to open out into a swift shrewdness and dry candour
+when 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 should
+like to learn the truth from you.  What are your plans?"
+
+Her eyes were burning with inquiry.  She was suddenly brought to the
+gateways of a new world.  Plans--what had she or her people to do with
+plans!  What Romany ever constructed anything?  What did the building of
+a city or a country mean to a Romany 'chal' or a Romany 'chi', they who
+lived 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 whole
+territory of their enterprise, designs and patriotism.  They saw the
+thousand places where cities could be made, and built their fires on the
+sites of them, and camped a day, and were gone, leaving them waiting and
+barren as before.  They travelled through the new lands in America from
+the fringe of the Arctic to Patagonia, but they raised no roof-tree; they
+tilled no acre, opened no market, set up no tabernacle: they had neither
+home nor country.
+
+Fleda was the heir of all this, the product of generations of such
+vagabondage.  Had the last few years given her the civic sense, the home
+sense?  From the influence of the Englishwoman, who had made her forsake
+the Romany life, had there come habits of mind in tune with the women of
+the Sagalac, who were helping to build so much more than their homes?
+Since the incident of the Carillon Rapids she had changed, but what the
+change meant was yet in her unopened Book of Revelations.  Yet something
+stirred in her which she had never felt before.  She had come of a race
+of 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 and
+all its gold; there's the Peace River country and all its unploughed
+wheat-fields; there's the whole valley of the Sagalac, which alone can
+maintain twenty millions of people; there's the East and the British
+people overseas who must have bread; there's China and Japan going to
+give up rice, and eat the wheaten loaf; there's the U. S. A.  with its
+hundred millions of people--it'll be that in a few years--and its
+exhausted wheat-fields; and here, right here, is the bread-basket for all
+the hungry peoples; and Manitou and Lebanon are the centre of it.  They
+will be the distributing centre.  I want to see the base laid right.  I'm
+not going to stay here till it all happens, but I want to plan it all so
+that it will happen, then I'll go on and do a bigger thing somewhere
+else.  These two towns have got to come together; they must play one big
+game.  I want to lay the wires for it.  That's why I've got capitalists
+to 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 on
+one side of the river and two on the other."
+
+"Was it really you who started those factories?" she asked
+incredulously.
+
+"Of course!  It was part of my plans.  I wasn't foolish enough to build
+and run them myself.  I looked for the right people that had the money
+and the brains, and I let them sweat--let them sweat it out.  I'm not a
+manufacturer; I'm an inventor and a builder.  I built the bridge over the
+river; 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 be
+supported.  I don't mind what they call me, so long as they don't call me
+too late for dinner."
+
+They both laughed.  It was seldom he talked like this, and never had he
+talked to such a listener before.  "The merging of the three railways was
+a good scheme, and I was the schemer," he continued.  "It might mean
+monopoly, but it won't work out that way.  It will simply concentrate
+energy and: save elbow-grease.  It will set free capital and capacity for
+other things."
+
+"They say there will be fewer men at work, not only in the offices but on
+the 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 employed
+at 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 Felix
+Marchand 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 burns
+long and hard."  He frowned, and a fighting look came into his face.
+
+"Then you know all that is working against you in Manitou--working harder
+than ever before?"
+
+"I think I do, but I probably don't know all.  Have you any special news
+about it?"
+
+"Felix Marchand is spending money among the men.  They are going on
+strike 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.  "Both
+towns--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 the
+men in all the factories to strike--that's the new game of the modern
+labour agitator!  Marchand has been travelling in France," he added
+disdainfully, "but he has brought his goods to the wrong shop.  What do
+the priests--what does Monseigneur Lourde say to it all?"
+
+"I am not a Catholic," she replied gravely.  "I've heard, though, that
+Monseigneur 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 friends
+with them.  I don't think the priests will be able to help much in the
+end, and if it is to be Manitou against Lebanon, you can't expect a great
+deal."
+
+"I never expect more than I get--generally less," he answered grimly;
+and he moved the gun about on his knees restlessly, fingering the lock
+and 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," he
+rejoined, his jaw hardening; "and I can take care of myself.  What makes
+you say he means personal harm?  Have you heard anything?"
+
+"No, nothing, but I feel it is so.  That day at the Hospital Fete he
+looked at you in a way that told me.  I think such instincts are given
+to some people and some races.  You read books--I read people.  I wanted
+to 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 and
+you also."  Was the psychic and fortune-telling instinct of the Romany
+alive in her and working involuntarily, doing that faithfully which her
+people did so faithlessly?  The darkness which comes from intense feeling
+had gathered underneath her eyes, and gave them a look of pensiveness not
+in keeping with the glow of her perfect health, the velvet of her cheek.
+
+"Would you mind telling me where you got your information?" he asked
+presently.
+
+"My father heard here and there, and I, also, and some I got from old
+Madame Thibadeau, who is a friend of mine.  I talk with her more than
+with any one else in Manitou.  First she taught me how to crochet, but
+she teaches me many other things, too."
+
+"I know the old girl by sight.  She is a character.  She would know a
+lot, that woman."
+
+He paused, seemed about to speak, hesitated, then after a moment hastily
+said: "A minute ago you spoke of having the instinct of your race, or
+something like that.  What is your race?  Is it Irish, or--do you mind my
+asking?  Your English is perfect, but there is something--something--"
+
+She turned away her head, a flush spreading over her face.  She was
+unprepared for the question.  No one had ever asked it directly of her
+since they had come to Manitou.  Whatever speculation there had been, she
+had never been obliged to tell any one of what race she was.  She spoke
+English with no perceptible accent, as she spoke Spanish, Italian,
+French, Hungarian and Greek; and there was nothing in her speech marking
+her as different from the ordinary Western woman.  Certainly she would
+have been considered pure English among the polyglot population of
+Manitou.
+
+What must she say?  What was it her duty to say?  She was living the life
+of a British woman, she was as much a Gorgio in her daily existence as
+this man be side her.  Manitou was as much home--nay, it was a thousand
+times more home--than the shifting habitat of the days when they wandered
+from the Caspians to John o' Groat's.
+
+For years all traces of the past had been removed as completely as though
+the tide had washed over them; for years it had been so, until the
+fateful day when she ran the Carillon Rapids.  That day saw her whole
+horizon alter; that day saw this man beside her enter on the stage of her
+life.  And on that very day, also, came Jethro Fawe out of the Past and
+demanded 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 faced
+it, who had a fight to make and would make it.
+
+What would happen if she told this man that she was a Gipsy--the daughter
+of a Gipsy ruler, which was no more than being head of a clan of the
+world's transients, the leader of the world's nomads.  Money--her father
+had that, at least--much money; got in ways that could not bear the light
+at times, yet, as the world counts things, not dishonestly; for more than
+one great minister in a notable country in Europe had commissioned him,
+more than one ruler and crowned head had used him when "there was trouble
+in the Balkans," or the "sick man of Europe" was worse, or the Russian
+Bear came prowling.  His service had ever been secret service, when he
+lived the life of the caravan and the open highway.  He had no stable
+place among the men of all nations, and yet secret rites and mysteries
+and a language which was known from Bokhara to Wandsworth, and from
+Waikiki to Valparaiso, gave him dignity of a kind, clothed him with
+importance.
+
+Yet she wanted to tell this man beside her the whole truth, and see what
+he would do.  Would he turn his face away in disgust?  What had she a
+right to tell?  She knew well that her father would wish her to keep to
+that secrecy which so far had sheltered them--at least until Jethro
+Fawe's coming.
+
+At last she turned and looked him in the eyes, the flush gone from her
+face.
+
+"I'm not Irish--do I look Irish?" she asked quietly, though her heart
+was beating unevenly.
+
+"You look more Irish than anything else, except, maybe, Slav or
+Hungarian--or Gipsy," he said admiringly and unwittingly.
+
+"I have Gipsy blood in me," she answered slowly, "but no Irish or
+Hungarian blood."
+
+"Gipsy--is that so?" he said spontaneously, as she watched him so
+intently that the pulses throbbed at her temples.
+
+A short time ago Fleda might have announced her origin defiantly, now her
+courage failed her.  She did not wish him to be prejudiced against her.
+
+"Well, well," he added, "I only just guessed at it, because there's
+something unusual and strong in you, not because your eyes are so dark
+and 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 post
+the other day from one of your friends in Lebanon--a stock-rider I think
+he was, and they said I had a 'wild beauty' and a 'savage sweetness.'"
+
+He laughed, yet he suddenly saw her sensitive vigilance, and by instinct
+he felt that she was watching for some sign of shock or disdain on his
+part; yet in truth he cared no more whether she had Gipsy blood in her
+than 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 quite
+harmless.  There was a disease at college we called adjectivitis.  Your
+poet friend had it.  He could have left out the 'wild' and 'savage' and
+he'd have been pleasant, and truthful too--no, I apologize."
+
+He had seen her face darken under the compliment, and he hastened to put
+it right.
+
+"I loved a Gipsy once," he added whimsically to divert attention from his
+mistake, and with so genuine a sympathy in his voice that she was
+disarmed.  "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 was
+Charley Long.  Well, this woman was his aunt.  When she moved through the
+town people looked twice.  She was tall and splendidly made, and her
+manner--oh, as if she owned the place.  She did own a lot--she had more
+money than any one else thereabouts, anyhow.  It was the tallest kind of
+a holiday when Charley and I walked out to the big white house-golly, but
+it was white--to visit her!  We didn't eat much the day before we went to
+see her; and we didn't eat much the day after, either. She used to feed
+us--I wish I could eat like that now! I can see her brown eyes following
+us 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 one
+girl, but she died of consumption, got camping out in bad weather.  Aunt
+Cynthy--that was what we called her, her name being Cynthia--never got
+over her girl's death.  She blamed herself for it.  She had had those
+fits of going back to the open-for weeks at a time.  The girl oughtn't to
+have been taken to camp out.  She was never strong, and it was the wrong
+place and the wrong time of year--all right in August and all wrong in
+October.
+
+"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 path
+here, and it brought those days back to me--Charley Long and Aunt Cynthy
+and all.  Yes, the first time I ever ate hedgehog; was in Aunt Cynthy's
+house.  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, but
+there 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 when
+she was in the mood."
+
+"What was the history of Aunt Cynthy?"
+
+"I only know what Charley Long told me.  Aunt Cynthy was the daughter
+of a Gipsy--they say the only Gipsy in that part of the country at the
+time--who used to buy and sell horses, and travel in a big van as
+comfortable as a house.  The old man suddenly died on the farm of
+Charley's uncle.  In a month the uncle married the girl.  She brought him
+thirty thousand dollars."
+
+Fleda knew that this man who had fired her spirit for the first time had
+told his childhood story to show her the view he took of her origin; but
+she did not like him less for that, though she seemed to feel a chasm
+between them still.  The new things moving in her were like breezes that
+stir the trees, not like the wind turning the windmill which grinds the
+corn.  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 the
+new trail would lead her.  The Past dogged her footsteps, hung round her
+like the folds of a garment.  Even as she rejected it, it asserted its
+power, troubled her, angered her, humiliated her, called to her.
+
+She was glad of this meeting with Ingolby.  It had helped her.  She had
+set out to do a thing she dreaded, and it was easier now than it would
+have been if they had not met.  She had been on her way to the Hut in the
+Wood, and now the dread of the visit to Jethro Fawe had diminished.
+The last voice she would hear before she entered Jethro Fawe's prison
+was that of the man who represented to her, however vaguely, the life
+which must be her future--the settled life, the life of Society and not
+of the Saracen.
+
+After he had told his boyhood story they sat in silence for a moment or
+two, then she rose, and, turning to him, was about to speak.  At that
+instant 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 her
+face, and she quickly regained her self-control.
+
+"I heard that sound before," he said, "and I thought from your look you
+heard 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 broke
+in 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'd
+pass 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?" he
+asked.
+
+"'I must finish my journey alone,'" she answered slowly, repeating a line
+from the first English book she had ever read.
+
+"That's English enough," he responded with a laugh.  "Well, if I mustn't
+go with you I mustn't, but my respects to Robinson Crusoe."  He slung the
+gun into the hollow of his arm.  "I'd like much to go with you," he
+urged.
+
+"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 her
+direction.
+
+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 a
+light of battle in his eyes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+IN WHICH THE PRISONER GOES FREE
+
+As Fleda wound her way through the deeper wood, remembering the things
+which had just been said between herself and Ingolby, the colour came and
+went 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 place
+apart; and the Romany lads had been few who had talked with her even as a
+child.  Her father had jealously guarded her until the time when she fell
+under the spell and influence of Lady Barrowdale.  Here, by the Sagalac,
+she had moved among this polyglot people with an assurance of her own
+separateness which was the position of every girl in the West, but
+developed in her own case to the nth degree.
+
+Never before had she come so near--not to a man, but to what concerned a
+man; and never had a man come so near to her or what concerned her inmost
+life.  It was not a question of opportunity or temptation--these always
+attend the footsteps of those who would adventure; but for long she had
+fenced herself round with restrictions of her own making; and the secrecy
+and 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 of
+days--indeed since the day when Jethro Fawe and Max Ingolby had come into
+her life, each in his own way, for good or for evil.  If Ingolby came for
+good, then Jethro Fawe came for evil.  She would have revolted at the
+suggestion that Jethro Fawe came for good.
+
+Yet, during the last few days, she had been drawn again and again towards
+the hut in the wood.  It was as though a power stronger than herself had
+ordered her not to wander far from where the Romany claimant of herself
+awaited his fate.  As though Jethro knew she was drawn towards him, he
+had 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 attention
+of some passer-by, and so found release and brought confusion and perhaps
+punishment to Gabriel Druse; but that was not possible to him.  First and
+last he was a Romany, good or bad; and it was his duty to obey his Ry of
+Rys, 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 the
+phrase; but in his stubborn way he made the meaning of the phrase the
+pivot of his own action.  If he could but see Fleda face to face, he made
+no doubt that something would accrue to his advantage.  He would not give
+up the hunt without a struggle.
+
+Twice a day Gabriel Druse had placed food and water inside the door of
+the 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's
+reply had been that he was in no haste, that he could wait for what he
+came to get; that it was his own--'ay bor'!  it was his own, and God or
+devil could not prevent the thing meant to be from the beginning of the
+world.
+
+He did not hear Fleda approach the hut; he was singing to himself a song
+he 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 Gipsy
+workmanship, setting all the Gipsies in that part of the Balkans
+at 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 of
+the refrain, and, without hesitation, Fleda stepped inside, closing the
+door behind her.
+
+"'Mi Duvel', but who would think--ah, did you hear me call then?" he
+asked, rising from the plank couch where he had been sitting.  He showed
+his teeth in a smile which was meant to be a welcome, but it had an
+involuntary malice.
+
+"I heard you singing," she answered composedly, "but I do not come here
+because 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 Austria
+were rattling the fire-irons again, and there was I as my father was
+before me.  But I heard you calling, and I came."
+
+"You never heard me call, Jethro Fawe," she returned quietly.  "My
+calling of you is as silent as the singing of the stars, where you are
+concerned.  And the stars do not sing."
+
+"But the stars do sing, and you call just the same," he responded with a
+twist to his moustache, and posing against the wall.  "I've heard the
+stars sing.  What's the noise they make in the heart, if it's not
+singing?  You don't hear with the ears only.  The heart hears.  It's only
+a manner of speaking, this talk about the senses.  One sense can do the
+same 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 by
+long and by last, but I was right in coming."
+
+His impudence at once irritated her and provoked her admiration.  She
+knew by instinct how false he was, and how a lie was as common with him
+as the truth; but his submission to her father, his indifference to his
+imprisonment, forced her interest, even as she was humiliated by the fact
+that he was sib to her, bound by ties of clan and blood apart from his
+monstrous claim of marriage.  He was indeed such a man as a brainless or
+sensual woman could yield to with ease.  He had an insinuating animal
+grace, that physical handsomeness which marks so many of the Tziganies
+who fill the red coats of a Gipsy musical sextette!  He was not
+distinguished, yet there was an intelligence in his face, a daring at
+his lips and chin, which, in the discipline and conventions of organized
+society, would have made him superior.  Now, with all his sleek
+handsomeness, he looked a cross between a splendid peasant and a
+chevalier of industry.
+
+She compared him instinctively with Ingolby the Gorgio, as she looked at
+him.  What was it made the difference between the two?  It was the world
+in a man--personality, knowledge of life, the culture of the thousand
+things which make up civilization: it was personality got from life and
+power in contest with the ordered world.
+
+Yet was this so after all?  Tekewani was only an Indian brave who lived
+on the bounty of a government, and yet he had presence and an air of
+command.  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 was
+wrong: Tekewani had been the servant and child of a system which was as
+fixed and historical as that of Russia or Spain.  He belonged to a people
+who had traditions and laws of their own; organized communities moving
+here and there, but carrying with them their system, their laws and their
+national 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 place
+in the world to escape into another; that squeezed one day dry, threw it
+away, and then went seeking another day to bleed; for ever fleeing from
+yesterday, and using to-day only as a camping-ground.  Suddenly, however,
+she came to a stop in her reflections.  Her father, Gabriel Druse, was of
+the same race as this man, the same unorganized, irresponsible, useless
+race, with no weight of civic or social duty upon its shoulders--where
+did he stand?  Was he no better than such as Jethro Fawe?  Was he
+inferior to such as Ingolby, or even Tekewani?
+
+She realized that in her father's face there was the look of one who had
+no place in the ambitious designs of men, who was not a builder, but a
+wayfarer.  She had seen the look often of late, and had never read it
+until now, when Jethro Fawe stared at her with the boldness of
+possession, with the insolence of a soul of lust which had had its
+victories.
+
+She read his look, and while one part of her shrank from him as from some
+noisome thing, another part of her--to her dismay and anger--understood
+him, and did not resent him.  It was the Past dragging at her life.  It
+was inherited predisposition, the unregulated passions of her forebears,
+the mating of the fields, the generated dominance of the body, which was
+not to be commanded into obscurity, but must taunt and tempt her while
+her soul sickened.  She put a hand on herself.  She must make this man
+realize once and for all that they were as far apart as Adam and
+Cagliostro.  "I never called to you," she said at last.  "I did not know
+of your existence, and, if I had, then I certainly shouldn't have
+called."
+
+"The Gorgios have taken away your mind, or you'd understand," he replied
+coolly.  "Your soul calls and those that understand come.  It isn't that
+you know who hears or who is coming--till he comes."
+
+"A call to all creation!" she answered disdainfully.  "Do you think you
+can impress me by saying things like that?"
+
+"Why not?  It's true.  Wherever you went in all these years the memory of
+you 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 he
+said, and I felt enough what he did!"
+
+He laughed, and began to roll a cigarette mechanically, keeping his eyes
+fixed on her, however.
+
+"You heard what my father said and what I said, and you will learn that
+it is true, if you live long enough," she added meaningly.
+
+A look of startled perception flashed into his eyes.  If I live long
+enough, I'll turn you, my mad wife, into my Romany queen and the blessing
+of my 'tan'."
+
+"Don't mistake what I mean," she urged.  "I shall never be ruler of the
+Romanys.  I shall never hear--"
+
+"You'll hear the bosh played-fiddle, they call it in these heathen
+places--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 and
+fibre.  "I come of your race, I was what you are, a child of the hedge
+and 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 Romany
+lass that's forgot her cradle!"
+
+"I have forgotten nothing.  I have only moved on.  I have only seen that
+there is a better road to walk than that where people, always looking
+behind 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 to
+follow 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 it
+in fury real or assumed.  "Great Heaven and Hell," he exclaimed, "here's
+a Romany has sold her blood to the devil!  And this is the daughter of
+Gabriel Druse, King and Duke of all the Romanys, him with ancestor King
+Panuel, 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 tale
+to tell to the Romanys of the world!"  For reply she went to the door and
+opened 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 own
+people 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 light
+upon the doorway.  A little grey bird fluttered into the radiance and
+came tripping across the threshold; a whippoorwill called in the
+ashtrees; and the sweet smell of the thick woodland, of the bracken and
+fern, crept into the room.  The balm of a perfect evening of Summer was
+upon the face of nature.  The world seemed untroubled and serene; but in
+this hidden but two stormy spirits broke the peace to which the place and
+the time were all entitled.
+
+After Fleda's scornful words of release and dismissal, Jethro stood for a
+moment confounded and dismayed.  He had not reckoned with this.  During
+their talk it had come to him how simple it would be to overpower any
+check 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 no
+means sure that escape was what he wanted--not yet, at any rate; in the
+second place, if Gabriel Druse passed the word along the subterranean
+wires of the Romany world that Jethro Fawe should vanish, he would not
+long 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 in
+marriage so many years ago.  He had fared far and wide in his adventures
+and amours when he had gold in plenty; and he had swung more than one
+Gorgio woman in the wild dance of sentiment, dazzling them by the
+splendour of his passion.  The fire gleaming in his dark eyes lighted a
+face which would have made memorable a picture by Guido.  He had fared
+far and wide, but he had never seen a woman who had seized his
+imagination as this girl was doing; who roused in him, not the old hot
+desire, but the hungry will to have a 'tan' of his own, and go travelling
+down 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 a
+hundred 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 seen
+her--Fleda Fawe, not Fleda Druse--laying the cloth and bringing out the
+silver cups, or stretching the Turkey rugs upon the ground to make a
+couch 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 where
+abandoned castles stood, and the fox and the squirrel and the hawk gave
+shade and welcome to the dusty pilgrims of the road; or, when the wild
+winds blew in winter, gave shelter and wood for the fire, and a sense of
+homeliness 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 seen
+them both in a great wagon with bright furnishings and brass-girt harness
+on their horses, lording it over all, rich, dominant and admired.  In his
+visions he had even seen a Romany babe carried in his arms to a Christian
+church and there baptized in grandeur as became the child of the head of
+the people.  His imagination had also seen his own tombstone in some
+Christian churchyard near to the church porch, where he would not be
+lonely when he was dead, but could hear the gossip of the people as they
+went in and out of church; and on the tombstone some such inscription as
+he had seen once at Pforzheim--"To the high-born Lord Johann, Earl of
+Little 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 Gorgio
+churchyard; 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 Kleinschild
+at Mantua--all of whom had great emblazoned monuments in Christian
+churches, just to show that in all-levelling death they condescended from
+high 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 of
+adventure, cupidity and desire.  He had come like one who betrays, but he
+acknowledged to a higher force than his own and to superior rights when
+Gabriel Druse's strong arm brought him low; and, waking to life and
+consciousness again, he was aware that another force also had levelled
+him to the earth.  That force was this woman's spirit which now gave him
+his freedom so scornfully; who bade him begone and tell their people
+everywhere that she was no longer a Romany, while she would go, no doubt
+--a thousand times without doubt unless he prevented it--to the
+swaggering Gorgio who had saved her on the Sagalac.
+
+She stood waiting for him to go, as though he could not refuse his
+freedom.  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 your
+prisoner.  You tell me to take that word to the Romany people--that you
+leave them for ever.  I will not do it.  You are a Romany, and a Romany
+you must stay.  You belong nowhere else.  If you married a Gorgio, you
+would still sigh for the camp beneath the stars, for the tambourine and
+the dance--"
+
+"And the fortune-telling," she interjected sharply, "and the snail-soup,
+and the dirty blanket under the hedge, and the constable on the road
+behind, always just behind, watching, waiting, and--"
+
+"The hedge is as clean as the dirty houses where the low-class Gorgios
+sleep.  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 Gorgio
+countess, 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 the
+Romany.  It's there, and it will show red and angry when we've stripped
+off the Gorgio.  It's the way with a woman, always acting, always
+imagining herself something else than what she is--if she's a beggar
+fancying herself a princess; if she's a princess fancying herself a
+flower-girl.  'Mi Duvel', but I know you all!"
+
+Every word he said went home.  She knew that there was truth in what he
+said, and that beneath all was the Romany blood; but she meant to conquer
+it.  She had made her vow to one in England that she loved, and she would
+not change.  Whatever happened, she had finished with Romany life, and to
+go back would only mean black tragedy in the end.  A month ago it was a
+vow and an inner desire which made her determined; to-day it was the vow
+and a man--a Gorgio whom she had but now left in the woods, gazing after
+her with the look which a woman so well interprets.
+
+"You mean you won't go free from here?  Because I was a Romany, and wish
+you no harm, I have come here to-day to let you go where you will--to go
+back to the place where the patrins show where your people travel.  I set
+you free, and you say what you think will hurt and shame me.  You have a
+cruel soul.  You would torture any woman till she died.  You shall not
+torture me.  You are as far from me as the River Starzke.  I could have
+let 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 more
+to you than one of the women you have fooled and left to eat the vile
+bread 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 it
+seemed almost black.  A torrent of mad words gathered in his throat, but
+they choked him, and in the pause his will asserted itself.  He became
+cool and deliberate.
+
+"You are right, my girl, I have sucked the orange and thrown the skin
+away, and I've picked flowers and cast them by, but that was before the
+first day I saw you as you now are.  You were standing by the Sagalac
+looking out to the west where the pack-trains were travelling into the
+sun 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 at
+you, and I wished that I had never seen a woman before and could look at
+the 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 alone
+with me with that door shut.  Have I said or done anything that a Gorgio
+duke wouldn't do?  Ah, God's love, but you were bold to come!  I married
+you by the River Starzke; I looked upon you as my wife; and here you were
+alone with me!  I had my rights, and I had been trampled underfoot by
+your father--"
+
+"By your Chief."
+
+"'Ay bor', by my Chief!  I had my wrongs, and I had my rights, and you
+were mine by Romany law.  It was for me here to claim you--here where a
+Romany and his wife were alone together!"
+
+His eyes were fixed searchingly on hers, as though he would read the
+effect of his words before he replied, and his voice had a curious, rough
+note, as though with difficulty he quelled the tempest within him.
+"I have my rights, and you had spat upon me," he said with ferocious
+softness.
+
+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 keep
+me 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 if
+such shame could be, I still would have had no fear, for I should have
+shot you as wolves are shot that come too near the fold."
+
+He looked at her piercingly, and the pupils of his eyes narrowed to a
+pin-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 thought
+that, 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 declined
+to see, the significance of her bearing, of her dress, of her speech, of
+her present mode of life, of its comparative luxury, its social
+distinction of a kind which lifted her above even the Gorgios by whom she
+was surrounded.  A fatuous belief in himself and in his personal powers
+had deluded him.  He had told the truth when he said that no woman had
+ever appealed to him as she did; that she had blotted out all other women
+from the book of his adventurous and dissolute life; and he had dreamed a
+dream of conquest of her when Fortune should hand out to him the key of
+the situation.  Did not the beautiful Russian countess on the Volga flee
+from her liege lord and share his 'tan'?  When he played his fiddle to
+the Austrian princess, did she not give him a key to the garden where she
+walked of an evening?  And this was a Romany lass, daughter of his
+Chieftain, as he was son of a great Romany chief; and what marvel could
+there be that she who had been made his child wife, should be conquered
+as others had been!
+
+"'Mi Duvel', but I see!" he repeated in a husky fierceness.  "I am your
+husband, but you would have killed me if I had taken a kiss from your
+lips, 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 a
+man of my own choosing, and he will not be a Romany," she replied with a
+look of resolution which her beating heart belied.  "I'm not a pedlar's
+basket."
+
+"'Kek!  Kek'!  That's plain," he retorted.  "But the 'wolf' is no lamb
+either!  I said I would not go till your father set me free, since you
+had no right to do so, but a wife should save her husband, and her
+husband should set himself free for his wife's sake"--his voice rose in
+fierce irony--"and so I will now go free.  But I will not take the word
+to 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 wanted
+her.  I am a true Romany husband who will not betray his wife to her
+people; 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 not
+take you to my 'tan', it will be because I'm dead," he said, and his
+white 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 the
+Romany 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 a
+moment's truth in his words.  "Go while you can," she said.  "You are
+nothing to me."
+
+For an instant he hesitated, then, with a muttered oath, sprang out into
+the bracken, and was presently lost among the trees.
+
+For a long time she sat in the doorway, and again and again her eyes
+filled with tears.  She felt a cloud of trouble closing in upon her.  At
+last there was the sound of footsteps, and a moment later Gabriel Druse
+came 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.  I
+ought to have put him out of the way, but I have no heart any more--no
+heart; I have the soul of a rabbit."
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Saw how futile was much competition
+When you strike your camp, put out the fires
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WORLD FOR SALE
+
+By Gilbert Parker
+
+
+
+BOOK II
+
+VIII.     THE SULTAN
+IX.       MATTER AND MIND AND TWO MEN
+X.        FOR LUCK
+XI.       THE SENTENCE OF THE PATRIN
+XII.      "LET THERE BE LIGHT"
+XIII.     THE CHAIN OF THE PAST
+XIV.      SUCH THINGS MAY NOT BE
+XV.       THE WOMAN FROM WIND RIVER
+XVI.      THE MAYOR FILLS AN OFFICE
+XVII.     THE MONSEIGNEUR AND THE NOMAD
+XVIII.    THE BEACONS
+XIX.      THE BEEPER OF THE BRIDGE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE SULTAN
+
+Ingolby's square head jerked forwards in stern inquiry and his eyes
+fastened those of Jowett, the horsedealer.  "Take care what you're
+saying, Jowett," he said.  "It's a penitentiary job, if it can be proved.
+Are you sure you got it right?"
+
+Jowett had unusual shrewdness, some vanity and a humorous tongue.  He was
+a favourite in both towns, and had had the better of both in horse-
+dealing a score of times.
+
+That did not make him less popular.  However, it was said he liked low
+company, and it was true that though he had "money in the bank," and
+owned a corner lot or so, he seemed to care little what his company was.
+His most constant companion was Fabian Osterhaut, who was the common
+property of both towns, doing a little of everything for a living, from
+bill-posting to the solicitation of an insurance agent.
+
+For any casual work connected with public functions Osterhaut was
+indispensable, and he would serve as a doctor's assistant and help cut
+off a leg, be the majordomo for a Sunday-school picnic, or arrange a
+soiree at a meeting-house with equal impartiality.  He had been known to
+attend a temperance meeting and a wake in the same evening.  Yet no one
+ever questioned his bona fides, and if he had attended mass at Manitou in
+the morning, joined a heathen dance in Tekewani's Reserve in the
+afternoon, and listened to the oleaginous Rev. Reuben Tripple in the
+evening, it would have been taken as a matter of course.
+
+He was at times profane and impecunious, and he had been shifted from
+one boarding-house to another till at last, having exhausted credit in
+Lebanon, he had found a room in the house of old Madame Thibadeau in
+Manitou.  She had taken him in because, in years gone by, he had nursed
+her only son through an attack of smallpox on the Siwash River, and
+somehow Osterhaut had always paid his bills to her.  He was curiously
+exact where she was concerned.  If he had not enough for his week's board
+and lodging, he borrowed it, chiefly of Jowett, who used him profitably
+at times to pass the word about a horse, or bring news of a possible
+deal.
+
+"It's a penitentiary job, Jowett," Ingolby repeated.  "I didn't think
+Marchand would be so mad as that."
+
+"Say, it's all straight enough, Chief," answered Jowett, sucking his
+unlighted cigar.  "Osterhaut got wind of it--he's staying at old Mother
+Thibadeau's, as you know.  He moves round a lot, and he put me on to it.
+I took on the job at once.  I got in with the French toughs over at
+Manitou, at Barbazon's Tavern, and I gave them gin--we made it a gin
+night.  It struck their fancy--gin, all gin!  'Course there's nothing in
+gin different from any other spirit; but it fixed their minds, and took
+away suspicion.
+
+"I got drunk--oh, yes, of course, blind drunk, didn't I?  Kissed me, half
+a dozen of the Quebec boys did--said I was 'bully boy' and 'hell-fellow';
+said I was 'bon enfant'; and I said likewise in my best patois.  They
+liked that.  I've got a pretty good stock of monkey-French, and I let
+it go.  They laughed till they cried at some of my mistakes, but they
+weren't no mistakes, not on your life.  It was all done a-purpose.
+They said I was the only man from Lebanon they wouldn't have cut up and
+boiled, and they was going to have the blood of the Lebanon lot before
+they'd done.  I pretended to get mad, and I talked wild.  I said that
+Lebanon would get them first, that Lebanon wouldn't wait, but'd have it
+out; and I took off my coat and staggered about--blind-fair blind boozy.
+I tripped over some fool's foot purposely, just beside a bench against
+the wall, and I come down on that bench hard.  They laughed--Lord, how
+they laughed!  They didn't mind my givin' 'em fits--all except one or
+two.  That was what I expected.  The one or two was mad.  They begun
+raging towards me, but there I was asleep on the bench-stony blind,
+and then they only spit fire a bit.  Some one threw my coat over me.
+I hadn't any cash in the pockets, not much--I knew better than that--and
+I snored like a sow.  Then it happened what I thought would happen.  They
+talked.  And here it is.  They're going to have a strike in the mills,
+and you're to get a toss into the river.  That's to be on Friday.  But
+the other thing--well, they all cleared away but two.  They were the two
+that wanted to have it out with me.  They stayed behind.  There was I
+snoring like a locomotive, but my ears open all right.
+
+"Well, they give the thing away.  One of 'em had just come from Felix
+Marchand and he was full of it.  What was it?  Why, the second night of
+the strike your new bridge over the river was to be blown up.
+Marchand was to give these two toughs three hundred dollars each for
+doing it."
+
+"Blown up with what?" Ingolby asked sharply.
+
+"Dynamite."
+
+"Where would they get it?"
+
+"Some left from blasting below the mills."
+
+"All right!  Go on."
+
+"There wasn't much more.  Old Barbazon, the landlord, come in and they
+quit talking about it; but they said enough to send 'em to gaol for ten
+years."
+
+Ingolby blinked at Jowett reflectively, and his mouth gave a twist that
+lent to his face an almost droll look.
+
+"What good would it do if they got ten years--or one year, if the bridge
+was blown up?  If they got skinned alive, and if Marchand was handed over
+to a barnful of hungry rats to be gnawed to death, it wouldn't help.
+I've heard and seen a lot of hellish things, but there's nothing to equal
+that.  To blow up the bridge--for what?  To spite Lebanon, and to hurt
+me; to knock the spokes out of my wheel.  He's the dregs, is Marchand."
+
+"I guess he's a shyster by nature, that fellow," interposed Jowett.
+"He was boilin' hot when he was fifteen.  He spoiled a girl I knew when
+he was twenty-two, not fourteen she was--Lil Sarnia; and he got her away
+before--well, he got her away East; and she's in a dive in Winnipeg now.
+As nice a girl--as nice a little girl she was, and could ride any broncho
+that ever bucked.  What she saw in him--but there, she was only a child,
+just the mind of a child she had, and didn't understand.  He'd ha' been
+tarred and feathered if it'd been known.  But old Mick Sarnia said hush,
+for his wife's sake, and so we hushed, and Sarnia's wife doesn't know
+even now.  I thought a lot of Lil, as much almost as if she'd been my
+own; and lots o' times, when I think of it, I sit up straight, and the
+thing freezes me; and I want to get Marchand by the scruff of the neck.
+I got a horse, the worst that ever was--so bad I haven't had the heart to
+ride him or sell him.  He's so bad he makes me laugh.  There's nothing he
+won't do, from biting to bolting.  Well, I'd like to tie Mr. Felix
+Marchand, Esquire, to his back, and let him loose on the prairie, and
+pray the Lord to save him if he thought fit.  I fancy I know what the
+Lord would do.  And Lil Sarnia's only one.  Since he come back from the
+States, he's the limit, oh, the damnedest limit.  He's a pest all round-
+and now, this!"
+
+Ingolby kept blinking reflectively as Jowett talked.  He was doing two
+things at once with a facility quite his own.  He was understanding all
+Jowett was saying, but he was also weighing the whole situation.  His
+mind was gone fishing, figuratively speaking.  He was essentially a man
+of action, but his action was the bullet of his mind; he had to be quiet
+physically when he was really thinking.  Then he was as one in a dream
+where all physical motion was mechanical, and his body was acting
+automatically.  His concentration, and therefore his abstraction, was
+phenomenal.  Jowett's reminiscences at a time so critical did not disturb
+him--did not, indeed, seem to be irrelevant.  It was as though Felix
+Marchand was being passed in review before him in a series of aspects.
+He nodded encouragement to Jowett to go on.
+
+"It's because Marchand hates you, Chief.  The bump he got when you
+dropped him on the ground that day at Carillon hurts still.  It's a
+chronic inflammation.  Closing them railway offices at Manitou, and
+dislodging the officials give him his first good chance.  The feud
+between the towns is worse now than it's ever been.  Make no mistake.
+There's a whole lot of toughs in Manitou.  Then there's religion, and
+there's race, and there's a want-to-stand-still and leave-me-alone-
+feeling.  They don't want to get on.  They don't want progress.  They
+want to throw the slops out of the top windows into the street; they want
+their cesspools at the front door; they think that everybody's got to
+have smallpox some time or another, and the sooner they have it the
+better; they want to be bribed; and they think that if a vote's worth
+having it's worth paying for--and yet there's a bridge between these two
+towns!  A bridge--why, they're as far apart as the Yukon and Patagonia."
+
+"What'd buy Felix Marchand?" Ingolby asked meditatively.  "What's his
+price?"
+
+Jowett shifted with impatience.  "Say, Chief, I don't know what you're
+thinking about.  Do you think you could make a deal with Felix Marchand?
+Not much.  You've got the cinch on him.  You could send him to quod, and
+I'd send him there as quick as lightning.  I'd hang him, if I could, for
+what he done to Lil Sarnia.  Years ago when he was a boy he offered me a
+gold watch for a mare I had.  The watch looked as right as could be--
+solid fourteen-carat, he said it was.  He got my horse, and I got his
+watch.  It wasn't any more gold than he was.  It was filled--just plated
+with nine-carat gold.  It was worth about ten dollars."
+
+"What was the mare worth?" asked Ingolby, his mouth twisting again with
+quizzical meaning.
+
+"That mare--she was all right."
+
+"Yes, but what was the matter with her?"
+
+"Oh, a spavin--she was all right when she got wound up--go like Dexter or
+Maud S."
+
+"But if you were buying her what would you have paid for her, Jowett?
+Come now, man to man, as they say.  How much did you pay for her?"
+
+"About what she was worth, Chief, within a dollar or two."
+
+"And what was she worth?"
+
+"What I paid for her-ten dollars."
+
+Then the two men looked at each other full in the eyes, and Jowett threw
+back his head and laughed outright--laughed loud and hard.  "Well, you
+got me, Chief, right under the guard," he observed.
+
+Ingolby did not laugh outright, but there was a bubble of humour in his
+eyes.  "What happened to the watch?" he asked.
+
+"I got rid of it."
+
+"In a horse-trade?"
+
+"No, I got a town lot with it."
+
+"In Lebanon?"
+
+"Well, sort of in Lebanon's back-yard."
+
+"What's the lot worth now?"
+
+"About two thousand dollars!"
+
+"Was it your first town lot?"
+
+"The first lot of Mother Earth I ever owned."
+
+"Then you got a vote on it?"
+
+"Yes, my first vote."
+
+"And the vote let you be a town-councillor?"
+
+"It and my good looks."
+
+"Indirectly, therefore, you are a landowner, a citizen, a public servant,
+and an instrument of progress because of Felix Marchand.  If you hadn't
+had the watch you wouldn't have had that town lot."
+
+"Well, mebbe, not that lot."
+
+Suddenly Ingolby got to his feet and squared himself, and his face became
+alight with purpose.  His mind had come back from fishing, and he was
+ready now for action.  His plans were formed.  He was in for a fight, and
+he had made up his mind how, with the new information to his hand, he
+would develop his campaign further.
+
+"You didn't make a fuss about the watch, Jowett.  You might have gone to
+Felix Marchand or to his father and proved him a liar, and got even that
+way.  You didn't; you got a corner lot with it.  That's what I'm going to
+do.  I can have Felix Marchand put in the jug, and make his old father,
+Hector Marchand, sick; but I like old Hector Marchand, and I think he's
+bred as bad a pup as ever was.  I'm going to try and do with this
+business as you did with that watch.  I'm going to try and turn it to
+account and profit in the end.  Felix Marchand's profiting by a mistake
+of mine--a mistake in policy.  It gives him his springboard; and there's
+enough dry grass in both towns to get a big blaze with a very little
+match.  I know that things are seething.  The Chief Constable keeps me
+posted as to what's going on here, and pretty fairly as to what's going
+on in Manitou.  The police in Manitou are straight enough.  That's one
+comfort.  I've done Felix Marchand there.  I guess that the Chief
+Constable of Manitou and Monseigneur Lourde and old Mother Thibadeau are
+about the only people that Marchand can't bribe.  I see I've got to face
+a scrimmage before I can get what I want."
+
+"What you want you'll have, I bet," was the admiring response.
+
+"I'm going to have a good try.  I want these two towns to be one.
+That'll be good for your town lots, Jowett," he added whimsically.  "If
+my policy is carried out, my town lot'll be worth a pocketful of gold-
+plated watches or a stud of spavined mares."  He chuckled to himself, and
+his fingers reached towards a bell on the table, but he paused.  "When
+was it they said the strike would begin?" he asked.
+
+"Friday."
+
+"Did they say what hour?"
+
+"Eleven in the morning."
+
+"Third of a day's work and a whole day's pay," he mused.  "Jowett," he
+added, "I want you to have faith.  I'm going to do Marchand, and I'm
+going to do him in a way that'll be best in the end.  You can help as
+much if not more than anybody--you and Osterhaut.  And if I succeed,
+it'll be worth your while."
+
+"I ain't followin' you because it's worth while, but because I want to,
+Chief."
+
+"I know; but a man--every man--likes the counters for the game."  He
+turned to the table, opened a drawer, and took out a folded paper.  He
+looked it through carefully, wrote a name on it, and handed it to Jowett.
+
+"There's a hundred shares in the Northwest Railway, with my regards,
+Jowett.  Some of the counters of the game."
+
+Jowett handed it back at once with a shake of the head.  "I don't live in
+Manitou," he said.  "I'm almost white, Chief.  I've never made a deal
+with you, and don't want to.  I'm your man for the fun of it, and because
+I'd give my life to have your head on my shoulders for one year."
+
+"I'd feel better if you'd take the shares, Jowett.  You've helped me,
+and I can't let you do it for nothing."
+
+"Then I can't do it at all.  I'm discharged."  Suddenly, however, a
+humorous, eager look shot into Jowett's face.  "Will you toss for it?"
+he blurted out.  "Certainly, if you like," was the reply.
+
+"Heads I win, tails it's yours?"
+
+"Good."
+
+Ingolby took a silver dollar from his pocket, and tossed.  It came down
+tails.  Ingolby had won.
+
+"My corner lot against double the shares?" Jowett asked sharply, his
+face flushed with eager pleasure.  He was a born gambler.
+
+"As you like," answered Ingolby with a smile.  Ingolby tossed, and they
+stooped over to look at the dollar on the floor.  It had come up heads.
+"You win," said Ingolby, and turning to the table, took out another
+hundred shares.  In a moment they were handed over.
+
+"You're a wonder, Jowett," he said.  "You risked a lot of money.  Are you
+satisfied?"
+
+"You bet, Chief.  I come by these shares honestly now."
+
+He picked up the silver dollar from the floor, and was about to put it in
+his pocket.
+
+"Wait--that's my dollar," said Ingolby.
+
+"By gracious, so it is!" said Jowett, and handed it over reluctantly.
+
+Ingolby pocketed it with satisfaction.
+
+Neither dwelt on the humour of the situation.  They were only concerned
+for the rules of the game, and both were gamesters in their way.
+
+After a few brief instructions to Jowett, and a message for Osterhaut
+concerning a suit of workman's clothes, Ingolby left his offices and
+walked down the main street of the town with his normal rapidity,
+responding cheerfully to the passers-by, but not encouraging evident
+desire for talk with him.  Men half-started forward to him, but he held
+them back with a restraining eye.  They knew his ways.  He was responsive
+in a brusque, inquisitive, but good-humoured and sometimes very droll
+way; but there were times when men said to themselves that he was to be
+left alone; and he was so much master of the place that, as Osterhaut and
+Jowett frequently remarked, "What he says goes!"  It went even with those
+whom he had passed in the race of power.
+
+He had had his struggles to be understood in his first days in Lebanon.
+He had fought intrigue and even treachery, had defeated groups which were
+the forces at work before he came to Lebanon, and had compelled the
+submission of others.  All these had vowed to "get back at him," but when
+it became a question of Lebanon against Manitou they swung over to his
+side and acknowledged him as leader.  The physical collision between the
+rougher elements of the two towns had brought matters to a head, and
+nearly every man in Lebanon felt that his honour was at stake, and was
+ready "to have it out with Manitou."
+
+As he walked along the main street after his interview with Jowett, his
+eyes wandered over the buildings rising everywhere; and his mind reviewed
+as in a picture the same thinly inhabited street five years ago when he
+first came.  Now farmers' wagons clacked and rumbled through the prairie
+dust, small herds of cattle jerked and shuffled their way to the
+slaughter-yard, or out to the open prairie, and caravans of settlers with
+their effects moved sturdily forward to the trails which led to a new
+life beckoning from three points of the compass.  That point which did
+not beckon was behind them.  Flaxen-haired Swedes and Norwegians; square-
+jawed, round-headed North Germans; square-shouldered, loose-jointed
+Russians with heavy contemplative eyes and long hair, looked curiously at
+each other and nodded understandingly.  Jostling them all, with a jeer
+and an oblique joke here and there, and crude chaff on each other and
+everybody, the settler from the United States asserted himself.  He
+invariably obtruded himself, with quizzical inquiry, half contempt and
+half respect, on the young Englishman, who gazed round with phlegm upon
+his fellow adventurers, and made up to the sandy-faced Scot or the
+cheerful Irishman with his hat on the back of his head, who showed in the
+throng here and there.  This was one of the days when the emigrant and
+settlers' trains arrived both from the East and from "the States," and
+Front Street in Lebanon had, from early morning, been alive with the
+children of hope and adventure.
+
+With hands plunged deep in the capacious pockets of his grey jacket,
+Ingolby walked on, seeing everything; yet with his mind occupied
+intently, too, on the trouble which must be faced before Lebanon and
+Manitou would be the reciprocating engines of his policy.  Coming to a
+spot where a great gap of vacant land showed in the street-land which he
+had bought for the new offices of his railway combine--he stood and
+looked at it abstractedly.  Beyond it, a few blocks away, was the
+Sagalac, and beyond the Sagalac was Manitou, and a little way to the
+right was the bridge which was the symbol of his policy.  His eyes gazed
+almost unconsciously on the people and the horses and wagons coming and
+going upon the bridge.  Then they were lifted to the tall chimneys rising
+at two or three points on the outskirts of Manitou.
+
+"They don't know a good thing when they get it," he said to himself.
+"A strike--why, wages are double what they are in Quebec, where most of
+'em come from!  Marchand--"
+
+A hand touched his arm.  "Have you got a minute to spare, kind sir?"
+a voice asked.
+
+Ingolby turned and saw Nathan Rockwell, the doctor.  "Ah, Rockwell," he
+responded cheerfully, "two minutes and a half, if you like!  What is it?"
+
+The Boss Doctor, as he was familiarly called by every one, to identify
+him from the newer importations of medical men, drew from his pocket a
+newspaper.
+
+"There's an infernal lie here about me," he replied.  "They say that I--"
+
+He proceeded to explain the misstatement, as Ingolby studied the paper
+carefully, for Rockwell was a man worth any amount of friendship.
+
+"It's a lie, of course," Ingolby said firmly as he finished the
+paragraph.  "Well?"
+
+"Well, I've got to deal with it."
+
+"You mean you're going to deny it in the papers?"
+
+"Exactly."
+
+"I wouldn't, Rockwell."
+
+"You wouldn't?"
+
+"No.  You never can really overtake a newspaper lie.  Lots of the people
+who read the lie don't see the denial.  Your truth doesn't overtake the
+lie--it's a scarlet runner."
+
+"I don't see that.  When you're lied about, when a lie like that--"
+
+"You can't overtake it, Boss.  It's no use.  It's sensational, it runs
+too fast.  Truth's slow-footed.  When a newspaper tells a lie about you,
+don't try to overtake it, tell another."
+
+He blinked with quizzical good-humour.  Rockwell could not resist the
+audacity.  "I don't believe you'd do it just the same," he retorted
+decisively, and laughing.
+
+"I don't try the overtaking anyhow; I get something spectacular in my own
+favour to counteract the newspaper lie."
+
+"In what way?"
+
+"For instance, if they said I couldn't ride a moke at a village
+steeplechase, I'd at once publish the fact that, with a jack-knife, I'd
+killed two pumas that were after me.  Both things would be lies, but the
+one would neutralize the other.  If I said I could ride a moke, nobody
+would see it, and if it were seen it wouldn't make any impression; but to
+say I killed two mountain-lions with a jack-knife on the edge of a
+precipice, with the sun standing still to look at it, is as good as the
+original lie and better; and I score.  My reputation increases."
+
+Nathan Rockwell's equilibrium was restored.  "You're certainly a wonder,"
+he declared.  "That's why you've succeeded."
+
+"Have I succeeded?"
+
+"Thirty-three-and what you are!"
+
+"What am I?"
+
+"Pretty well master here."
+
+"Rockwell, that'd do me a lot of harm if it was published.  Don't say it
+again.  This is a democratic country.  They'd kick at my being called
+master of anything, and I'd have to tell a lie to counteract it."
+
+"But it's the truth, and it hasn't to be overtaken."
+
+A grim look came into Ingolby's face.  "I'd like to be master-boss of
+life and death, holder of the sword and balances, the Sultan, here just
+for one week.  I'd change some things.  I'd gag some people that are
+doing terrible harm.  It's a real bad business.  The scratch-your-face
+period is over, and we're in the cut-your-throat epoch."
+
+Rockwell nodded assent, opened the paper again, and pointed to a column.
+"I expect you haven't seen that.  To my mind, in the present state of
+things, it's dynamite."
+
+Ingolby read the column hastily.  It was the report of a sermon delivered
+the evening before by the Rev. Reuben Tripple, the evangelical minister
+of Lebanon.  It was a paean of the Scriptures accompanied by a crazy
+charge that the Roman Church forbade the reading of the Bible.  It had
+a tirade also about the Scarlet Woman and Popish idolatry.
+
+Ingolby made a savage gesture.  "The insatiable Christian beast!" he
+growled in anger.  "There's no telling what this may do.  You know what
+those fellows are over in Manitou.  The place is full of them going to
+the woods, besides the toughs at the mills and in the taverns.  They're
+not psalm-singing, and they don't keep the Ten Commandments, but they're
+savagely fanatical, and--"
+
+"And there's the funeral of an Orangeman tomorrow.  The Orange Lodge
+attends in regalia."
+
+Ingolby started and looked at the paper again.  "The sneaking, praying
+liar," he said, his jaw setting grimly.  "This thing's a call to riot.
+There's an element in Lebanon as well that'd rather fight than eat.  It's
+the kind of lie that--"
+
+"That you can't overtake," said the Boss Doctor appositely; "and I don't
+know that even you can tell another that'll neutralize it.  Your
+prescription won't work here."
+
+An acknowledging smile played at Ingolby's mouth.  "We've got to have a
+try.  We've got to draw off the bull with a red rag somehow."
+
+"I don't see how myself.  That Orange funeral will bring a row on to us.
+I can just see the toughs at Manitou when they read this stuff, and know
+about that funeral."
+
+"It's announced?"
+
+"Yes, here's an invitation in the Budget to Orangemen to attend the
+funeral of a brother sometime of the banks of the Boyne!"
+
+"Who's the Master of the Lodge?" asked Ingolby.  Rockwell told him,
+urging at the same time that he see the Chief Constable as well, and
+Monseigneur Lourde at Manitou.
+
+"That's exactly what I mean to do--with a number of other things.
+Between ourselves, Rockwell, I'd have plenty of lint and bandages ready
+for emergencies if I were you."
+
+"I'll see to it.  That collision the other day was serious enough, and
+it's gradually becoming a vendetta.  Last night one of the Lebanon
+champions lost his nose."
+
+"His nose--how?"
+
+"A French river-driver bit a third of it off."
+
+Ingolby made a gesture of disgust.  "And this is the twentieth century!"
+
+They had moved along the street until they reached a barber-shop, from
+which proceeded the sound of a violin.  "I'm going in here," Ingolby
+said.  "I've got some business with Berry, the barber.  You'll keep me
+posted as to anything important?"
+
+"You don't need to say it.  Shall I see the Master of the Orange Lodge or
+the Chief Constable for you?"  Ingolby thought for a minute.  "No, I'll
+tackle them myself, but you get in touch with Monseigneur Lourde.  He's
+grasped the situation, and though he'd like to have Tripple boiled in
+oil, he doesn't want broken heads and bloodshed."
+
+"And Tripple?"
+
+"I'll deal with him at once.  I've got a hold on him.  I never wanted to
+use it, but I will now without compunction.  I have the means in my
+pocket.  They've been there for three days, waiting for the chance."
+
+"It doesn't look like war, does it?" said Rockwell, looking up the
+street and out towards the prairie where the day bloomed like a flower.
+Blue above--a deep, joyous blue, against which a white cloud rested or
+slowly travelled westward; a sky down whose vast cerulean bowl flocks of
+wild geese sailed, white and grey and black, while the woods across the
+Sagalac were glowing with a hundred colours, giving tender magnificence
+to the scene.  The busy eagerness of a pioneer life was still a quiet,
+orderly thing, so immense was the theatre for effort and movement.  In
+these wide streets, almost as wide as a London square, there was room to
+move; nothing seemed huddled, pushing, or inconvenient.  Even the
+disorder of building lost its ugly crudity in the space and the sunlight.
+
+"The only time I get frightened in life is when things look like that,"
+Ingolby answered.  "I go round with a life-preserver on me when it seems
+as if 'all's right with the world.'"
+
+The violin inside the barber-shop kept scraping out its cheap music--a
+coon-song of the day.
+
+"Old Berry hasn't much business this morning," remarked Rockwell.
+"He's in keeping with this surface peace."
+
+"Old Berry never misses anything.  What we're thinking, he's thinking.
+I go fishing when I'm in trouble; Berry plays his fiddle.  He's a
+philosopher and a friend."
+
+"You don't make friends as other people do."
+
+"I make friends of all kinds.  I don't know why, but I've always had a
+kind of kinship with the roughs, the no-accounts, and the rogues."
+
+"As well as the others--I hope I don't intrude!"
+
+Ingolby laughed.  "You?  Oh, I wish all the others were like you.  It's
+the highly respectable members of the community I've always had to
+watch."
+
+The fiddle-song came squeaking out upon the sunny atmosphere.
+It arrested the attention of a man on the other side of the street--
+a stranger in strange Lebanon.  He wore a suit of Western clothes as a
+military man wears mufti, if not awkwardly, yet with a manner not wholly
+natural--the coat too tight across the chest, too short in the body.
+However, the man was handsome and unusual in his leopard way, with his
+brown curling hair and well-cared-for moustache.  It was Jethro Fawe.
+
+Attracted by the sound of the violin, he stayed his steps and smiled
+scornfully.  Then his look fell on the two figures at the door of the
+barber-shop, and his eyes flashed.
+
+Here was the man he wished to see--Max Ingolby, the man who stood between
+him and his Romany lass.  Here was a chance of speaking face to face with
+the man who was robbing him.  What he should do when they met must be
+according to circumstances.  That did not matter.  There was the impulse
+storming in his brain, and it drove him across the street as the Boss
+Doctor walked away, and Ingolby entered the shop.  All Jethro realized
+was that the man who stood in his way, the big, rich, masterful Gorgio
+was there.
+
+He entered the shop after Ingolby, and stood for an instant unseen.  The
+old negro barber with his curly white head, slave-black face, and large,
+shrewd, meditative eyes was standing in a corner with a violin under his
+chin, his cheek lovingly resting against it, as he drew his bow through
+the last bars of the melody.  He had smiled in welcome as Ingolby
+entered, instantly rising from his stool, but continuing to play.  He
+would not have stopped in the middle of a tune for an emperor, and he put
+Ingolby higher than an emperor.  For one who had been born a slave, and
+had still the scars of the overseer's whip on his back, he was very
+independent.  He cut everybody's hair as he wanted to cut it, trimmed
+each beard as he wished to trim it, regardless of its owner's wishes.
+If there was dissent, then his customer need not come again, that was
+all.  There were other barbers in the place, but Berry was the master
+barber.  To have your head massaged by him was never to be forgotten,
+especially if you found your hat too small for your head in the morning.
+Also he singed the hair with a skill and care, which had filled many a
+thinly covered scalp with luxuriant growth, and his hair-tonic, known as
+"Smilax," gave a pleasant odour to every meeting-house or church or
+public hall where the people gathered.  Berry was an institution even in
+this new Western town.  He kept his place and he forced the white man,
+whoever he was, to keep his place.
+
+When he saw Jethro Fawe enter the shop he did not stop playing, but his
+eyes searched the newcomer.  Following his glance, Ingolby turned round
+and saw the Romany.  His first impression was one of admiration, but
+suspicion was quickly added.  He was a good judge of men, and there was
+something secluded about the man which repelled him.  Yet he was
+interested.  The dark face had a striking racial peculiarity.
+
+The music died away, and old Berry lowered the fiddle from his chin and
+gave his attention to the Romany.
+
+"Yeth-'ir?" he said questioningly.
+
+For an instant Jethro was confused.  When he entered the shop he had not
+made up his mind what he should do.  It had been mere impulse and the
+fever of his brain.  As old Berry spoke, however, his course opened out.
+
+"I heard.  I am a stranger.  My fiddle is not here.  My fingers itch for
+the cat-gut.  Eh?"
+
+The look in old Berry's face softened a little.  His instinct had been
+against his visitor, and he had been prepared to send him to another
+shop-besides, not every day could he talk to the greatest man in the
+West.
+
+"If you can play, there it is," he said after a slight pause, and handed
+the fiddle over.
+
+It was true that Jethro Fawe loved the fiddle.  He had played it in many
+lands.  Twice, in order to get inside the palace of a monarch for a
+purpose--once in Berlin and once in London--he had played the second
+violin in a Tzigany orchestra.  He turned the fiddle slowly round,
+looking at it with mechanical intentness.  Through the passion of emotion
+the sure sense of the musician was burning.  His fingers smoothed the
+oval brown breast of the instrument with affection.  His eyes found joy
+in the colour of the wood, which had all the graded, merging tints of
+Autumn leaves.
+
+"It is old--and strange," he said, his eyes going from Berry to Ingolby
+and back again with a veiled look, as though he had drawn down blinds
+before his inmost thoughts.  "It was not made by a professional."
+
+"It was made in the cotton-field by a slave," observed old Berry sharply,
+yet with a content which overrode antipathy to his visitor.
+
+Jethro put the fiddle to his chin, and drew the bow twice or thrice
+sweepingly across the strings.  Such a sound had never come from Berry's
+violin before.  It was the touch of a born musician who certainly had
+skill, but who had infinitely more of musical passion.
+
+"Made by a slave in the cotton-fields!" Jethro said with a veiled look,
+and as though he was thinking of something else: "'Dordi', I'd like to
+meet a slave like that!"
+
+At the Romany exclamation Ingolby swept the man with a searching look.
+He had heard the Romany wife of Ruliff Zaphe use the word many years ago
+when he and Charley Long visited the big white house on the hill.  Was
+the man a Romany, and, if so, what was he doing here?  Had it anything to
+do with Gabriel Druse and his daughter?  But no--what was there strange
+in the man being a Romany and playing the fiddle?  Here and there in the
+West during the last two years, he had seen what he took to be Romany
+faces.  He looked to see the effect of the stranger's remark on old
+Berry.
+
+"I was a slave, and I was like that.  My father made that fiddle in the
+cotton-fields of Georgia," the aged barber said.
+
+The son of a race which for centuries had never known country or flag or
+any habitat, whose freedom was the soul of its existence, if it had a
+soul; a freedom defying all the usual laws of social order--the son of
+that race looked at the negro barber with something akin to awe.  Here
+was a man who had lived a life which was the staring antithesis of his
+own, under the whip as a boy, confined to compounds; whose vision was
+constricted to the limits of an estate; who was at the will of one man,
+to be sold and trafficked with like a barrel of herrings, to be worked at
+another's will--and at no price!  This was beyond the understanding of
+Jethro Fawe.  But awe has the outward look of respect, and old Berry who
+had his own form of vanity, saw that he had had a rare effect on the
+fellow, who evidently knew all about fiddles.  Certainly that was a
+wonderful sound he had produced from his own cotton-field fiddle.
+
+In the pause Ingolby said to Jethro Fawe, "Play something, won't you?
+I've got business here with Mr. Berry, but five minutes of good music
+won't matter.  We'd like to hear him play--wouldn't we, Berry?"
+
+The old man nodded assent.  "There's plenty of music in the thing," he
+said, "and a lot could come out in five minutes, if the right man played
+it."
+
+His words were almost like a challenge, and it reached to Jethro's
+innermost nature.  He would show this Gorgio robber what a Romany could
+do, and do as easily as the birds sing.  The Gorgio was a money-master,
+they said, but he would find that a Romany was a master, too, in his own
+way.  He thought of one of the first pieces he had ever heard, a rhapsody
+which had grown and grown, since it was first improvised by a Tzigany in
+Hungary.  He had once played it to an English lady at the Amphitryon Club
+in London, and she had swooned in the arms of her husband's best friend.
+He had seen men and women avert their heads when he had played it, daring
+not to look into each other's eyes.  He would play it now--a little of
+it.  He would play it to her--to the girl who had set him free in the
+Sagalac woods, to the ravishing deserter from her people, to the only
+woman who had told him the truth in all his life, and who insulated his
+magnetism as a ground-wire insulates lightning.  He would summon her here
+by his imagination, and tell her to note how his soul had caught the
+music of the spheres.  He would surround himself with an atmosphere of
+his own.  His rage, his love, and his malignant hate, his tenderness and
+his lust should fill the barber's shop with a flood which would drown the
+Gorgio raider.  He laughed to himself, almost unconsciously.  Then
+suddenly he leaned his cheek to the instrument and drew the bow across
+the strings with a savage softness.  The old cottonfield fiddle cried out
+with a thrilling, exquisite pain, but muffled, as a hand at the lips
+turns agony into a tender moan.  Some one--some spirit--in the fiddle
+was calling for its own.
+
+Five minutes later-a five minutes in which people gathered at the
+door of the shop, and heads were thrust inside in ravished wonder--the
+palpitating Romany lowered the fiddle from his chin, and stood for a
+minute looking into space, as though he saw a vision.
+
+He was roused by old Berry's voice.  "Das a fiddle I wouldn't sell for a
+t'ousand dollars.  If I could play like dat I wouldn't sell it for ten
+t'ousand.  You kin play a fiddle to make it worth a lot--you."
+
+The Romany handed back the instrument.  "It's got something inside it
+that makes it better than it is.  It's not a good fiddle, but it has
+something--ah, man alive, it has something!"  It was as though he was
+talking to himself.
+
+Berry made a quick, eager gesture.  "It's got the cotton-fields and the
+slave days in it.  It's got the whip and the stocks in it; it's got the
+cry of the old man that'd never see his children ag'in.  That's what the
+fiddle's got in it."
+
+Suddenly, in an apparent outburst of anger, he swept down on the front
+door and drove the gathering crowd away.
+
+"Dis is a barber-shop," he said with an angry wave of his hand; "it ain't
+a circuse."
+
+One man protested.  "I want a shave," he said.  He tried to come inside,
+but was driven back.
+
+"I ain't got a razor that'd cut the bristle off your face," the old
+barber declared peremptorily; "and, if I had, it wouldn't be busy on you.
+I got two customers, and that's all I'm going to take befo' I have my
+dinner.  So you git away.  There ain't goin' to be no more music."
+
+The crowd drew off, for none of them cared to offend this autocrat of the
+shears and razor.
+
+Ingolby had listened to the music with a sense of being swayed by a wind
+which blew from all quarters of the compass at once.  He loved music;
+it acted as a clearing-house to his mind; and he played the piano himself
+with the enthusiasm of a wilful amateur, who took liberties with every
+piece he essayed.  There was something in this fellow's playing which the
+great masters, such as Paganini, must have had.  As the music ceased, he
+did not speak, but remained leaning against the great red-plush barber's
+chair looking reflectively at the Romany.  Berry, however, said to the
+still absorbed musician: "Where did you learn to play?"
+
+The Romany started, and a flush crossed his face.  "Everywhere," he
+answered sullenly.
+
+"You've got the thing Sarasate had," Ingolby observed.  "I only heard him
+play but once--in London years ago: but there's the same something in it.
+I bought a fiddle of Sarasate.  I've got it now."
+
+"Here in Lebanon?"  The eyes of the Romany were burning.  An idea had
+just come into his brain.  Was it through his fiddling that he was going
+to find a way to deal with this Gorgio, who had come between him and his
+own?
+
+"Only a week ago it came," Ingolby replied.  "They actually charged me
+Customs duty on it.  I'd seen it advertised, and I made an offer and got
+it at last."
+
+"You have it here--at your house here?" asked old Berry in surprise.
+
+"It's the only place I've got.  Did you think I'd put it in a museum?
+I can't play it, but there it is for any one that can play.  How would
+you like to try it?" he added to Jethro in a friendly tone.  "I'd give a
+good deal to see it under your chin for an hour.  Anyhow, I'd like to
+show it to you.  Will you come?"
+
+It was like him to bring matters to a head so quickly.
+
+The Romany's eyes glistened.  "To play the Sarasate alone to you?" he
+asked.
+
+"That's it-at nine o'clock to-night, if you can."
+
+"I will come--yes, I will come," Jethro answered, the lids drooping over
+his eyes in which were the shadows of the first murder of the created
+world.
+
+"Here is my address, then."  Ingolby wrote something on his visiting-
+card.  "My man'll let you in, if you show that.  Well, good-bye."
+
+The Romany took the card, and turned to leave.  He had been dismissed by
+the swaggering Gorgio, as though he was a servant, and he had not even
+been asked his name, of so little account was he!  He could come and play
+on the Sarasate to the masterful Gorgio at the hour which the masterful
+Gorgio fixed--think of that!  He could be--a servant to the pleasure of
+the man who was stealing from him the wife sealed to him in the Roumelian
+country.  But perhaps it was all for the best--yes, he would make it all
+for the best!  As he left the shop, however, and passed down the street
+his mind remained in the barber-shop.  He saw in imagination the
+masterful Gorgio in the red-plush chair, and the negro barber bending
+over him, with black fingers holding the Gorgio's chin, and an open razor
+in the right hand lightly grasped.  A flash of malicious desire came into
+his eyes as the vision shaped itself in his imagination, and he saw
+himself, instead of the negro barber, holding the Gorgio chin and looking
+down at the Gorgio throat with the razor, not lightly, but firmly grasped
+in his right hand.  How was it that more throats were not cut in that
+way?  How was it that while the scissors passed through the beard of a
+man's face the points did not suddenly slip up and stab the light from
+helpless eyes?  How was it that men did not use their chances?  He went
+lightly down the street, absorbed in a vision which was not like the
+reality; but it was evidence that his visit to Max Ingolby's house was
+not the visit of a virtuoso alone, but of an evil spirit.
+
+As the Romany disappeared, Max Ingolby had his hand on the old barber's
+shoulder.  "I want one of the wigs you made for that theatrical
+performance of the Mounted Police, Berry," he said.  "Never mind what
+it's for.  I want it at once--one with the long hair of a French-Canadian
+coureur-de-bois.  Have you got one?"
+
+"Suh, I'll send it round-no, I'll bring it round as I come from dinner.
+Want the clothes, too?"
+
+"No.  I'm arranging for them with Osterhaut.  I've sent word by Jowett."
+
+"You want me to know what it's for?"
+
+"You can know anything I know--almost, Berry.  You're a friend of the
+right sort, and I can trust you."
+
+"Yeth-'ir, I bin some use to you, onct or twict, I guess."
+
+"You'll have a chance to be of use more than ever presently."
+
+"Suh, there's gain' to be a bust-up, but I know who's comin' out on the
+top.  That Felix Marchand and his roughs can't down you.  I hear and see
+a lot, and there's two or three things I was goin' to put befo' you;
+yeth-'ir."
+
+He unloaded his secret information to his friend, and was rewarded by
+Ingolby suddenly shaking his hand warmly.
+
+"That's the line," Ingolby said decisively.  "When do you go over to
+Manitou again to cut old Hector Marchand's hair?  Soon?"
+
+"To-day is his day--this evening," was the reply.
+
+"Good.  You wanted to know what the wig and the habitant's clothes are
+for, Berry--well, for me to wear in Manitou.  In disguise I'm going there
+tonight among them all, among the roughs and toughs.  I want to find out
+things for myself.  I can speak French as good as most of 'em, and I can
+chew tobacco and swear with the best."
+
+"You suhly are a wonder," said the old man admiringly.  "How you fin' the
+time I got no idee."
+
+"Everything in its place, Berry, and everything in its time.  I've got a
+lot to do to-day, but it's in hand, and I don't have to fuss.  You'll not
+forget the wig--you'll bring it round yourself?"
+
+"Suh.  No snoopin' into the parcel then.  But if you go to Manitou
+to-night, how can you have that fiddler?"
+
+"He comes at nine o'clock.  I'll go to Manitou later.  Everything in its
+own time."
+
+He was about to leave the shop when some one came bustling in.  Berry was
+between Ingolby and the door, and for an instant he did not see who it
+was.  Presently he heard an unctuous voice: "Ah, good day, good day, Mr.
+Berry.  I want to have my hair cut, if you please," it said.
+
+Ingolby smiled.  The luck was with him to-day so far.  The voice belonged
+to the Rev. Reuben Tripple, and he would be saved a journey to the manse.
+Accidental meetings were better than planned interviews.  Old Berry's
+grizzled beard was bristling with repugnance, and he was about to refuse
+Mr. Tripple the hospitality of the shears when Ingolby said: "You won't
+mind my having a word with Mr. Tripple first, will you, Berry?  May we
+use your back parlour?"
+
+A significant look from Ingolby's eyes gave Berry his cue.
+
+"Suh, Mr. Ingolby.  I'm proud."  He opened the door of another room.
+
+Mr. Tripple had not seen Ingolby when he entered, and he recognized him
+now with a little shock of surprise.  There was no reason why he should
+not care to meet the Master Man, but he always had an uncanny feeling
+when his eye met that of Ingolby.  His apprehension had no foundation in
+any knowledge, yet he had felt that Ingolby had no love for him, and this
+disturbed the egregious vanity of a narrow nature.  His slouching,
+corpulent figure made an effort to resist the gesture with which Ingolby
+drew him to the door, but his will succumbed, and he shuffled importantly
+into the other room.
+
+Ingolby shut the door quietly behind him, and motioned the minister to a
+chair beside the table.  Tripple sank down, mechanically smiling, placed
+his hat on the floor, and rested his hands on the table.  Ingolby could
+not help but notice how coarse the hands were--with fingers suddenly
+ending as though they had been cut off, and puffy, yellowish skin that
+suggested fat foods, or worse.
+
+Ingolby came to grips at once.  "You preached a sermon last night which
+no doubt was meant to do good, but will only do harm," he said abruptly.
+
+The flabby minister flushed, and then made an effort to hold his own.
+
+"I speak as I am moved," he said, puffing out his lips.  "You spoke on
+this occasion before you were moved--just a little while before,"
+answered Ingolby grimly.  "The speaking was last night, the moving comes
+today."
+
+"I don't get your meaning," was the thick rejoinder.  The man had a
+feeling that there was some real danger ahead.
+
+"You preached a sermon last night which might bring riot and bloodshed
+between these two towns, though you knew the mess that's brewing."
+
+"My conscience is my own.  I am responsible to my Lord for words which I
+speak in His name, not to you."
+
+"Your conscience belongs to yourself, but your acts belong to all of us.
+If there is trouble at the Orange funeral to-morrow it will be your
+fault.  The blame will lie at your door."
+
+"The sword of the Spirit--"
+
+"Oh, you want the sword, do you?  You want the sword, eh?"  Ingolby's jaw
+was set now like a millstone.  "Well, you can have it, and have it now.
+If you had taken what I said in the right way, I would not have done what
+I'm going to do.  I'm going to send you out of Lebanon.  You're a bad and
+dangerous element here.  You must go."
+
+"Who are you to tell me I must go?"
+
+The fat hands quivered on the table with anger and emotion, but also with
+fear of something.  "You may be a rich man and own railways, but--"
+
+"But I am not rich and I don't own railways.  Lately bad feeling has been
+growing on the Sagalac, and only a spark was needed to fire the ricks.
+You struck the spark in your sermon last night.  I don't see the end of
+it all.  One thing is sure--you're not going to take the funeral service
+to-morrow."
+
+The slack red lips of the man of God were gone dry with excitement, the
+loose body swayed with the struggle to fight it out.
+
+"I'll take no orders from you," the husky voice protested.  "My
+conscience alone will guide me.  I'll speak the truth as I feel it, and
+the people will stand by me."
+
+"In that case you WILL take orders from  me.  I'm going to save the town
+from what hurts it, if I can.  I've got no legal rights over you, but I
+have moral rights, and I mean to enforce them.  You gabble of conscience
+and truth, but isn't it a new passion with you--conscience and truth?"
+
+He leaned over the table and fastened the minister's eyes with his own.
+"Had you the same love of conscience and truth at Radley?"
+
+A whiteness passed over the flabby face, and the beady eyes took on a
+glazed look.  Fight suddenly died out of them.
+
+"You went on a missionary tour on the Ottawa River.  At Radley you toiled
+and rested from your toil--and feasted.  The girl had no father or
+brother, but her uncle was a railway-man.  He heard where you were, and
+he hired with my company to come out here as a foreman.  He came to drop
+on you.  The day after he came he had a bad accident.  I went to see him.
+He told me all; his nerves were unstrung, you observe.  He meant to ruin
+you, as you ruined the girl.  He had proofs enough.  The girl herself is
+in Winnipeg.  Well, I know life, and I know man and man's follies and
+temptations.  I thought it a pity that a career and a life like yours
+should be ruined--"
+
+A groan broke from the twitching lips before him, and a heavy sweat stood
+out on the round, rolling forehead.
+
+"If the man spoke, I knew it would be all up with you, for the world is
+very hard on men of God who fall.  I've seen men ruined before this,
+because of an hour's passion and folly.  I said to myself that you were
+only human, and that maybe you had paid heavy in remorse and fear.  Then
+there was the honour of the town of Lebanon.  I couldn't let the thing
+take its course.  I got the doctor to tell the man that he must go for
+special treatment to a hospital in Montreal, and I--well, I bought him
+off on his promising to keep his mouth shut.  He was a bit stiff in
+terms, because he said the girl needed the money.  The child died,
+luckily for you.  Anyhow I bought him off, and he went.  That was a year
+ago.  I've got all the proofs in my pocket, even to the three silly
+letters you wrote her when your senses were stronger than your judgment.
+I was going to see you about them to-day."
+
+He took from his pocket a small packet, and held them before the other's
+face.  "Have a good look at your own handwriting, and see if you
+recognize it," Ingolby continued.
+
+But the glazed, shocked eyes did not see.  Reuben Tripple had passed the
+several stages of horror during Ingolby's merciless arraignment, and he
+had nearly collapsed before he heard the end of the matter.  When he knew
+that Ingolby had saved him, his strength gave way, and he trembled
+violently.  Ingolby looked round and saw a jug of water.  Pouring out a
+glassful, he thrust it into the fat, wrinkled fingers.
+
+"Drink and pull yourself together," he said sternly.  The shaken figure
+straightened itself, and the water was gulped down.  "I thank you," he
+said in a husky voice.
+
+"You see I treated you fairly, and that you've been a fool?"  Ingolby
+asked with no lessened determination.
+
+"I have tried to atone, and--"
+
+"No, you haven't had the right spirit to atone.  You were fat with vanity
+and self-conceit.  I've watched you."
+
+"In future I will--"
+
+"Well, that rests with yourself, but your health is bad, and you're not
+going to take the funeral tomorrow.  You've had a sudden breakdown, and
+you're going to get a call from some church in the East--as far East as
+Yokohama or Bagdad, I hope; and leave here in a few weeks.  You
+understand?  I've thought the thing out, and you've got to go.  You'll do
+no good to yourself or others here.  Take my advice, and wherever you go,
+walk six miles a day at least, work in a garden, eat half as much as you
+do, and be good to your wife.  It's bad enough for any woman to be a
+parson's wife, but to be a parson's wife and your wife, too, wants a lot
+of fortitude."
+
+The heavy figure lurched to the upright, and steadied itself with a force
+which had not yet been apparent.
+
+"I'll do my best--so help me God!" he said and looked Ingolby squarely
+in the face for the first time.
+
+"All right, see you keep your word," Ingolby replied, and nodded good-
+bye.
+
+The other went to the door, and laid a hand on the knob.
+
+Suddenly Ingolby stopped him, and thrust a little bundle of bills into
+his hand.  "There's a hundred dollars for your wife.  It'll pay the
+expense of moving," he said.
+
+A look of wonder, revelation and gratitude crept into Tripple's face.  "I
+will keep my word, so help me God!" he said again.
+
+"All right, good-bye," responded Ingolby abruptly, and turned away.
+
+A moment afterwards the door closed behind the Rev. Reuben Tripple and
+his influence in Lebanon.  "I couldn't shake hands with him," said
+Ingolby to himself, "but I'm glad he didn't sniffle.  There's some stuff
+in him--if it only has a chance."
+
+"I've done a good piece of business, Berry," he said cheerfully as he
+passed through the barber-shop.  "Suh, if you say so," said the barber,
+and they left the shop together.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+MATTER AND MIND AND TWO MEN
+
+Promptly at nine o'clock Jethro Fawe knocked at Ingolby's door, and was
+admitted by the mulatto man-servant Jim Beadle, who was to Ingolby like
+his right hand.  It was Jim who took command of his house, "bossed" his
+two female servants, arranged his railway tours, superintended his
+kitchen--with a view to his own individual tastes; valeted him, kept his
+cigars within a certain prescribed limit by a firm actuarial principle
+which transferred any surplus to his own use; gave him good advice,
+weighed up his friends and his enemies with shrewd sense; and protected
+him from bores and cranks, borrowers and "dead-beats."
+
+Jim was accustomed to take a good deal of responsibility, and had more
+than once sent people to the right-about who had designs on his master,
+even though they came accredited.  On such occasions he did not lie to
+protect himself when called to account, but told the truth
+pertinaciously.  He was obstinate in his vanity, and carried off his
+mistakes with aplomb.  When asked by Ingolby what he called the Governor
+General when he took His Excellency over the new railway in Ingolby's
+private car, he said, "I called him what everybody called him.  I called
+him 'Succelency.'" And "Succelency" for ever after the Governor General
+was called in the West.  Jim's phonetic mouthful gave the West a roar of
+laughter and a new word to the language.  On another occasion Jim gave
+the West a new phrase to its vocabulary which remains to this day.
+Having to take the wife of a high personage of the neighbouring Republic
+over the line in the private car, he had astounded his master by
+presenting a bill for finger-bowls before the journey began.  Ingolby
+said to him, "Jim, what the devil is this--finger-bowls in my private
+car?  We've never had finger-bowls before, and we've had everybody as was
+anybody to travel with us."  Jim's reply was final.  "Say," he replied,
+"we got to have 'em.  Soon's I set my eyes on that lady I said: 'She's a
+finger-bowl lady.'"
+
+"'Finger-bowl lady' be hanged, Jim, we don't--" Ingolby protested, but
+Jim waved him down.
+
+"Say," he said decisively, "she'll ask for them finger-bowls--she'll ask
+for 'em, and what'd I do if we hadn't got 'em."
+
+She did ask for them; and henceforth the West said of any woman who put
+on airs and wanted what she wasn't born to: "She's a finger-bowl lady."
+
+It was Jim who opened the door to Jethro Fawe, and his first glance was
+one of prejudice.  His quick perception saw that the Romany wore clothes
+not natural to him.  He felt the artificial element, the quality of
+disguise.  He was prepared to turn the visitor away, no matter what he
+wanted, but Ingolby's card handed to him by the Romany made him pause.
+He had never known his master give a card like that more than once or
+twice in the years they had been together.  He fingered the card,
+scrutinized it carefully, turned it over, looked heavenward reflectively,
+as though the final permission for the visit remained with him, and
+finally admitted the visitor.
+
+"Mr. Ingolby ain't in," he said.  "He went out a little while back.  You
+got to wait," he added sulkily, as he showed the Romany into Ingolby's
+working-room.
+
+As Jim did so, he saw lying on a chair a suit of clothes on top of which
+were a wig and false beard and moustache.  Instantly he got between the
+visitor and the make-up.  The parcel was closed when he was in the room a
+half-hour before.  Ingolby had opened it since, had been called out, and
+had forgotten to cover the things up or put them away.
+
+"Sit down," Jim said to the Romany, still covering the disguise.  Then he
+raised them in his arms, and passed with them into another room,
+muttering angrily to himself.
+
+The Romany had seen, however.  They were the first things on which his
+eyes had fallen when he entered the room.  A wig, a false beard, and
+workman's clothes!  What were they for?  Were these disguises for the
+Master Gorgio?  Was he to wear them?  If so, he--Jethro Fawe--would watch
+and follow him wherever he went.  Had these disguises to do with Fleda--
+with his Romany lass?
+
+His pulses throbbed; he was in an overwrought mood.  He was ready for any
+illusion, susceptible to any vagary of the imagination.
+
+He looked round the room.  So this was the way the swaggering, masterful
+Gorgio lived?
+
+Here were pictures and engravings which did not seem to belong to a new
+town in a new land, where everything was useful or spectacular.  Here was
+a sense of culture and refinement.  Here were finished and unfinished
+water-colours done by Ingolby's own hand or bought by him from some hard-
+up artist earning his way mile by mile, as it were.  Here were books, not
+many, but well-bound and important-looking, covering fields in which
+Jethro Fawe had never browsed, into which, indeed, he had never entered.
+If he had opened them he would have seen a profusion of marginal notes in
+pencil, and slips of paper stuck in the pages to mark important passages.
+
+He turned from them to the welcome array of weapons on the walls-rifles,
+shotguns, Indian bows, arrows and spears, daggers, and great sheath-
+knives such as are used from the Yukon to Bolivia, and a sabre with a
+faded ribbon of silk tied to the handle.  This was all that Max Ingolby
+had inherited from his father--that artillery sabre which he had worn in
+the Crimea and in the Indian Mutiny.  Jethro's eyes wandered eagerly over
+the weapons, and, in imagination, he had each one in his hand.  From the
+pained, angry confusion he felt when he looked at the books had emerged a
+feeling of fanaticism, of feud and war, in which his spirit regained its
+own kind of self-respect.  In looking at the weapons he was as good a man
+as any Gorgio.  Brains and books were one thing, but the strong arm, the
+quick eye, and the deft lunge home with the sword or dagger were better;
+they were of a man's own skill, not the acquired skill of another's
+brains which books give.  He straightened his shoulders till he looked
+like a modern actor playing the hero in a romantic drama, and with quick
+vain motions he stroked and twisted his brown moustache, and ran his
+fingers through his curling hair.  In truth he was no coward; and his
+conceit would not lessen his courage when the test of it came.
+
+As his eyes brightened from gloom and sullenness to valiant enmity, they
+suddenly fell on a table in a corner where lay a black coffin-shaped
+thing of wood.  In this case, he knew, was the Sarasate violin.
+Sarasate--once he had paid ten lira to hear Sarasate play the fiddle in
+Turin, and the memory of it was like the sun on the clouds to him now.
+In music such of him as was real found a home.  It fed everything in him
+--his passion, his vanity; his vagabond taste, his emotions, his self-
+indulgence, his lust.  It was the means whereby he raised himself to
+adventure and to pilgrimage, to love and license and loot and spying and
+secret service here and there in the east of Europe.  It was the
+flagellation of these senses which excited him to do all that man may do
+and more.
+
+He was going to play to the masterful Gorgio, and he would play as he had
+never played before.  He would pour the soul of his purpose into the
+music--to win back or steal back, the lass sealed to him by the Starzke
+River.
+
+"Kismet!" he said aloud, and he rose from the chair to go to the violin,
+but as he did so the door opened and Ingolby entered.
+
+"Oh, you're here, and longing to get at it," he said pleasantly.
+
+He had seen the look in the eyes of the Romany as he entered, and noted
+which way his footsteps were tending.  "Well, we needn't lose any time,
+but will you have a drink and a smoke first?" he added.
+
+He threw his hat in a corner, and opened a spirittable where shone a half
+dozen cut-glass, tumblers and several well-filled bottles, while boxes of
+cigars and cigarettes flanked them.  It was the height of modern luxury
+imported from New York, and Jethro eyed it with envious inward comment.
+The Gorgio had the world on his key-chain!  Every door would open to him
+--that was written on his face--unless Fate stepped in and closed all
+doors!
+
+The door of Fleda's heart had already been opened, but he had not yet
+made his bed in it, and there was still time to help Fate, if her mystic
+finger beckoned.
+
+Jethro nodded in response to Ingolby's invitation to drink.  "But I do
+not drink much when I play," he remarked.  "There's enough liquor in the
+head when the fiddle's in the hand.  'Dadia', I do not need the spirit to
+make the pulses go!"
+
+"As little as you like then, if you'll only play as well as you did this
+afternoon," Ingolby said cheerily.  "I will play better," was the reply.
+
+"On Sarasate's violin--well, of course."
+
+"Not only because it is Sarasate's violin, 'Kowadji'!"  "Kowadji!  Oh,
+come now, you may be a Gipsy, but that doesn't mean that you're an
+Egyptian or an Arab.  Why Arabic--why 'kowadji'?"
+
+The other shrugged his shoulders.  "Who can tell I speak many languages.
+I do not like the Mister.  It is ugly in the ear.  Monsieur, signor,
+effendi, kowadji, they have some respect in them."
+
+"You wanted to pay me respect, eh?"
+
+"You have Sarasate's violin!"
+
+"I have a lot of things I could do without."
+
+"Could you do without the Sarasate?"
+
+"Long enough to hear you play it, Mr.--what is your name, may I ask?"
+
+"My name is Jethro Fawe."
+
+"Well, Jethro Fawe, my Romany 'chal', you shall show me what a violin can
+do."
+
+"You know the Romany lingo?" Jethro asked, as Ingolby went over to the
+violin-case.
+
+"A little--just a little."
+
+"When did you learn it?"  There was a sudden savage rage in Jethro's
+heart, for he imagined Fleda had taught Ingolby.
+
+"Many a year ago when I could learn anything and remember anything and
+forget anything."  Ingolby sighed.  "But that doesn't matter, for I know
+only a dozen words or so, and they won't carry me far."
+
+He turned the violin over in his hands.  "This ought to do a bit more
+than the cotton-field fiddle," he said dryly.
+
+He snapped the strings, looking at it with the love of the natural
+connoisseur.  "Finish your drink and your cigarette.  I can wait," he
+added graciously.  "If you like the cigarettes, you must take some away
+with you.  You don't drink much, that's clear, therefore you must smoke.
+Every man has some vice or other, if it's only hanging on to virtue too
+tight."
+
+He laughed eagerly.  Strange that he should have a feeling of greater
+companionship for a vagabond like this than for most people he met.  Was
+it some temperamental thing in him?  "Dago," as he called the Romany
+inwardly, there was still a bond between them.  They understood the glory
+of a little instrument like this, and could forget the world in the light
+on a great picture.  There was something in the air they breathed which
+gave them easier understanding of each other and of the world.
+
+Suddenly with a toss Jethro drained the glass of spirit, though he had
+not meant to do so.  He puffed the cigarette an instant longer, then
+threw it on the floor, and was about to put his foot on it, when Ingolby
+stopped him.
+
+"I'm a slave," he said.  "I've got a master.  It's Jim.  Jim's a hard
+master, too.  He'd give me fits if we ground our cigarette ashes into the
+carpet."
+
+He threw the refuse into a flower-pot.
+
+"That squares Jim.  Now let's turn the world inside out," he proceeded.
+He handed the fiddle over.  "Here's the little thing that'll let you do
+the trick.  Isn't it a beauty, Jethro Fawe?"
+
+The Romany took it, his eyes glistening with mingled feelings.  Hatred
+was in his soul, and it showed in the sidelong glance as Ingolby turned
+to place a chair where he could hear and see comfortably; yet he had the
+musician's love of the perfect instrument, and the woods and the streams
+and the sounds of night and the whisperings of trees and the ghosts that
+walked in lonely places and called across the glens--all were pouring
+into his brain memories which made his pulses move far quicker than the
+liquor he had drunk could do.
+
+"What do you wish?" he asked as he tuned the fiddle.
+
+Ingolby laughed good-humouredly.  "Something Eastern; something you'd
+play for yourself if you were out by the Caspian Sea.  Something that has
+life in it."
+
+Jethro continued to tune the fiddle carefully and abstractedly.  His eyes
+were half-closed, giving them a sulky look, and his head was averted.  He
+made no reply to Ingolby, but his head swayed from side to side in that
+sensuous state produced by self-hypnotism, so common among the half-
+Eastern races.  By an effort of the will they send through the nerves a
+flood of feeling which is half-anaesthetic, half-intoxicant.  Carried
+into its fullest expression it drives a man amok or makes of him a
+howling dervish, a fanatic, or a Shakir.  In lesser intensity it produces
+the musician of the purely sensuous order, or the dancer that performs
+prodigies of abandoned grace.  Suddenly the sensuous exaltation had come
+upon Jethro Fawe.  It was as though he had discharged into his system
+from some cells of his brain a flood which coursed like a stream of soft
+fire.
+
+In the pleasurable pain of such a mood he drew his bow across the strings
+with a sweeping stroke, and then, for an instant, he ran hither and
+thither on the strings testing the quality and finding the range and
+capacity of the instrument.  It was a scamper of hieroglyphics which
+could only mean anything to a musician.
+
+"Well, what do you think of him?" Ingolby asked as the Romany lowered
+the bow.  "Paganini--Joachim--Sarasate--any one, it is good enough," was
+the half-abstracted reply.
+
+"It is good enough for you--almost, eh?"
+
+Ingolby meant his question as a compliment, but an evil look shot into
+the Romany's face, and the bow twitched in his hand.  He was not Paganini
+or Sarasate, but that was no reason why he should be insulted.
+
+Ingolby's quick perception saw, however, what his words had done, and he
+hastened to add: "I believe you can get more out of that fiddle than
+Sarasate ever could, in your own sort of music anyhow.  I've never heard
+any one play half so well the kind of piece you played this afternoon.
+I'm glad I didn't make a fool of myself buying the fiddle.  I didn't, did
+I?  I gave five thousand dollars for it."
+
+"It's worth anything to the man that loves it," was the Romany's
+response.  He was mollified by the praise he had received.
+
+He raised the fiddle slowly to his chin, his eyes wandering round the
+room, then projecting themselves into space, from which they only
+returned to fix themselves on Ingolby with the veiled look which sees but
+does not see--such a look as an oracle, or a death-god, or a soulless
+monster of some between-world, half-Pagan god would wear.  Just such a
+look as Watts's "Minotaur" wears in the Tate Gallery in London.
+
+In an instant he was away in a world which was as far off from this world
+as Jupiter is from Mars.  It was the world of his soul's origin--a place
+of beautiful and yet of noisome creations also; of white mountains and
+green hills, and yet of tarns in which crawled evil things; a place of
+vagrant, hurricanes and tidal-waves and cloud-bursts, of forests alive
+with quarrelling!  and affrighted beasts.  It was a place where birds
+sang divinely, yet where obscene fowls of prey hovered in the blue or
+waited by the dying denizens of the desert or the plain; where dark-eyed
+women heard, with sidelong triumph, the whispers of passion; where sweet-
+faced children fled in fear from terrors undefined; where harpies and
+witch-women and evil souls waited in ambush; or scurried through the
+coverts where men brought things to die; or where they fled for futile
+refuge from armed foes.  It was a world of unbridled will, this, where
+the soul of Jethro Fawe had its origin; and to it his senses fled
+involuntarily when he put Sarasate's fiddle to his chin this Autumn
+evening.
+
+From that well of the First Things--the first things of his own life, the
+fount from which his forebears drew, backwards through the centuries,
+Jethro Fawe quickly drank his fill; and then into the violin he poured
+his own story--no improvisation, but musical legends and classic
+fantasies and folk-breathings and histories of anguished or joyous haters
+or lovers of life; treated by the impressionist who made that which had
+been in other scenes to other men the thing of the present and for the
+men who are.  That which had happened by the Starzke River was now of the
+Sagalac River.  The passions and wild love and irresponsible deeds of the
+life he had lived in years gone by were here.
+
+It was impossible for Ingolby to resist the spell of the music.  Such
+abandonment he had never seen in any musician, such riot of musical
+meaning he had never heard.  He was conscious of the savagery and the
+bestial soul of vengeance which spoke through the music, and drowned the
+joy and radiance and almost ghostly and grotesque frivolity of the
+earlier passages; but it had no personal meaning to him, though at times
+it seemed when the Romany came near and bent over him with the ecstatic
+attack of the music, as though there was a look in the black eyes like
+that of a man who kills.  It had, of course, nothing to do with him; it
+was the abandonment of a highly emotional nature, he thought.
+
+It was only after he had been playing, practically without ceasing, for
+three-quarters of an hour, that there came to Ingolby the true
+interpretation of the Romany mutterings through the man's white, wolf-
+like teeth.  He did not shrink, however, but kept his head and watched.
+
+Once, as the musician flung his body round in a sweep of passion, Ingolby
+saw the black eyes flash to the weapons on the wall with a malign look
+which did not belong to the music alone, and he took a swift estimate of
+the situation.  Why the man should have any intentions against him, he
+could not guess, except that he might be one of the madmen who have a
+vendetta against the capitalist.  Or was he a tool of Felix Marchand?  It
+did not seem possible, and yet if the man was penniless and an anarchist
+maybe, there was the possibility.  Or--the blood rushed to his face--or
+it might be that the Gipsy's presence here, this display of devilish
+antipathy, as though it were all part of the music, was due, somehow, to
+Fleda Druse.
+
+The music swelled to a swirling storm, crashed and flooded the feelings
+with a sense of shipwreck and chaos, through which a voice seemed to cry-
+the quiver and delicate shrillness of one isolated string--and then fell
+a sudden silence, as though the end of all things had come; and on the
+silence the trembling and attenuated note which had quivered on the
+lonely string, rising, rising, piercing the infinite distance and sinking
+into silence again.
+
+In the pause which followed the Romany stood panting, his eyes fixed on
+Ingolby with an evil exaltation which made him seem taller and bigger
+than he was, but gave him, too, a look of debauchery like that on the
+face of a satyr.  Generations of unbridled emotion, of license of the
+fields and the covert showed in his unguarded features.
+
+"What did the single cry--the motif--express?" Ingolby asked coolly.
+"I know there was catastrophe, the tumblings of avalanches, but the voice
+that cried-the soul of a lover, was it?"
+
+The Romany's lips showed an ugly grimace.  "It was the soul of one that
+betrayed a lover, going to eternal tortures."
+
+Ingolby laughed carelessly.  "It was a fine bit of work.  Sarasate would
+have been proud of his fiddle if he could have heard.  Anyhow he couldn't
+have played that.  Is it Gipsy music?"
+
+"It is the music of a 'Gipsy,' as you call it."
+
+"Well, it's worth a year's work to hear," Ingolby replied admiringly, yet
+acutely conscious of danger.  "Are you a musician by trade?" he asked.
+
+"I have no trade."  The glowing eyes kept scanning the wall where the
+weapons hung, and as though without purpose other than to get a pipe from
+the rack on the wall, Ingolby moved to where he could be prepared for any
+rush.  It seemed absurd that there should be such a possibility; but the
+world was full of strange things.
+
+"What brought you to the West?" he asked as he filled a pipe, his back
+almost against the wall.
+
+"I came to get what belonged to me."
+
+Ingolby laughed ironically.  "Most of us are here for that purpose.  We
+think the world owes us such a lot."
+
+"I know what is my own."
+
+Ingolby lit his pipe, his eyes reflectively scanning the other.
+
+"Have you got it again out here--your own?"
+
+"Not yet, but I will."
+
+Ingolby took out his watch, and looked at it.  "I haven't found it easy
+getting all that belongs to me."
+
+"You have found it easier getting what belongs to some one else," was the
+snarling response.
+
+Ingolby's jaw hardened.  What did the fellow mean?  Did he refer to
+money, or--was it Fleda Druse?  "See here," he said, "there's no need to
+say things like that.  I never took anything that didn't belong to me,
+that I didn't win, or earn or pay for--market price or 'founder's
+shares'"--he smiled grimly.  "You've given me the best treat I've had in
+many a day.  I'd walk fifty miles to hear you play my Sarasate--or even
+old Berry's cotton-field fiddle.  I'm as grateful as I can be, and I'd
+like to pay you for it; but as you're not a professional, and it's one
+gentleman to another as it were, I can only thank you--or maybe help you
+to get what's your own, if you're really trying to get it out here.
+Meanwhile, have a cigar and a drink."
+
+He was still between the Romany and the wall, and by a movement forward
+sought to turn Jethro to the spirit-table.  Probably this manoeuvring was
+all nonsense, that he was wholly misreading the man; but he had always
+trusted his instincts, and he would not let his reason rule him entirely
+in such a situation.  He could also ring the bell for Jim, or call to
+him, for while he was in the house Jim was sure to be near by; but he
+felt he must deal with the business alone.
+
+The Romany did not move towards the spirit-table, and Ingolby became
+increasingly vigilant.
+
+"No, I can't pay you anything, that's clear," he said; "but to get your
+own--I've got some influence out here--what can I do?  A stranger is up
+against all kinds of things if he isn't a native, and you're not.  Your
+home and country's a good way from here, eh?"
+
+Suddenly the Romany faced him.  "Yes.  I come from places far from here.
+Where is the Romany's home?  It is everywhere in the world, but it is
+everywhere inside his tent.  Because his country is everywhere and
+nowhere, his home is more to him than it is to any other.  He is alone
+with his wife, and with his own people.  Yes, and by long and by last,
+he will make the man pay who spoils his home.  It is all he has.  Good or
+bad, it is all he has.  It is his own."
+
+Ingolby had a strange, disturbing premonition that he was about to hear
+what would startle him, but he persisted.  "You said you had come here to
+get your own--is your home here?"
+
+For a moment the Romany did not answer.  He had worked himself into a
+great passion.  He had hypnotized himself, he had acted for a while as
+though he was one of life's realities; but suddenly there passed through
+his veins the chilling sense of the unreal, that he was only acting a
+part, as he had ever done in his life, and that the man before him could,
+with a wave of the hand, raise the curtain on all his disguises and
+pretences.  It was only for an instant, however, for there swept through
+him the feeling that Fleda had roused in him--the first real passion, the
+first true love--if what such as he felt can be love--that he had ever
+known; and he saw her again as she was in the but in the wood defying
+him, ready to defend herself against him.  All his erotic anger and
+melodramatic fervour were alive in him once more.
+
+He was again a man with a wrong, a lover dispossessed.  On the instant
+his veins filled with passionate blood.  The Roscian strain in him had
+its own tragic force and reality.
+
+"My home is where my own is, and you, have taken my own from me, as I
+said," he burst out.  "There was all the world for you, but I had only my
+music and my wife, and you have taken my wife from me.  'Mi Duvel', you
+have taken, but you shall give back again, or there will be only one of
+us in the world!  The music I have played for you--that has told you all:
+the thing that was music from the beginning of Time, the will of the
+First of All.  Fleda Druse, she was mine, she is my wife, and you, the
+Gorgio, come between, and she will not return to me."
+
+A sudden savage desire came to Ingolby to strike the man in the face--
+this Gipsy vagabond the husband of Fleda Druse!  It was too monstrous.
+It was an evil lie, and yet she had said she was a Romany, and had said
+it with apparent shame or anxiety.  She had given him no promise, had
+pledged no faith, had admitted no love, and yet already in his heart of
+hearts he thought upon her as his own.  Ever since the day he had held
+her in his arms at the Carillon Rapids her voice had sounded in his ears,
+and a warmth was in his heart which had never been there in all his days.
+This waif of barbarism even to talk of Fleda Druse as though he was of
+the same sphere as herself invited punishment-but to claim her as his
+wife!  It was shameless.  An ugly mood came on him, the force that had
+made him what he was filled all his senses.  He straightened himself;
+contempt of the Ishmael showed at his lips.
+
+"I think you lie, Jethro Fawe," he said quietly, and his eyes were hard
+and piercing.  "Gabriel Druse's daughter is not--never was--any wife of
+yours.  She never called you husband.  She does not belong to the refuse
+of the world."
+
+The Romany made a sudden rush towards the wall where the weapons hung,
+but two arms of iron were flung out and caught him, and he was hurled
+across the room.  He crashed against a table, swayed, missed a chair
+where rested the Sarasate violin, then fell to the floor; but he
+staggered to his feet again, all his senses in chaos.
+
+"You almost fell on the fiddle.  If you had hurt it I'd have hurt you,
+Mr. Fawe," Ingolby said with a grim smile.  "That fiddle's got too much
+in it to waste it."
+
+"Mi Duvel!  Mi Duvel!" gasped the Romany in his fury.
+
+"You can say that as much as you like, but if you play any more of your
+monkey tricks here, my Paganini, I will wring your neck," Ingolby
+returned, his six feet of solid flesh making a movement of menace.
+
+"And look," he added, "since you are here, and I said what I meant, that
+I'd help you to get your own, I'll keep my word.  But don't talk in
+damned riddles.  Talk white men's language.  You said that Gabriel
+Druse's daughter was your wife.  Explain what you meant, and no
+nonsense."
+
+The Romany made a gesture of acquiescence.  "She was made mine according
+to Romany law by the River Starzke seventeen years ago.  I was the son of
+Lemuel Fawe, rightful King of all the Romanys.  Gabriel Druse seized the
+headship, and my father gave him three thousand pounds that we should
+marry, she and I, and so bring the headship to the Fawes again when
+Gabriel Druse should die; and so it was done by the River Starzke in the
+Roumelian country."
+
+Ingolby winced, for the man's words rang true.  A cloud came over his
+face, but he said nothing.  Jethro saw the momentary advantage.  "You did
+not know?" he asked.  "She did not tell you she was made my wife those
+years ago?  She did not tell you she was the daughter of the Romany King?
+So it is, you see, she is afraid to tell the truth."
+
+Ingolby's knitted bulk heaved with desire to injure.  "Your wife--you
+melodious sinner!  Do you think such tomfoolery has any effect in this
+civilized country?  She is about as much your wife as I am your brother.
+Don't talk your heathenish rot here.  I said I'd help you to get your
+own, because you played the fiddle as few men can play it, and I owe you
+a lot for that hour's music; but there's nothing belonging to Gabriel
+Druse that belongs to you, and his daughter least of all.  Look out--
+don't sit on the fiddle, damn you!"
+
+The Romany had made a motion as if to sit down on the chair where the
+fiddle was, but stopped short at Ingolby's warning.  For an instant
+Jethro had an inclination to seize the fiddle and break it across his
+knees.  It would be an exquisite thing to destroy five thousand dollars'
+worth of this man's property at a single wrench and blow.  But the spirit
+of the musician asserted itself before the vengeful lover could carry out
+his purpose; as Ingolby felt sure it would.  Ingolby had purposely given
+the warning about the fiddle, in the belief that it might break the
+unwelcome intensity of the scene.  He detested melodrama, and the scene
+came precious near to it.  Men had been killed before his eyes more than
+once, but there had been no rodomontade even when there had been a woman
+in the case.
+
+This Romany lover, however, seemed anxious to make a Sicilian drama out
+of his preposterous claim, and it sickened him.  Who was the fellow that
+he should appear in the guise of a rival to himself!  It was humiliating
+and offensive.  Ingolby had his own kind of pride and vanity, and they
+were both hurt now.  He would have been less irritable if this rival had
+been as good a man as himself or better.  He was so much a gamester that
+he would have said, "Let the best man win," and have taken his chances.
+
+His involuntary strategy triumphed for the moment.  The Romany looked at
+the fiddle for an instant with murderous eyes, but the cool, quiet voice
+of Ingolby again speaking sprayed his hot virulence.
+
+"You can make a good musician quite often, but a good fiddle is a prize-
+packet from the skies," Ingolby said.  "When you get a good musician and
+a good fiddle together it's a day for a salute of a hundred guns."
+
+Half-dazed with unregulated emotion, Jethro acted with indecision for a
+moment, and the fiddle was safe.  But he had suffered the indignity of
+being flung like a bag of bones across the room, and the microbe of
+insane revenge was in him.  It was not to be killed by the cold humour of
+the man who had worsted him.  He returned to the attack.
+
+"She is mine, and her father knows it is so.  I have waited all these
+years, and the hour has come.  I will--"
+
+Ingolby's eyes became hard and merciless again.  "Don't talk your Gipsy
+rhetoric.  I've had enough.  No hour has come that makes a woman do what
+she doesn't want to do in a free country.  The lady is free to do what
+she pleases here within British law, and British law takes no heed of
+Romany law or any other law.  You'll do well to go back to your Roumelian
+country or whatever it is.  The lady will marry whom she likes."
+
+"She will never marry you," the Romany said huskily and menacingly.
+
+"I have never asked her, but if I do, and she said yes, no one could
+prevent it."
+
+"I would prevent it."
+
+"How?"
+
+"She is a Romany: she belongs to the Romany people; I will find a way."
+
+Ingolby had a flash of intuition.
+
+"You know well that if Gabriel Druse passed the word, your life wouldn't
+be worth a day's purchase.  The Camorra would not be more certain or more
+deadly.  If you do anything to hurt the daughter of Gabriel Druse, you
+will pay the full price, and you know it.  The Romanys don't love you
+better than their rightful chief."
+
+"I am their rightful chief."
+
+"Maybe, but if they don't say so, too, you might as well be their
+rightful slave.  You are a genius in your way.  Take my advice and return
+to the trail of the Gipsy.  Or, there's many an orchestra would give you
+a good salary as leader.  You've got no standing in this country.  You
+can't do anything to hurt me except try to kill me, and I'll take my
+chance of that.  You'd better have a drink now and go quietly home to
+bed.  Try and understand that this is a British town, and we don't settle
+our affairs by jumping from a violin rhapsody to a knife or a gun."  He
+jerked his head backwards towards the wall.  "Those things are for
+ornament, not for use.  Come, Fawe, have a drink and go home like a good
+citizen for one night only."
+
+The Romany hesitated, then shook his head and muttered chaotically.
+
+"Very well," was the decisive reply.  Ingolby pressed a bell, and, in an
+instant, Jim Beadle was in the room.  He had evidently been at the
+keyhole.  "Jim," he said, "show the gentleman out."
+
+But suddenly he caught up a box of cigars from the table and thrust it
+into the Romany's hands.  "They're the best to be got this side of
+Havana," he said cheerily.  "They'll help you put more fancy still into
+your playing.  Good night.  You never played better than you've done
+during the last hour, I'll stake my life on that.  Good night.  Show Mr.
+Fawe out, Jim."
+
+The Romany had not time to thrust back the cigars upon his host, and
+dazed by the strategy of the thing, by the superior force and mind of the
+man who a moment ago he would have killed, he took the box and turned
+towards the door, taking his hat dazedly from Jim.
+
+At the door, however, catching sight of the sly grin on the mulatto
+servant's face, his rage and understanding returned to him, and he faced
+the masterful Gorgio once again.
+
+"By God, I'll have none of it!" he exclaimed roughly and threw the box
+of cigars on the floor of the room.  Ingolby was not perturbed.  "Don't
+forget there's an east-bound train every day," he said menacingly, and
+turned his back as the door closed.
+
+In another minute Jim entered the room.  "Get the clothes and the wig and
+things, Jim.  I must be off," he said.
+
+"The toughs don't get going till about this time over at Manitou,"
+responded Jim.  Then he told his master about the clothes having been
+exposed in the room when the Romany arrived.  "But I don't think he seen
+them," Jim added with approval of his own conduct.  "I got 'em out quick
+as lightning.  I covered 'em like a blanket."
+
+"All right, Jim; it doesn't matter.  That fellow's got other things to
+think of than that."
+
+He was wrong, however.  The Romany was waiting outside in the darkness
+not far away--watching and waiting.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+FOR LUCK
+
+Felix Marchand was in the highest spirits.  His clean-shaven face was
+wrinkled with smiles and sneers.  His black hair was flung in waves of
+triumph over his heavily-lined forehead; one hand was on his hip with
+brave satisfaction, the other with lighted cigarette was tossed upwards
+in exultation.
+
+"I've got him.  I've got him--like that!" he said transferring the
+cigarette to his mouth, and clenching his right hand as though it could
+not be loosed by an earthquake.  "For sure, it's a thing finished as the
+solder of a pannikin--like that."
+
+He caught up a tin quart-pot from the bar-counter and showed the soldered
+bottom of it.
+
+He was alone in the bar of Barbazon's Hotel except for one person--the
+youngest of the officials who had been retired from the offices of the
+railways when Ingolby had merged them.  This was a man who had got his
+position originally by nepotism, and represented the worst elements of a
+national life where the spoils system is rooted in the popular mind.  He
+had, however, a little residue of that discipline which, working in a
+great industrial organization, begets qualms as to extreme courses.
+
+He looked reflectively at the leaden pot and said in reply: "I'd never
+believe in anything where that Ingolby is concerned till I had it in the
+palm of my hand.  He's as deep as a well, and when he's quietest it's
+good to look out.  He takes a lot of skinning, that badger."
+
+"He's skinned this time all right," was Marchand's reply.  "To-morrow'll
+be the biggest day Manitou's had since the Indian lifted his wigwam and
+the white man put down his store.  Listen--hear them!  They're coming!"
+
+He raised a hand for silence, and a rumbling, ragged roar of voices could
+be heard without.
+
+"The crowd have gone the rounds," he continued.  "They started at
+Barbazon's and they're winding up at Barbazon's.  They're drunk enough
+to-night to want to do anything, and to-morrow when they've got sore
+heads they'll do anything.  They'll make that funeral look like a
+squeezed orange; they'll show Lebanon and Master Ingolby that we're to be
+bosses of our own show.  The strike'll be on after the funeral, and after
+the strike's begun there'll be--eh, bien sur!"
+
+He paused sharply, as though he had gone too far.  "There'll be what?"
+whispered the other; but Marchand made no reply, save to make a warning
+gesture, for Barbazon, the landlord, had entered behind the bar.
+
+"They're coming back, Barbazon," Marchand said to the landlord, jerking
+his head towards the front door.  The noise of the crowd was increasing,
+the raucous shouts were so loud that the three had to raise their voices.
+"You'll do a land-office business to-night," he declared.
+
+Barbazon had an evil face.  There were rumours that he had been in gaol
+in Quebec for robbery, and that after he had served his time he had dug
+up the money he had stolen and come West.  He had started the first
+saloon at Manitou, and had grown with the place in more senses than one.
+He was heavy and thick-set, with huge shoulders, big hands, and beady
+eyes that looked out of a stolid face where long hours, greed and vices
+other than drink had left their mark.  He never drank spirits, and was
+therefore ready to take advantage of those who did drink.  More than one
+horse and canoe and cow and ox, and acre of land, in the days when land
+was cheap, had come to him across the bar-counter.  He could be bought,
+could Barbazon, and he sold more than wine and spirits.  He had a wife
+who had left him twice because of his misdemeanours, but had returned and
+straightened out his house and affairs once again; and even when she went
+off with Lick Baldwin, a cattle-dealer, she was welcomed back without
+reproaches by Barbazon, chiefly because he had no morals, and her
+abilities were of more value to him than her virtue.  On the whole, Gros
+Barbazon was a bad lot.
+
+At Marchand's words Barbazon shrugged his shoulders.  "The more spent
+to-night, the less to spend to-morrow," he growled.
+
+"But there's going to be spending for a long time," Marchand answered.
+"There's going to be a riot to-morrow, and there's going to be a strike
+the next day, and after that there's going to be something else."
+
+"What else?" Barbazon asked, his beady eyes fastened on Marchand's face.
+
+"Something worth while-better than all the rest."  Barbazon's low
+forehead seemed to disappear almost, as he drew the grizzled shock of
+hair down, by wrinkling his forehead with a heavy frown.
+
+"It's no damn good, m'sieu'," he growled.  "Am I a fool?  They'll spend
+money to-night, and tomorrow, and the next day, and when the row is on;
+and the more they spend then, the less they'll have to spend by-and-by.
+It's no good.  The steady trade for me--all the time.  That is my idee.
+And the something else--what?  You think there's something else that'll
+be good for me?  Nom de Dieu, there's nothing you're doing, or mean to
+do, but'll hurt me and everybody."
+
+"That's your view, is it, Barbazon?" exclaimed Marchand loudly, for the
+crowd was now almost at the door.  "You're a nice Frenchman and patriot.
+That crowd'll be glad to hear you think they're fools.  Suppose they took
+it into their heads to wreck the place?"
+
+Barbazon's muddy face got paler, but his eyes sharpened, and he leaned
+over the bar-counter, and said with a snarl: "Go to hell, and say what
+you like; and then I'll have something to say about something else,
+m'sieu'."
+
+Marchand was about to reply angrily, but he instantly changed his mind,
+and before Barbazon could stop him, he sprang over the counter and
+disappeared into the office behind the bar.
+
+"I won't steal anything, Barbazon," he said over his shoulder as he
+closed the door behind him.
+
+"I'll see to that," Barbazon muttered stolidly, but with malicious eyes.
+
+The front door was flung open now, and the crowd poured into the room,
+boisterous, reckless, though some were only sullen, watchful and angry.
+These last were mostly men above middle age, and of a fanatical and
+racially bitter type.  They were not many, but in one sense they were the
+backbone and force of the crowd, probably the less intelligent but the
+more tenacious and consistent.  They were black spots of gathering storm
+in an electric atmosphere.
+
+All converged upon the bar.  Two assistants rushed the drinks along the
+counter with flourishes, while Barbazon took in the cash and sharply
+checked the rougher element, who were inclined to treat the bar as a
+place for looting.  Most of them, however, had a wholesome fear of
+Barbazon, and also most of them wished to stand well with him--credit
+was a good thing, even in a saloon.
+
+For a little time the room was packed, then some of the more restless
+spirits, their thirst assuaged, sallied forth to taste the lager and old
+rye elsewhere, and "raise Cain" in the streets.  When they went, it
+became possible to move about more freely in the big bar-room, at the end
+of which was a billiard-table.  It was notable, however, that the more
+sullen elements stayed.  Some of them were strangers to each other.
+Manitou was a distributing point for all radiations of the compass, and
+men were thrown together in its streets who only saw one another once or
+twice a year-when they went to the woods in the Fall or worked the rivers
+in the Summer.  Some were Mennonites, Doukhobors and Finlanders, some
+Swedes, Norwegians and Icelanders.  Others again were birds of passage
+who would probably never see Manitou in the future, but they were mostly
+French, and mostly Catholic, and enemies of the Orange Lodges wherever
+they were, east or west or north or south.  They all had a common ground
+of unity--half-savage coureurs-de-bois, river-drivers, railway-men,
+factory hands, cattlemen, farmers, labourers; they had a gift for
+prejudice, and taking sides on something or other was as the breath
+of the nostrils to them.
+
+The greater number of the crowd were, however, excitable, good-natured
+men, who were by instinct friendly, save when their prejudices were
+excited; and their oaths and exclamations were marvels of droll
+ingenuity.  Most of them were still too good-humoured with drink to be
+dangerous, but all hoped for trouble at the Orange funeral on principle,
+and the anticipated strike had elements of "thrill."  They were of a
+class, however, who would swing from what was good-humour to deadly anger
+in a minute, and turn a wind of mere prejudice into a hurricane of life
+and death with the tick of a clock.  They would all probably go to the
+Orange funeral to-morrow in a savage spirit.  Some of them were loud in
+denunciation of Ingolby and "the Lebanon gang"; they joked coarsely over
+the dead Orangeman, but their cheerful violence had not yet the
+appearance of reality.
+
+One man suddenly changed all that.  He was a river-driver of stalwart
+proportions, with a red handkerchief round his neck, and with loose
+corded trousers tucked into his boots.  He had a face of natural ugliness
+made almost repulsive by marks of smallpox.  Red, flabby lips and an
+overhanging brow made him a figure which men would avoid on a dark night.
+
+"Let's go over to Lebanon to-night and have it out," he said in French.
+"That Ingolby--let's go break his windows and give him a dip in the
+river.  He's the curse of this city.  Holy, once Manitou was a place to
+live in, now it's a place to die in!  The factories, the mills, they're
+full of Protes'ants and atheists and shysters; the railway office is gone
+to Lebanon.  Ingolby took it there.  Manitou was the best town in
+the West; it's no good now.  Who's the cause?  Ingolby's the cause.  Name
+of God, if he was here I'd get him by the throat as quick as winkin'."
+
+He opened and shut his fingers with spasmodic malice, and glared round
+the room.  "He's going to lock us out if we strike," he added.  "He's
+going to take the bread out of our mouths; he's going to put his heel on
+Manitou, and grind her down till he makes her knuckle to Lebanon--to a
+lot of infidels, Protes'ants, and thieves.  Who's going to stand it?  I
+say-bagosh, I say, who's going to stand it!"
+
+"He's a friend of the Monseigneur," ventured a factory-hand, who had a
+wife and children to support, and however partisan, was little ready for
+that which would stop his supplies.
+
+"Sacre bapteme!  That's part of his game," roared the big river-driver in
+reply.  "I'll take the word of Felix Marchand about that.  Look at him!
+That Felix Marchand doesn't try to take the bread out of people's mouths.
+He gives money here, he gives it there.  He wants the old town to stay as
+it is and not be swallowed up."
+
+"Three cheers for Felix Marchand !" cried some one in the throng.  All
+cheered loudly save one old man with grizzled hair and beard, who leaned
+against the wall half-way down the room smoking a corncob pipe.  He was a
+French Canadian in dress and appearance, and he spat on the floor like a
+navvy--he had filled his pipe with the strongest tobacco that one man
+ever offered to another.  As the crowd cheered for Felix Marchand, he
+made his way up towards the bar slowly.  He must have been tall when he
+was young; now he was stooped, yet there was still something very sinewy
+about him.
+
+"Who's for Lebanon?" cried the big river-driver with an oath.  "Who's
+for giving Lebanon hell, and ducking Ingolby in the river?"
+
+"I am--I am--I am--all of us!" shouted the crowd.  "It's no good waiting
+for to-morrow.  Let's get the Lebs by the scruff to-night.  Let's break
+Ingolby's windows and soak him in the Sagalac.  Allons--allons gai!"
+
+Uproar and broken sentences, threats, oaths, and objurgations sounded
+through the room.  There was a sudden movement towards the door, but the
+exit of the crowd was stopped by a slow but clear voice speaking in
+French.
+
+"Wait a minute, my friends!" it cried.  "Wait a minute.  Let's ask a few
+questions first."
+
+"Who's he?" asked a dozen voices.  "What's he going to say?"  The mob
+moved again towards the bar.
+
+The big river-driver turned on the grizzled old man beside the bar-
+counter with bent shoulders and lazy, drawling speech.
+
+"What've you got to say about it, son?" he asked threateningly.
+
+"Well, to ask a few questions first--that's all," the old man replied.
+
+"You don't belong here, old cock," the other said roughly.
+
+"A good many of us don't belong here," the old man replied quietly.  "It
+always is so.  This isn't the first time I've been to Manitou.  You're a
+river-driver, and you don't live here either," he continued.
+
+"What've you got to say about it?  I've been coming and going here for
+ten years.  I belong--bagosh, what do you want to ask?  Hurry up.  We've
+got work to do.  We're going to raise hell in Lebanon."
+
+"And give hell to Ingolby," shouted some one in the crowd.
+
+"Suppose Ingolby isn't there?" questioned the old man.
+
+"Oh, that's one of your questions, is it?" sneered the big river-driver.
+"Well, if you knew him as we do, you'd know that it's at night-time he
+sits studyin' how he'll cut Lebanon's throat.  He's home, all right.
+He's in Lebanon anyhow, and we'll find him."
+
+"Well, but wait a minute--be quiet a bit," said the old man, his eyes
+blinking slowly at the big riverdriver.  "I've been 'round a good deal,
+and I've had some experience in the world.  Did you ever give that
+Ingolby a chance to tell you what his plans were?  Did you ever get close
+to him and try to figure what he was driving at?  There's no chance of
+getting at the truth if you don't let a man state his case--but no.  If
+he can't make you see his case then is the time to jib, not before."
+
+"Oh, get out!" cried a rowdy English road-maker in the crowd.  "We know
+all right what Ingolby's after."
+
+"Eh, well, what is he after?" asked the old man looking the other in the
+eye.
+
+"What's he after?  Oof-oof-oof, that's what he's after.  He's for his own
+pocket, he's for being boss of all the woolly West.  He's after keeping
+us poor and making himself rich.  He's after getting the cinch on two
+towns and three railways, and doing what he likes with it all; and we're
+after not having him do it, you bet.  That's how it is, old hoss."
+
+The other stroked his beard with hands which, somehow, gave little
+indication of age, and then, with a sudden jerk forward of his head, he
+said: "Oh, it's like that, eh?  Is that what M'sieu' Marchand told you?
+That's what he said, is it?"
+
+The big river-driver, eager to maintain his supreme place as leader,
+lunged forward a step, and growled a challenge.
+
+"Who said it?  What does it matter if M'sieu' Marchand said it--it's
+true.  If I said it, it's true.  All of us in this room say it, and it's
+true.  Young Marchand says what Manitou says."
+
+The old man's eyes grew brighter--they were exceedingly sharp for one so
+old, and he said quite gently now:
+
+"M. Marchand said it first, and you all say it afterwards--ah, bah!  But
+listen to me; I know Max Ingolby that you think is such a villain; I know
+him well.  I knew him when he was a little boy and--"
+
+"You was his nurse, I suppose!" cried the Englishman's voice amid a roar
+of laughter.
+
+"Taught him his A-B-C-was his dear, kind teacher, eh?" hilariously cried
+another.
+
+The old man appeared not to hear.  "I have known him all the years since.
+He has only been in the West a few years, but he has lived in the world
+exactly thirty-three years.  He never willingly did anybody harm--never.
+Since he came West, since he came to the Sagalac, he's brought work to
+Lebanon and to Manitou.  There are hundreds more workmen in both the
+towns than there were when he came.  It was he made others come with much
+money and build the factories and the mills.  Work means money, money
+means bread, bread means life--so."
+
+The big river-driver, seeing the effect of the old man's words upon the
+crowd, turned to them with an angry gesture and a sneer.
+
+"I s'pose Ingolby has paid this old skeesicks for talking this swash.
+We know all right what Ingolby is, and what he's done.  He's made war
+between the two towns--there's hell to pay now on both sides of the
+Sagalac.  He took away the railway offices from here, and threw men out
+of work.  He's done harm to Manitou--he's against Manitou every time."
+
+Murmurs of approval ran through the crowd, though some were silent,
+looking curiously at the forceful and confident old man.  Even his bent
+shoulders seemed to suggest driving power rather than the weight of
+years.  He suddenly stretched out a hand in command as it were.
+
+"Comrades, comrades," he said, "every man makes mistakes.  Even if it was
+a mistake for Ingolby to take away the offices from Manitou, he's done a
+big thing for both cities by combining the three railways."
+
+"Monopoly," growled a voice from the crowd.  "Not monopoly," the old man
+replied with a ring to his voice, which made it younger, fresher.  "Not
+monopoly, but better management of the railways, with more wages, more
+money to spend on things to eat and drink and wear, more dollars in the
+pocket of everybody that works in Manitou and Lebanon.  Ingolby works,
+he doesn't loaf."
+
+"Oh, gosh all hell, he's a dynamo," shouted a voice from the crowd.
+"He's a dynamo running the whole show-eh!"
+
+The old man seemed to grow shorter, but as he thrust his shoulders
+forward, it was like a machine gathering energy and power.
+
+"I'll tell you, friends, what Ingolby is trying to do," he said in a low
+voice vibrating with that force which belongs neither to age nor youth,
+but is the permanent activity uniting all ages of a man.  "Of course,
+Ingolby is ambitious and he wants power.  He tries to do the big things
+in the world because there is the big thing to do--for sure.  Without
+such men the big things are never done, and other men have less work to
+do, and less money and poorer homes.  They discover and construct and
+design and invent and organize and give opportunities.  I am a working
+man, but I know what Ingolby thinks.  I know what men think who try to do
+the big things.  I have tried to do them."
+
+The crowd were absolutely still now, but the big river-driver shook
+himself free of the eloquence, which somehow swayed them all, and said:
+
+"You--you look as if you'd tried to do big things, you do, old skeesicks.
+I bet you never earned a hundred dollars in your life."  He turned to the
+crowd with fierce gestures.  "Let's go to Lebanon and make the place
+sing," he roared.  "Let's get Ingolby out to talk for himself, if he
+wants to talk.  We know what we want to do, and we're not going to be
+bossed.  He's for Lebanon and we're for Manitou.  Lebanon means to boss
+us, Lebanon wants to sit on us because we're Catholics, because we're
+French, because we're honest."
+
+Again a wave of revolution swept through the crowd.  The big river-driver
+represented their natural instincts, their native fanaticism, their
+prejudices.  But the old man spoke once more.
+
+"Ingolby wants Lebanon and Manitou to come together, not to fall apart,"
+he declared.  "He wants peace.  If he gets rich here he won't get rich
+alone.  He's working for both towns.  If he brings money from outside,
+that's good for both towns.  If he--"
+
+"Shut your mouth, let Ingolby speak for himself," snarled the big river-
+driver.  "Take his dollars out of your pocket and put them on the bar,
+the dollars Ingolby gives you to say all this.  Put them dollars of
+Ingolby's up for drinks, or we'll give you a jar that'll shake you, old
+wart-hog."
+
+At that instant a figure forced itself through the crowd, and broke into
+the packed circle which was drawing closer upon the old man.
+
+It was Jethro Fawe.  He flung a hand out towards the old man.
+
+"You want Ingolby--well, that's Ingolby," he shouted.
+
+Like lightning the old man straightened himself, snatched the wig and
+beard away from his head and face, and with quiet fearlessness said:
+
+"Yes, I am Ingolby."
+
+For an instant there was absolute silence, in which Ingolby weighed his
+chances.  He was among enemies.  He had meant only to move among the
+crowd to discover their attitude, to find things out for himself.  He had
+succeeded, and his belief that Manitou could be swayed in the right
+direction if properly handled, was correct.  Beneath the fanaticism and
+the racial spirit was human nature; and until Jethro Fawe had appeared,
+he had hoped to prevent violence and the collision at to-morrow's
+funeral.
+
+Now the situation was all changed.  It was hard to tell what sharp turn
+things might take.  He was about to speak, but suddenly from the crowd
+there was spat out at him the words, "Spy!  Sneak!  Spy!"
+
+Instantly the wave of feeling ran against him.  He smiled frankly,
+however, with that droll twist of his mouth which had won so many, and
+the raillery of his eyes was more friendly than any appeal.
+
+"Spy, if you like, my friends," he said firmly and clearly.  "Moses sent
+spies down into the Land of Promise, and they brought back big bunches of
+grapes.  Well, I've come down into a land of promise.  I wanted to know
+just how you all feel without being told it by some one else.  I knew if
+I came here as Max Ingolby I shouldn't hear the whole truth; I wouldn't
+see exactly how you see, so I came as one of you, and you must admit, my
+French is as good as yours almost."
+
+He laughed and nodded at them.
+
+"There wasn't one of you that knew I wasn't a Frenchman.  That's in my
+favour.  If I know the French language as I do, and can talk to you in
+French as I've done, do you think I don't understand the French people,
+and what you want and how you feel?  I'm one of the few men in the West
+that can talk your language.  I learned it when I was a boy, so that I
+might know my French fellow-countrymen under the same flag, with the same
+King and the same national hope.  As for your religion, God knows, I wish
+I was as good a Protestant as lots of you are good Catholics.  And I tell
+you this, I'd be glad to have a minister that I could follow and respect
+and love as I respect and love Monseigneur Lourde of Manitou.  I want to
+bring these two towns together, to make them a sign of what this country
+is, and what it can do; to make hundreds like ourselves in Manitou and
+Lebanon work together towards health, wealth, comfort and happiness.
+Can't you see, my friends, what I'm driving at?  I'm for peace and work
+and wealth and power--not power for myself alone, but power that belongs
+to all of us.  If I can show I'm a good man at my job, maybe better than
+others, then I have a right to ask you to follow me.  If I can't, then
+throw me out.  I tell you I'm your friend--Max Ingolby is your friend."
+
+"Spy!  Spy!  Spy!" cried a new voice.
+
+It came from behind the bar.  An instant after, the owner of the voice
+leaped up on the counter.  It was Felix Marchand.  He had entered by the
+door behind the bar into Barbazon's office.
+
+"When I was in India," Marchand cried, "I found a snake in the bed.  I
+killed it before it stung me.  There's a snake in the bed of Manitou--
+what are you going to do with it?"
+
+The men swayed, murmured, and shrill shouts of "Marchand!  Marchand!
+Marchand !" went up.  The crowd heaved upon Ingolby.  "One minute!" he
+called with outstretched arm and commanding voice.  They paused.
+Something in him made him master of them even then.
+
+At that moment two men were fiercely fighting their way through the crowd
+towards where Ingolby was.  They were Jowett and Osterhaut.  Ingolby saw
+them coming.
+
+"Go back--go back!" he called to them.
+
+Suddenly a drunken navvy standing on a table in front of and to the left
+of Ingolby seized a horseshoe hanging on the wall, and flung it with an
+oath.
+
+It caught Ingolby in the forehead, and he fell to the floor without a
+sound.
+
+A minute afterwards the bar was empty, save for Osterhaut, Jowett, old
+Barbazon, and his assistants.
+
+Barbazon and Jowett lifted the motionless figure in their arms, and
+carried it into a little room.
+
+Then Osterhaut picked up the horseshoe tied with its gay blue ribbons,
+now stained with blood, and put it in his pocket.
+
+"For luck," he said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE SENTENCE OF THE PATRIN
+
+Fleda waked suddenly, but without motion; just a wide opening of the eyes
+upon the darkness, and a swift beating of the heart, but not the movement
+of a muscle.  It was as though some inward monitor, some gnome of the
+hidden life had whispered of danger to her slumbering spirit.  The waking
+was a complete emergence, a vigilant and searching attention.
+
+There was something on her breast weighing it down, yet with a pressure
+which was not weight alone, and maybe was not weight at all as weight is
+understood.  Instantly there flashed through her mind the primitive
+belief that a cat will lie upon the breasts of children and suck their
+breath away.  Strange and even absurd as it was, it seemed to her that a
+cat was pressing and pressing down upon her breast.  There could be no
+mistaking the feline presence.  Now with a sudden energy of the body, she
+threw the Thing from her, and heard it drop, with the softness of feline
+feet, on the Indian rug upon the floor.
+
+Then she sprang out of bed, and, feeling for the matches, lit a candle on
+the small table beside her bed, and moved it round searching for what she
+thought to be a cat.  It was not to be seen.  She looked under the bed;
+it was not there: under the washstand, under the chest of drawers, under
+the improvised dressing-table; and no cat was to be found.  She 173
+looked under the chair over which hung her clothes, even behind the
+dresses and the Indian deerskin cape hanging on the door.
+
+There was no life of any kind save her own in the room, so far as she
+could see.  She laughed nervously, though her heart was still beating
+hard.  That it should beat hard was absurd, for what had she to fear--she
+who had lived the wild open-air life of many lands, had slept among hills
+infested by animals the enemy of man, and who when a little girl had
+faced beasts of prey alone.  Yet here in her own safe room on the
+Sagalac, with its four walls, but its unlocked doors--for Gabriel Druse
+said that he could not bear that last sign of his exile--here in the
+fortress of the town-dweller there was a strange trembling of her pulses
+in the presence of a mere hallucination or nightmare--the first she had
+had ever.  Her dreams in the past had always been happy and without the
+black fancies of nightmare.  On the night that Jethro Fawe had first
+confronted her father and herself, and he had been carried to the hut in
+the Wood, her sleep had been disturbed and restless, but dreamless; in
+her sleep on the night of the day of his release, she had been tossed
+upon vague clouds of mental unrest; but that was the first really
+disordered sleep she had ever known.
+
+Holding the candle above her head, she looked in the mirror on her
+dressing-table, and laughed nervously at the shocked look in her eyes,
+at the hand pressed upon the bosom whose agitations troubled the delicate
+linen at her breast.  The pale light of the candle, the reflection from
+the white muslin of her dressing-table and her nightwear, the strange,
+deep darkness of her eyes, the ungathered tawny hair falling to her
+shoulders, gave an unusual paleness to her face.
+
+"What a ninny I am!" she said aloud as she looked at herself, her tongue
+chiding her apprehensive eyes, her laugh contemptuously adding its
+comment on her tremulousness.  "It was a real nightmare--a waking
+nightmare, that's what it was."
+
+She searched the room once more, however-every corner, under the bed, the
+chest of drawers and the dressing-table, before she got into bed again,
+her feet icily cold.  And yet again before settling down she looked
+round, perplexed and inquiring.  Placing the matches beside the
+candlestick, she blew out the light.  Then, half-turning on her side with
+her face to the wall, she composed herself to sleep.
+
+Resolutely putting from her mind any sense of the supernatural, she shut
+her eyes with confidence of coming sleep.  While she was, however, still
+within the borders of wakefulness, and wholly conscious, she felt the
+Thing jump from the floor upon her legs, and crouch there with that
+deadening pressure which was not weight.  Now with a start of anger she
+raised herself, and shot out a determined hand to seize the Thing,
+whatever it was.  Her hand grasped nothing, and again she distinctly
+heard a soft thud as of something jumping on the floor.  Exasperated, she
+drew herself out of bed, lit the candle again, and began another search.
+Nothing was to be seen; but she had now the curious sense of an unseen
+presence.  She went to the door, opened it, and looked out into the
+narrow hall.  Nothing was to be seen there.  Then she closed the door
+again, and stood looking at it meditatively for a moment.  It had a lock
+and key; yet it had never been locked in the years they had lived on the
+Sagalac.  She did not know whether the key would turn in the lock.  After
+a moment's hesitation, she shrugged her shoulders and turned the key.  It
+rasped, proved stubborn, but at last came home with a click.  Then she
+turned to the window.  It was open about three inches at the bottom.  She
+closed it tight, and fastened it, then stood for a moment in the middle
+of the room looking at both door and window.
+
+She was conscious of a sense of suffocation.  Never in her life had she
+slept with door or window or tentflap entirely closed.  Never before had
+she been shut in all night behind closed doors and sealed windows.  Now,
+as the sense of imprisonment was felt, her body protested; her spirit
+resented the funereal embrace of security.  It panted for the freedom
+which gives the challenge to danger and the courage to face it.
+
+She went to the window and opened it slightly at the top, and then sought
+her bed again; but even as she lay down, something whispered to her mind
+that it was folly to lock the door and yet leave the window open, if it
+was but an inch.  With an exclamation of self-reproach, and a vague
+indignation at something, she got up and closed the window once more.
+
+Again she composed herself to sleep, lying now with her face turned to
+the window and the door.  She was still sure that she had been the victim
+of a hallucination which, emerging from her sleep, had invaded the
+borders of wakefulness, and then had reproduced itself in a waking
+illusion--an imitation of its original existence.
+
+Resolved to conquer any superstitious feeling, she invoked sleep, and was
+on its borders once more when she was startled more violently than
+before.
+
+The Thing had sprung again upon her feet and was crouched there.  Wide
+awake, she waited for a moment to make sure that she was not mad, or that
+she was not asleep or in a half-dream.  In the pause, she felt the Thing
+draw up towards her knees, dragging its body along with tiger-like
+closeness, and with that strange pressure which was not weight but power.
+
+With a cry which was no longer doubt, but agonized apprehension, she
+threw the Thing from her with a motion of both hands and feet; and, as
+she did so, she felt a horrible cold air breathing from a bloodless body,
+chill her hand.
+
+In another instant she was on her feet again.  With shaking fingers she
+lighted the candle yet once more, after which she lighted a lamp standing
+upon the chest of drawers.  The room was almost brilliantly bright now.
+With a gesture of incredulity she looked round.  The doors and windows
+were sealed tight, and there was nothing to be seen; yet she was more
+than ever conscious of a presence grown more manifest.  For a moment she
+stood staring straight before her at the place where it seemed to be.
+She realized its malice and its hatred, and an intense anger and hatred
+took possession of her.  She had always laughed at such things even when
+thrilled by wonder and manufactured terrors.  But now there was a sense
+of conflict, of evil, of the indefinable things in which so many
+believed.
+
+Suddenly she remembered an ancient Sage of her tribe, who, proficient in
+mysteries and secret rites gathered from nations as old as Phoenicia and
+Egypt and as modern as Switzerland, held the Romanys of the world in awe,
+for his fame had travelled where he could not follow.  To Fleda in her
+earliest days he had been like one inspired, and as she now stood facing
+the intangible Thing, she recalled an exorcism which the Sage had recited
+to her, when he had sufficiently startled her senses by tales of the
+Between World.  This exorcism was, as he had told her, more powerful than
+that which the Christian exorcists used, and the symbol of exorcism was
+not unlike the sign of the Cross, to which was added genuflection of
+Assyrian origin.
+
+At any other time Fleda would have laughed at the idea of using the
+exorcism; but all the ancient superstition of the Romany people latent in
+her now broke forth and held her captive.  Standing with candle raised
+above her head, her eyes piercing the space before her, she recalled
+every word of the exorcism which had caught the drippings from the
+fountains of Chaldean, Phoenician, and Egyptian mystery.
+
+Solemnly and slowly the exorcism came from her lips, and at the end her
+right hand made the cabalistic sign; then she stood like one transfixed
+with her arm extended towards the Thing she could not see.
+
+Presently there passed from her a sense of oppression.  The air seemed to
+grow lighter, restored self-possession came; there was a gentle breathing
+in the room like that of a sleeping child.  It was a moment before she
+realized that the breathing was her own, and she looked round her like
+one who had come out of a trance.
+
+"It is gone," she said aloud.  "It is gone."  A great sigh came from her.
+
+Mechanically she put down the candle, smoothed the pillows of her bed,
+adjusted the coverings, and prepared to lie down; but, with a sudden
+impulse, she turned to the window and the door.
+
+"It is gone," she said again.  With a little laugh of hushed triumph, she
+turned and made again the cabalistic sign at the bed, where the Thing had
+first assaulted her, and then at that point in the room near the door
+where she had felt it crouching.
+
+"Oh, Ewie Gal," she added, speaking to that Romany Sage long since laid
+to rest in the Roumelian country, "you did not talk to me for nothing.
+You were right--yes, you were right, old Ewie Gal.  It was there,"--she
+looked again at the place where the Thing had been--"and your curse drove
+it away."
+
+With confidence she went to the door and unlocked it.  Going to the
+window she opened it also, but she compromised sufficiently to open it
+at the top instead of at the bottom.  Presently she laid her head on her
+pillow with a sigh of content.
+
+Once again she composed herself to sleep in the darkness.  But now there
+came other invasions, other disturbers of the night.  In her imagination
+a man came who had held her in his arms one day on the Sagalac River, who
+had looked into her eyes with a masterful but respectful tenderness.  As
+she neared the confines of sleep, he was somehow mingled with visions of
+things which her childhood had known--moonlit passes in the Bosnian,
+Roumelian, and Roumanian hills, green fields by the Danube, with peasant
+voices drowsing in song before the lights went out; a gallop after dun
+deer far away up the Caspian mountains, over waste places, carpeted with
+flowers after a benevolent rain; mornings in Egypt, when the camels
+thudded and slid with melancholy ease through the sands of the desert,
+while the Arab drivers called shrilly for Allah to curse or bless; a
+tender sunset in England seen from the top of a castle when all the
+western sky was lightly draped with saffron, gold and mauve and delicate
+green and purple.
+
+Now she slept again, with the murmur of the Sagalac in her ears, and
+there was a smile at her lips.  If one could have seen her through the
+darkness, one would have said that she was like some wild creature of a
+virgin world, whom sleep had captured and tamed; for, behind the
+refinement which education and the vigilant influence with which Madame
+Bulteel had surrounded her, there was in her the spirit of primitive
+things: of the open road and the wilderness, of the undisciplined and
+vagrant life, however marked by such luxury as the ruler of all the
+Romanys could buy and use in pilgrimage.  There was that in her which
+would drag at her footsteps in this new life.
+
+For a full hour or more she slept, then there crept through the fantasies
+of sleep something that did not belong to sleep--again something from the
+wakeful world, strange, alien, troubling.  At first it was only as though
+a wind stirred the air of dreams, then it was like the sounds that gather
+behind the coming rage of a storm, and again it was as though a night-
+prowler plucked at the sleeve of a home-goer.  Presently, with a stir of
+fright and a smothered cry, she waked to a sound which was not of the
+supernatural or of the mind's illusions, but no less dreadful to her
+because of that.  In some cryptic way it was associated with the direful
+experience through which she had just passed.
+
+What she heard in the darkness was a voice which sang there by her
+window--at it or beneath it--the words of a Romany song.
+
+It was a song of violence, which she had heard but a short time before in
+the trees behind her father's house, when a Romany claimed her as his
+wife:
+
+                   "Time was I went to my true love,
+                    Time was she came to me--"
+
+Only one man would sing that song at her window, or anywhere in this
+Western world.  This was no illusion of her overwrought senses.  There,
+outside her window, was Jethro Fawe.
+
+She sat up and listened, leaning on one arm, and staring into the half-
+darkness beyond the window, the blind of which she had not drawn down.
+There was no moon, but the stars were shining brightly, relieving the
+intensity of the dark.  Through the whispering of the trees, and hushing
+the melancholy of a night-bird's song, came the wild low note of the
+Romany epic of vengeance.  It had a thrill of exultation.  Something in
+the voice, insistent, vibrating, personal, made every note a thrust of
+victory.  In spite of her indignation at the insolent serenade, she
+thrilled; for the strain of the Past was in her, and it had been fighting
+with her all night, breaking in upon the Present, tugging at the cords of
+youth.
+
+The man's daring roused her admiration, even as her anger mounted.  If
+her father heard the singing, there could be no doubt that Jethro Fawe's
+doom would be sealed.  Gabriel Druse would resent this insolence to the
+daughter of the Ry of Rys.  Word would be passed as silently as the
+electric spark flies, and one day Jethro Fawe would be found dead, with
+no clue to his slayer, and maybe no sign of violence upon him; for while
+the Romany people had remedies as old as Buddha, they had poisons as old
+as Sekhet.
+
+Suddenly the song ceased, and for a moment there was silence save for the
+whispering trees and the night-bird's song.  Fleda rose from her bed, and
+was about to put on her dressing-gown, when she was startled by a voice
+loudly whispering her name at her window, as it seemed.
+
+
+"Daughter of the Ry of Rys !" it called.
+
+In anger she started forward to the window, then, realizing that she was
+in her nightgown, caught up her red dressing-gown and put it on.  As she
+did so she understood why the voice had sounded so near.  Not thirty feet
+from her window there was a solitary oak-tree among the pines, in which
+was a seat among the branches, and, looking out, she could see a figure
+that blackened the starlit duskiness.
+
+"Fleda--daughter of the Ry of Rys," the voice called again.
+
+She gathered her dressing-gown tight about her, and, going to the window,
+raised it high and leaned out.
+
+"What do you want?" she asked sharply.
+
+"Wife of Jethro Fawe, I bring you news," the voice said, and she saw a
+hat waved with mock courtesy.  In spite of herself, Fleda felt a shiver
+of premonition pass through her.  The Thing which had threatened her in
+the night seemed to her now like the soul of this dark spirit in the
+trees.
+
+Resentment seized her.  "I have news for you, Jethro Fawe," she replied.
+"I set you free, and I gave my word that no harm should come to you, if
+you went your ways and did not come again.  You have come, and I shall do
+nothing now to save you from the Ry's anger.  Go at once, or I will wake
+him."
+
+"Will a wife betray her husband?" he asked in soft derision.
+
+Stung by his insolence, "I would not throw a rope to you, if you were
+drowning," she declared.  "I am a Gorgio, and the thing that was done by
+the Starzke River is nothing to me.  Now, go."
+
+"You have forgotten my news," he said: "It is bad news for the Gorgio
+daughter of the Romany Ry."  She was silent in apprehension.  He waited,
+but she did not speak.
+
+"The Gorgio of Gorgios of the Sagalac has had a fall," he said.
+
+Her heart beat fast for an instant, and then the presentiment came to her
+that the man spoke the truth.  In the presence of the accomplished thing,
+she became calm.
+
+"What has happened?" she asked quietly.
+
+"He went prowling in Manitou, and in Barbazon's Tavern they struck him
+down."
+
+"Who struck him down?" she asked.  It seemed to her that the night-bird
+sang so loud that she could scarcely hear her own voice.
+
+"A drunken Gorgio," he replied.  "The horseshoe is for luck all the world
+over, and it brought its luck to Manitou to-night.  It struck down a
+young Master Gorgio who in white beard and long grey hair went spying."
+
+She knew in her heart that he spoke the truth.  "He is dead?" she asked
+in a voice that had a strange quietness.
+
+"Not yet," he answered.  "There is time to wish him luck."
+
+She heard the ribald laugh with a sense of horror and loathing.  "The
+hand that brought him down may have been the hand of a Gorgio, but behind
+the hand was Jethro Fawe," she said in a voice grown passionate again.
+"Where is he?" she added.
+
+"At his own house.  I watched them take him there.  It is a nice house--
+good enough for a Gorgio house-dweller.  I know it well.  Last night I
+played his Sarasate fiddle for him there, and I told him all about you
+and me, and what happened at Starzke, and then--"
+
+"You told him I was a Romany, that I was married to you?" she asked in a
+low voice.
+
+"I told him that, and asked him why he thought you had deceived him, had
+held from him the truth.  He was angry and tried to kill me."
+
+"That is a lie," she answered.  "If he had tried to kill you he would
+have done so."
+
+Suddenly she realized the situation as it was--that she was standing at
+her window in the night, scantily robed, talking to a man in a tree
+opposite her window; and that the man had done a thing which belonged to
+the wild places which she had left so far behind.
+
+It flashed into her mind--what would Max Ingolby think of such a thing?
+She flushed.  The new Gorgio self of her flushed, and yet the old Romany
+self, the child of race and heredity had taken no exact account of the
+strangeness of this situation.  It had not seemed unnatural.  Even if he
+had been in her room itself, she would have felt no tithe of the shame
+that she felt now in asking herself what the Master Gorgio would think,
+if he knew.  It was not that she had less modesty, that any stir of sex
+was in her veins where the Romany chal was concerned; but in the life she
+had once lived less delicate cognizance was taken of such things, and
+something of it stayed.
+
+"Listen," Jethro said with sudden lowering of the voice, and imparting
+into his tones an emotion which was in part an actor's gift, but also in
+large degree a passion now eating at his heart, "you are my wife by all
+the laws of our people.  Nothing can change it.  I have waited for you,
+and I will wait, but you shall be mine in the end.  You see to-night--
+'Mi Duvel', you see that fate is with me!  The Gorgio has bewitched you.
+He goes down to-night in that tavern there by the hand of a Gorgio, and
+the Romany has his revenge.  Fate is always with me, and I will be the
+gift of the gods to the woman that takes me.  The luck is mine always.
+It will be always with me.  I am poor to-day, I shall be rich to-morrow.
+I was rich, and I lost it all; and I was poor, and became rich again.
+Ah, yes, there are ways!  Sometimes it is a Government, sometimes a
+prince that wants to know, and Jethro Fawe, the Romany, finds it out, and
+money fills his pockets.  I am here, poor, because last year when I lost
+all, I said, 'It is because my Romany lass is not with me.  I have not
+brought her to my tan, but when she comes then the gold will be here as
+before, and more when it is wanted.'  So, I came, and I hear the road
+calling, and all the camping places over all the world, and I see the
+patrins in every lane, and my heart is lifted up.  I am glad.  I rejoice.
+My heart burns with love.  I will forget everything, and be true to the
+queen of my soul.  Men die, and Gabriel Druse, he will die one day, and
+when the time comes, then it would be that you and I would beckon, and
+all the world would come to us."
+
+He stretched out a hand to her in the half-darkness.  "I send the blood
+of my heart to you," he continued.  "I am a son of kings.  Fleda,
+daughter of the Ry of Rys, come to me.  I have been bad, but I can be
+good.  I have killed, but I will live at peace.  I have cursed, but I
+will speak the word of blessing.  I have trespassed, but I will keep to
+my own, if you will come to me."
+
+Suddenly he dropped to the ground, lighting on his feet like an animal
+with a soft rebound.  Stretching up his arms, he made soft murmuring of
+endearment.
+
+She had listened, fascinated in spite of herself by the fire and meaning
+of his words.  She felt that in most part it was true, that it was meant;
+and, whatever he was, he was yet a man offering his heart and life,
+offering a love that she despised, and yet which was love and passion of
+a kind.  It was a passion natural to the people from whom she came, and
+to such as Jethro Fawe it was something more than sensual longing and the
+aboriginal desire of possession.  She realized it, and was not wholly
+revolted by it, even while her mind was fleeing to where the Master
+Gorgio lay wounded, it might be unto death; even while she knew that this
+man before her, by some means, had laid Ingolby low.  She was all at once
+a human being torn by contending forces.
+
+Jethro's drop to the ground broke the sudden trance into which his words
+had thrown her.  She shook herself as with an effort of control.  Then
+leaning over the window-sill, and, looking down at him, now grown so
+distinct that she could see his features, her eyes having become used to
+the half-light of the approaching dawn, she said with something almost
+like gentleness:
+
+"Once more I say, you must go and come no more.  You are too far off from
+me.  You belong to that which is for the ignorant, or the low, the
+vicious and the bad.  Behind the free life of the Romany is only the
+thing that the beasts of the field have.  I have done with it for ever.
+Find a Romany who will marry you.  As for me, I would rather die than do
+so, and I should die before it could come to pass.  If you stay here
+longer I will call the Ry."
+
+Presently the feeling that he had been responsible for the disaster to
+Ingolby came upon her with great force, and as suddenly as she had
+softened towards this man she hardened again.
+
+"Go, before there comes to you the death you deserve," she added, and
+turned away.
+
+At that moment footsteps sounded near, and almost instantly there emerged
+from a pathway which made a short cut to the house, the figure of old
+Gabriel Druse.  They had not heard him till he was within a few feet of
+where Jethro Fawe stood.  His walking had been muffled in the dust of the
+pathway.
+
+The Ry started when he saw Jethro Fawe; then he made a motion as though
+he would seize the intruder, who was too dumbfounded to flee; but he
+recovered himself, and gazed up at the open window.
+
+"Fleda!" he called.
+
+She came to the window again.
+
+"Has this man come here against your will?" he asked, not as though
+seeking information, but confirmation of his own understanding.
+
+"He is not here by my will," she answered.  "He came to sing the Song of
+Hate under my window, to tell me that he had--"
+
+"That I had brought the Master Gorgio to the ground," said Jethro, who
+now stood with sullen passiveness looking at Gabriel Druse.
+
+"From the Master Gorgio, as you call him, I have just come," returned the
+old man.  "When I heard the news, I went to him.  It was you who betrayed
+him to the mob, and--"
+
+"Wait, wait," Fleda cried in agitation.  "Is--is he dead?"
+
+"He is alive, but terribly hurt; and he may die," was the reply.
+
+Then the old man turned to the Romany with a great anger and
+determination in his face.  He stretched out an arm, making a sign as
+cabalistic as that which Fleda had used against her invisible foe in the
+bedroom.
+
+"Go, Jethro Fawe of all the Fawes," he said.  "Go, and may no patrins
+mark your road!"
+
+Jethro Fawe shrank back, and half raised his arm, as though to fend
+himself from a blow.
+
+The patrin is the clue which Gipsies leave behind them on the road they
+go, that other Gipsies who travel in it may know they have gone before.
+It may be a piece of string, a thread of wool, a twig, or in the dust the
+ancient cross of the Romany, which preceded the Christian cross and
+belonged to the Assyrian or Phoenician world.  The invocation that no
+patrins shall mark the road of a Romany is to make him an outcast, and
+for the Ry of Rys to utter the curse is sentence of death upon a Romany,
+for thenceforward every hand of his race is against him, free to do him
+harm.
+
+It was that which made Jethro Fawe shrink and cower for a moment.  Fleda
+raised her hand suddenly in protest to Gabriel Druse.
+
+"No, no, not that," Fleda murmured brokenly to her father, with eyes that
+looked the pain and horror she felt.  Though she repudiated the bond by
+which the barbarian had dared to call her wife, she heard an inner voice
+that said to her: "What was done by the Starzke River was the seal of
+blood and race, and this man must be nearer than the stranger, dearer
+than the kinsman, forgiven of his crimes like a brother, saved from
+shame, danger or death when she who was sealed to him can save him."
+
+She shuddered as she heard the inner voice.  She felt that this Other
+Self of her, the inner-seeing soul which had the secret of the far paths,
+had spoken truly.  Even as she begged her father to withdraw the
+sentence, it flashed into her mind that the grim Thing of the night was
+the dark spirit of hatred between Jethro Fawe and the Master Gorgio
+seeking embodiment, as though Jethro's evil soul detached itself from his
+body to persecute her.
+
+At her appeal, Jethro raised his head.  His courage came back, the old
+insolent self-possession took hold of him again.  The sentence which the
+Ry had passed was worse than death (and it meant death, too), for it made
+him an outcast from his people, and to be outcast was to be thrown into
+the abyss.  It was as though a man without race or country was banished
+into desolate space.  In a vague way he felt its full significance, and
+the shadow of it fell on him.
+
+"No, no, no," Fleda repeated hoarsely, with that new sense of
+responsibility where Jethro was concerned.
+
+Jethro's eyes were turned upon her now.  In the starlit night, just
+yielding to the dawn, she could faintly see his burning look, could feel,
+as it were, his hands reach out to claim her; and she felt that while he
+lived she was not wholly free.  She realized that the hand of nomad,
+disorderly barbarism was dragging her with a force which was inhuman, or,
+maybe, superhuman.
+
+Gabriel Druse could know nothing of the elements fighting in his
+daughter's soul; he only knew that her interest in the Master Gorgio was
+one he had never seen before, and that she abhorred the Romany who had
+brought Ingolby low.  He had shut his eyes to the man's unruliness and
+his daughter's intervention to free him; but now he was without pity.  He
+had come from Ingolby's bedside, and had been told a thing which shook
+his rugged nature to its centre--a thing sad as death itself, which he
+must tell his daughter.
+
+To Fleda's appeal he turned a stony face.  There was none of that rage in
+his words which had marked the scene when Jethro Fawe first came to claim
+what he could not have.  There was something in him now more deadly and
+inevitable.  It made him like some figure of mythology, implacable,
+fateful.  His great height, his bushy beard and stormy forehead, the eyes
+over which shaggy eyebrows hung like the shrubs on a cliff-edge, his face
+lined and set like a thing in bronze--all were signs of a power which, in
+passion, would be like that of OEdipus: in the moment of justice or doom
+would, with unblinking eyes, slay and cast aside as debris is tossed upon
+the dust-heap.
+
+As he spoke now his voice was toneless.  His mind was flint, and his
+tongue was but the flash of the flint.  He looked at his daughter for a
+moment with no light of fatherhood in his face, then turned from her to
+Jethro Fawe with slow decision and a gesture of authority.  His eyes
+fastened on the face of the son of Lemuel Fawe, as though it was that
+old enemy himself.
+
+"I have said what I have said, and there is no more to be spoken.  The
+rule of the Ry will be as water for ever after if these things may be
+done to him and his.  For generations have the Rys of all the Rys been
+like the trees that bend only to the whirlwind; and when they speak there
+is no more to be said.  When it ceases to be so, then the Rys will vanish
+from the world, and be as stubble of the field ready for the burning.  I
+have spoken.  Go!  And no patrins shall lie upon your road."
+
+A look of savage obedience and sullen acquiescence came into Jethro
+Fawe's face, and he took off his hat as one who stands in the presence of
+his master.  The strain of generations, the tradition of the race without
+a country was stronger than the revolt in his soul.  He was young, his
+blood was hot and brawling in his veins, he was all carnal, with the
+superior intelligence of the trained animal, but custom was stronger than
+all.  He knew now that whatever he might do, some time, not far, his doom
+would fall upon him suddenly, as a wind shoots up a ravine from the
+desert, or a nightbird rises from the dark.
+
+He set his feet stubbornly, and raised his sullen face and fanatical
+eyes.  The light of morning was creeping through the starshine, and his
+features showed plainly.
+
+"I am your daughter's husband," he said.  "Nothing can change that.  It
+was done by the River Starzke, and it was the word of the Ry of Rys.  It
+stands for ever.  There is no divorce except death for the Romany."
+
+"The patrins cease to mark the way," returned the old man with a swift
+gesture.  "The divorce of death will come."
+
+Jethro's face grew still paler, and he opened his lips to speak, but
+paused, seeing Fleda, with a backward look of pity and of horror, draw
+back into the darkness of her room.
+
+He made a motion of passion and despair.  His voice was almost shrill
+when he spoke.  "Till that divorce comes, the daughter of the Ry of Rys
+is mine!" he cried sharply.  "I will not give my wife to a Gorgio thief.
+His hands shall not caress her, his eyes shall not feed upon her--"
+
+"His eyes will not feed upon her," interrupted the old man, "So cease
+the prattle which can alter nothing.  Begone."
+
+For a moment Jethro Fawe stood like one who did not understand what was
+said to him, but suddenly a look of triumph and malice came into his
+face, and his eyes lighted with a reckless fire.  He threw back his head,
+and laughed with a strange, offensive softness.  Then, waving a hand to
+the window from which Fleda had gone, he swung his cap on his head and
+plunged into the trees.
+
+A moment afterwards his voice came back exultingly, through the morning
+air:
+
+              "But a Gorgio sleeps 'neath the greenwood tree
+               He'll broach my tan no more:
+               And my love, she sleeps afar from me
+               But near to the churchyard door."
+
+As the old man turned heavily towards the house, and opened the outer
+door, Fleda met him.
+
+"What did you mean when you said that Ingolby's eyes would not feed upon
+me?" she asked in a low tone of fear.
+
+A look of compassion came into the old man's face.  He took her hand.
+
+"Come and I will tell you," he said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+"LET THERE BE LIGHT"
+
+In Ingolby's bedroom, on the night of the business at Barbazon's Tavern,
+Dr. Rockwell received a shock.  His face, naturally colourless, was
+almost white, and his eyes were moist.  He had what the West called
+nerve.  That the crisis through which he had passed was that of a
+friend's life did not lessen the poignancy of the experience.  He had a
+singularly reserved manner and a rare economy of words; also, he had the
+refinement and distinction of one who had, oforetime, moved on the higher
+ranges of social life.  He was always simply and comfortably and in a
+sense fashionably dressed, yet there was nothing of the dude about him,
+and his black satin tie gave him an air of old-worldishness which somehow
+compelled an extra amount of respect.  This, in spite of the fact that he
+had been known as one who had left the East and come into the wilds
+because of a woman not his wife.
+
+It was not, however, strictly true to say that he had come West because
+of a woman, for it was on account of three women, who by sudden
+coincidence or collusion sprang a situation from which the only relief
+was flight.  In that he took refuge, not because he was a coward, but
+because it was folly to fight a woman, or three women, and because it was
+the only real solution of an ungovernable situation.  At first he had
+drifted from one town to another, dissolute and reckless, apparently
+unable to settle down, or to forget the unwholesome three.  But one day
+there was a terrible railway accident on a construction train, and
+Lebanon and Manitou made a call upon his skill, and held him in bondage
+to his profession for one whole month.  During this time he performed two
+operations which the surgeons who had been sent out by the Railway
+Directors at Montreal declared were masterpieces.
+
+When that month was up he was a changed man, and he opened an office in
+Lebanon.  Men trusted him despite his past, and women learned that there
+was never a moment when his pulses beat unevenly in their presence.
+Nathan Rockwell had had his lesson and it was not necessary to learn it
+again.  To him, woman, save as a subject of his skill, was a closed book.
+He regarded them as he regarded himself, with a kindly cynicism.  He
+never forgot that his own trouble could and would have been avoided had
+it not been for woman's vanity and consequent cruelty.  The unwholesome
+three had shared his moral lapse with wide-open eyes, and were in no
+sense victims of his; but, disregarding their responsibility, they had,
+from sheer jealousy, wrecked his past, and, to their own surprise, had
+wrecked themselves as well.  They were of those who act first and then
+think--too late.
+
+Thus it was that both men and women called Rockwell a handsome man, but
+thought of him as having only a crater of exhausted fires in place of a
+heart.  They came to him with their troubles--even the women of Manitou
+who ought to have gone to the priest.
+
+He moved about Lebanon as one who had authority, and desired not to use
+it; as one to whom life was like a case in surgery to be treated with
+scientific, coolness, with humanity, but not with undue sympathy; yet the
+early morning of the day after Ingolby had had his accident at Barbazon's
+Hotel found him the slave of an emotion which shook him from head to
+foot.  He had saved his friend's life by a most skilful operation, but he
+had been shocked beyond control when, an hour after the operation was
+over, and consciousness returned to the patient in the brilliantly
+lighted room, Ingolby said:
+
+"Why don't you turn on the light?"
+
+It was thus Rockwell knew that the Master Man, the friend of Lebanon and
+Manitou, was stone blind.  When Ingolby's voice ceased, a horrified
+silence filled the room for a moment.  Even Jim Beadle, his servant,
+standing at the foot of the bed, clapped a hand to his mouth to stop a
+cry, and the nurse turned as white as the apron she wore.
+
+Dumbfounded as Rockwell was, with instant professional presence of mind
+he said:
+
+"No, Ingolby, you must be kept in darkness a while yet."  Then he whipped
+out a silk handkerchief from his pocket.  "We will have light," he
+continued, "but we must bandage you first to keep out the glare and
+prevent pain.  The nerves of the eyes have been injured."
+
+Hastily and tenderly he bound the handkerchief round the sightless eyes.
+Having done so, he said to the nurse with unintentional quotation from
+the Gospel of St. John, and a sad irony: "Let there be light."
+
+It all gave him time to pull himself together and prepare for the moment
+when he must tell Ingolby the truth.  In one sense the sooner it was told
+the better, lest Ingolby should suddenly discover it for himself.
+Surprise and shock must be avoided.  So now he talked in his low,
+soothing voice, telling Ingolby that the operation had put him out of
+danger, that the pain now felt came chiefly from the nerves of the eye,
+and that quiet and darkness were necessary.  He insisted on Ingolby
+keeping silent, and he gave a mild opiate which induced several hours'
+sleep.
+
+During this time Rockwell prepared himself for the ordeal which must be
+passed as soon as possible; gave all needed directions, and had a
+conference with the assistant Chief Constable to whom he confided the
+truth.  He suggested plans for preserving order in excited Lebanon, which
+was determined to revenge itself on Manitou; and he gave some careful and
+specific instructions to Jowett the horse-dealer.  Also, he had conferred
+with Gabriel Druse, who had helped bear the injured man to his own home.
+He had noted with admiration the strange gentleness of the giant Romany
+as he, alone, carried Ingolby in his arms, and laid him on the bed from
+which he was to rise with all that he had fought for overthrown, himself
+the blind victim of a hard fate.  He had noticed the old man straighten
+himself with a spring and stand as though petrified when Ingolby said:
+"Why don't you turn on the light?"  As he looked round in that instant of
+ghastly silence he had observed almost mechanically that the old man's
+lips were murmuring something.  Then the thought of Fleda Druse shot into
+Rockwell's mind, and it harassed him during the hours Ingolby slept, and
+after the giant Gipsy had taken his departure just before the dawn.
+
+"I'm afraid it will mean more there than anywhere else," he said sadly to
+himself.  "There was evidently something between those two; and she isn't
+the kind to take it philosophically.  Poor girl!  Poor girl!  It's a
+bitter dose, if there was anything in it," he added.
+
+He watched beside the sick-bed till the dawn stared in and his patient
+stirred and waked, then he took Ingolby's hand, grown a little cooler,
+in both his own.  "How are you feeling, old man?" he asked cheerfully.
+"You've had a good sleep-nearly three and a half hours.  Is the pain in
+the head less?"
+
+"Better, Sawbones, better," Ingolby replied cheerfully.  "They've
+loosened the tie that binds--begad, it did stretch the nerves.  I had
+gripes of colic once, but the pain I had in my head was twenty times
+worse, till you gave the opiate."
+
+"That's the eyes," said Rockwell.  "I had to lift a bit of bone, and the
+eyes saw it and felt it, and cried out-shrieked, you might say.  They've
+got a sensitiveness all their own, have the eyes."
+
+"It's odd there aren't more accidents to them," answered Ingolby--"just a
+little ball of iridescent pulp with strings tied to the brain."
+
+"And what hurts the head may destroy the eyes sometimes," Rockwell
+answered cautiously.  "We know so little of the delicate union between
+them, that we can't be sure we can put the eyes right again when, because
+of some blow to the head, the ricochet puts the eyes out of commission."
+
+"That's what's the matter with me, then?" asked Ingolby, feeling the
+bandage on his eyes feverishly, and stirring in his bed with a sense of
+weariness.
+
+"Yes, the ricochet got them, and has put them out of commission," replied
+Rockwell, carefully dwelling upon each word, and giving a note of meaning
+to his tone.
+
+Ingolby raised himself in bed, but Rockwell gently forced him down again.
+"Will my eyes have to be kept bandaged long?  Shall I have to give up
+work for any length of time?" Ingolby asked.
+
+"Longer than you'll like," was the enigmatical reply.  "It's the devil's
+own business," was the weary answer.  "Every minute's valuable to me now.
+I ought to be on deck morning, noon, and night.  There's all the trouble
+between the two towns; there's the strike on hand; there's that business
+of the Orange funeral, and more than all a thousand times, there's--"
+he paused.
+
+He was going to say, "There's that devil Marchand's designs on my
+bridge," but he thought better of it and stopped.  It had been his
+intention to deal with Marchand directly, to get a settlement of their
+differences without resort to the law, to prevent the criminal act
+without deepening a feud which might keep the two towns apart for years.
+Bad as Marchand was, to prevent his crime was far better than punishing
+him for it afterwards.  To have Marchand arrested for conspiracy to
+commit a crime was a business which would gravely interfere with his
+freedom of motion in the near future, would create complications which
+might cripple his own purposes in indirect ways.  That was why he had
+declared to Jowett that even Felix Marchand had his price, and that he
+would try negotiations first.
+
+But what troubled him now, as he lay with eyes bandaged and a knowledge
+that to-morrow was the day fixed for the destruction of the bridge, was
+his own incapacity.  It was unlikely that his head or his eyes would be
+right by to-morrow, or that Rockwell would allow him to get up.  He felt
+in his own mind that the injury he had received was a serious one, and
+that the lucky horseshoe had done Maxchand's work for him all too well.
+This thought shook him.  Rockwell could see his chest heave with an
+excitement gravely injurious to his condition; yet he must be told the
+worst, or the shock of discovery by himself that he was blind might give
+him brain fever.  Rockwell felt that he must hasten the crisis.
+
+"Rockwell," Ingolby suddenly asked, "is there any chance of my discarding
+this and getting out to-morrow?"  He touched the handkerchief round his
+eyes.  "It doesn't matter about the head bandages, but the eyes--can't I
+slough the wraps to-morrow?  I feel scarcely any pain now."
+
+"Yes, you can get rid of the bandages to-morrow--you can get rid of them
+to-day, if you really wish," Rockwell answered, closing in on the last
+defence.
+
+"But I don't mind being in the dark to-day if it'll make me fitter for
+to-morrow and get me right sooner.  I'm not a fool.  There's too much
+carelessness about such things.  People often don't give themselves a
+chance to get right by being in too big a hurry.  So, keep me in darkness
+to-day, if you want to, old man.  For a hustler I'm not in too big a
+hurry, you see.  I'm for holding back to get a bigger jump."
+
+"You can't be in a big hurry, even if you want to, Ingolby," rejoined
+Rockwell, gripping the wrist of the sick man, and leaning over him.
+
+Ingolby grew suddenly very still.  It was as though vague fear had seized
+him and held him in a vice.  "What is it?  What do you want to say to
+me?" he asked in a low, nerveless tone.
+
+"You've been hit hard, Chief.  The ricochet has done you up for some
+time.  The head will soon get well, but I'm far from sure about your
+eyes.  You've got to have a specialist about them.  You're in the dark,
+and as for making you see, so am I.  Your eyes and you are out of
+commission for some time, anyhow."
+
+He leaned over hastily, but softly and deftly undid the bandages over the
+eyes and took them off.  "It's seven in the morning, and the sun's up,
+Chief, but it doesn't do you much good, you see."
+
+The last two words were the purest accident, but it was a strange,
+mournful irony, and Rockwell flushed at the thought of it.  He saw
+Ingolby's face turn grey, and then become white as death itself.
+
+"I see," came from the bluish-white lips, as the stricken man made call
+on all the will and vital strength in him.
+
+For a long minute Rockwell held the cold hand in the grasp of one who
+loves and grieves, but even so the physician and surgeon in him were
+uppermost, as they should be, in the hour when his friend was standing on
+the brink of despair, maybe of catastrophe irremediable.  He did not say
+a word yet, however.  In such moments the vocal are dumb and the blind
+see.
+
+Ingolby heaved himself in the bed and threw up his arms, wresting them
+from Rockwell's grasp.
+
+"My God--oh, my God-blind!" he cried in agony.  Rockwell drew the head
+with the sightless eyes to his shoulder.
+
+For a moment he laid one hand on the heart, that, suddenly still, now
+went leaping under his fingers.  "Steady," he said firmly.  "Steady.  It
+may be only temporary.  Keep your head up to the storm.  We'll have a
+specialist, and you must not get mired till then.  Steady, Chief."
+
+"Chief!  Chief!" murmured Ingolby.  "Dear God, what a chief!  I risked
+everything, and I've lost everything by my own vanity.  Barbazon's--the
+horseshoe--among the wolves, just to show I could do things better than
+any one else--as if I had the patent for setting the world right.  And
+now--now--"
+
+The thought of the bridge, of Marchand's devilish design, shot into his
+mind, and once more he was shaken.  "The bridge!  Blind!  Mother!" he
+called in a voice twisted in an agony which only those can feel to whom
+life's purposes are even more than life itself.  Then, with a moan, he
+became unconscious, and his head rolled over against Rockwell's cheek.
+The damp of his brow was as the damp of death as Rockwell's lips touched
+it.
+
+"Old boy, old boy!" Rockwell said tenderly, "I wish it had been me
+instead.  Life means so much to you--and so little to me.  I've seen too
+much, and you've only just begun to see."
+
+Laying him gently down, Rockwell summoned the nurse and Jim Beadle and
+spoke to them in low tones.  "He knows now, and it has hit him hard, but
+not so hard that he won't stiffen to it.  It might have been worse."
+
+He gave instructions as to the care that should be taken, and replaced
+the bandages on the eyes.  It was, however, long before Ingolby was
+restored to consciousness, and when it came, Rockwell put to his lips a
+cooling drink containing a powerful opiate.  Ingolby drank it without
+protest and in silence.  He was like one whose sense of life was
+automatic and of an inner rather than an outer understanding.  But when
+he lay back on the pillow again, he said slowly:
+
+"I want the Chief Constable to come here to-night at eight o'clock.  It
+will be dark then.  He must come.  It is important.  Will you see to it,
+Rockwell?"
+
+He thrust out a hand as though to find Rockwell's, and there was a
+gratitude and an appeal in the pressure of his fingers which went to
+Rockwell's heart.
+
+"All right, Chief.  I'll have him here," Rockwell answered briskly, but
+with tears standing in his eyes.  Ingolby had, as it were, been stricken
+out of the active, sentient, companionable world into a world where he
+was alone, detached, solitary.  His being seemed suspended in an
+atmosphere of misery and helplessness.
+
+"Blind!  I am blind!"  That was the phrase which kept beating with the
+pulses in Ingolby's veins, that throbbed, and throbbed, and throbbed like
+engines in a creaking ship which the storm was shaking and pounding in
+the vast seas between the worlds.  Here was the one incomprehensible,
+stupefying fact: nothing else mattered.  Every plan he had ever had,
+every design which he had made his own by an originality that even his
+foes acknowledged, were passing before his brain in swift procession,
+shining, magnified, and magnificent, and in that sudden clear-seeing of
+his soul he beheld their full value, their exact concrete force and
+ultimate effect.  Yet he knew himself detached from them, inactive,
+incapable, because he could not see with the eyes of the body.  The great
+essential thing to him was that one thing he had lost.  A man might be a
+cripple and still direct the great concerns of life and the business of
+life.  He might be shorn of limb and scarred of body, but with eye sight
+still direct the courses of great schemes, in whatever sphere of life his
+purposes were at work.  He might be deaf to every sound and forever dumb,
+but seeing enabled him still to carry forward every enterprise.  In
+darkness, however, those things were naught, because judgment must depend
+on the eyes and senses of others.  The report might be true or false, the
+deputy might deceive, and his blind chief might never know the truth
+unless some other spectator of his schemes should report it; and the
+truth could not surely be checked, save by some one, perhaps, whose life
+was joined to his, by one that truly loved him, whose fate was his.
+
+His brain was afire.  By one that truly loved him!  Who was there that
+loved him?  Who was there at one with him in all his deep designs, in all
+he had done and meant to do?  Neither brother, nor sister, nor friend,
+nor any other.  None of his blood was there who could share with him the
+constructive work he had set out to do.  There was no friend whose fate
+was part of his own.  There was the Boss Doctor: but Rockwell was tied to
+his own responsibilities, and he could not give up, of course, would not
+give up his life to the schemes of another.  There were a dozen men whom
+he had helped to forge ahead by his own schemes, but their destinies were
+not linked with his.  Only one whose life was linked with his could be
+trusted to be his eyes, to be the true reporter of all he did, had done,
+or planned to do.  Only one who loved him.
+
+But even one who loved him could not carry through his incompleted work
+against the assaults of his enemies, who were powerful, watchful, astute,
+and merciless; who had a greed which set money higher than all else in
+the world.  They were of the new order of things in the New World.  The
+business of life was to them not a system of barter and exchange, a
+giving something of value to get something of value, with a margin of
+profit for each, and a sense of human equity behind; it was a cockpit
+where one man sought to get what another man had--and get it almost
+anyhow.
+
+It was the work of the faro-bank man, whose sleight of hand deceived the
+man that carried the gun.
+
+All the old humanity and good-fellowship of the trader, the man who
+exchanged, as it was in the olden days of the world and continued in
+greater or less degree till the present generation--all that was gone.
+It was held in contempt.  It had prevailed when men were open robbers and
+filibusters and warriors, giving their lives, if need be, to get what
+they wanted, making force their god.  It had triumphed over the violence
+and robbery of the open road until the dying years of one century and the
+young years of a new century.  Then the day of the trickster came--and
+men laughed at the idea of fair exchange and strove to give an illusive
+value for a thing of real value--the remorseless sleight of hand which
+the law could not reach.  The desire to get profit by honest toiling was
+dying down to ashes.
+
+Against such men had Ingolby worked--the tricksters, the manipulators.
+At the basis of his schemes was organization and the economy which
+concentrated and conserved energy begets, together with its profit.
+He had been the enemy of waste, the apostle of frugality and thrift;
+and it was that which had enabled him, in his short career, to win the
+confidence of the big men behind him in Montreal, to make good every
+step of the way.  He had worked for profit out of legitimate product
+and industry and enterprise, out of the elimination of waste.  It was his
+theory (and his practice) that no bit of old iron, no bolt or screw, no
+scrap of paper should be thrown away; that the cinders of the engines
+could and should be utilized for that which they would make; and that was
+why there was a paper-mill and foundry on the Sagalac at Manitou.  That
+was why and how, so far, he had beaten the tricksters.
+
+But while his schemes flashed before his mind, as the opiate suspended
+him in the middle heaven between sleep and waking, the tricksters and
+manipulators came hurrying after him like marauders that waited for the
+moment when they could rush the camp in the watches of the night.  His
+disordered imagination saw the ruin and wreck of his work, the seizure of
+what was his own--the place of control on his railways, the place of the
+Master Man who cared infinitely more to see his designs accomplished than
+for the profit they would bring to himself.  Yesterday he had been just
+at the top of the hill.  The key in his fingers was turning in the lock
+which would make safe the securities of his life and career, when it
+snapped, and the world grew dark as the black curtain fell and shut out
+the lighted room from the wayfarer in the gloom.  Then, it was, came the
+opaque blackness which could be felt, and his voice calling in despair:
+"Blind!  I am blind!"
+
+He did not know that he had taken an opiate, that his friend had
+mercifully atrophied his rebellious nerves.  These visions he was seeing
+were terribly true, but they somehow gave him no physical torture.  It
+was as though one saw an operation performed upon one's body with the
+nerves stilled and deadened by ether.  Yet he was cruelly conscious of
+the disaster which had come to him.  For a time at least.  Then his mind
+seemed less acute, the visions came, then without seeing them go, they
+went.  And others came in broken patches, shreds, and dreams,
+phantasmagoria of the brain, and at last all were mingled and confused;
+but as they passed they seemed to burn his sight.  How he longed for a
+cool bandage over his eyes, for a soft linen which would shut out the
+cumuli of broken hopes and designs, life's goals obliterated!  He had had
+enough of the black procession of futile things.
+
+His longing was not denied, for even as he roused himself from the
+oblivion coming on him, as though by a last effort to remember his dire
+misfortune, maybe his everlasting tragedy, something soothing and soft
+like linen dipped in dew was laid upon his forehead.  A cool, delicious
+hand covered his eyes caressingly; a voice from spheres so far away that
+worlds were the echoing points of the sound, came whispering to him like
+a stir of wings in a singing grove.  With a last effort to remain in the
+waking world, he raised his head so very little, but fell gently back
+again with one sighing word on his lips:
+
+"Fleda!"
+
+It was no illusion.  Fleda had come from her own night of trouble to his
+motherless, wifeless home, and would not be denied admittance by the
+nurse.  It was Jim Beadle who admitted her.
+
+"He'd be mad if he knew we wouldn't let her come," Jim had said to the
+nurse.
+
+It was Fleda who had warned Ingolby of the dangers that surrounded him
+--the physical as well as business dangers.  She came now to serve the
+blind victim of that Fate which she had seen hovering over him.
+
+The renegade daughter of the Romanys, as Jethro Fawe had called her, was,
+for the first time, in the house of her master Gorgio.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE CHAIN OF THE PAST
+
+For once in its career, Lebanon was absolutely united.  The blow that had
+brought down the Master Man had also struck the town between the eyes,
+and there was no one--friend or foe of Ingolby--who did not regard it as
+an insult and a challenge.  It was now known that the roughs of Manitou,
+led by the big river-driver, were about to start on a raid upon Lebanon
+and upon Ingolby at the very moment the horseshoe did its work.  All
+night there were groups of men waiting outside Ingolby's house.  They
+were of all classes-carters, railway workers, bartenders, lawyers,
+engineers, bankers, accountants, merchants, ranchmen, carpenters,
+insurance agents, manufacturers, millers, horse-dealers, and so on.
+
+Some prayed for Ingolby's life, others swore viciously; and those who
+swore had no contempt for those who prayed, while those who prayed were
+tolerant of those who swore.  It was a union of incongruous elements.
+Men who had nothing in common were one in the spirit of faction; and all
+were determined that the Orangeman, whose funeral was fixed for this
+memorable Saturday, should be carried safely to his grave.  Civic pride
+had almost become civic fanaticism in Lebanon.  One of the men beaten by
+Ingolby in the recent struggle for control of the railways said to the
+others shivering in the grey dawn: "They were bound to get him in the
+back.  They're dagos, the lot of 'em.  Skunks are skunks, even when you
+skin 'em."
+
+When, just before dawn, old Gabriel Druse issued from the house into
+which he had carried Ingolby the night before, they questioned him
+eagerly.  He had been a figure apart from both Lebanon and Manitou, and
+they did not regard him as a dago, particularly as it was more than
+whispered that Ingolby "had a lien" on his daughter.  In the grey light,
+with his long grizzled beard and iron-grey, shaggy hair, Druse looked
+like a mystic figure of the days when the gods moved among men like
+mortals.  His great height, vast proportions, and silent ways gave him a
+place apart, and added to the superstitious feeling by which he was
+surrounded.
+
+"How is he?" they asked whisperingly, as they crowded round him.
+
+"The danger is over," was the slow, heavy reply.  He will live, but he
+has bad days to face."
+
+"What was the danger?" they asked.  "Fever--maybe brain fever," he
+replied.  "We'll see him through," someone said.
+
+"Well, he cannot see himself through," rejoined the old man solemnly.
+The enigmatical words made them feel there was something behind.
+
+"Why can't he see himself through?" asked Osterhaut the universal, who
+had just arrived from the City Hall.
+
+"He can't see himself through because he is blind," was the heavy answer.
+
+There was a moment of shock, of hushed surprise, and then a voice burst
+forth: "Blind--they've blinded him, boys!  The dagos have killed his
+sight.  He's blind, boys!"
+
+A profane and angry muttering ran through the crowd, who were thirsty,
+hungry, and weary with watching.
+
+Osterhaut held up the horseshoe which had brought Ingolby down.  "Here it
+is, the thing that done it.  It's tied with a blue ribbon-for luck," he
+added ironically.  "It's got his blood on it.  I'm keeping it till
+Manitou's paid the price of it.  Then I'll give it to Lebanon for keeps."
+
+"That's the thing that did it, but where's the man behind the thing?"
+snarled a voice.
+
+Again there was a moment's silence, and then Billy Kyle, the veteran
+stage-driver, said: "He's in the jug, but a gaol has doors, and doors'll
+open with or without keys.  I'm for opening the door, boys."
+
+"What for?" asked a man who knew the answer, but who wanted the thing
+said.
+
+"I spent four years in Arizona, same as Jowett," Billy Kyle answered,
+"and I got in the way of thinking as they do there, and acting just as
+quick as you think.  I drove stage down in the Verde Valley.  Sometimes
+there wasn't time to bring a prisoner all the way to a judge and jury,
+and people was busy, and hadn't time to wait for the wagon; so they done
+what was right, and there was always a tree that would carry that kind o'
+fruit for the sake of humanity.  It's the best way, boys."
+
+"This isn't Arizona or any other lyncher's country," said Halliday, the
+lawyer, making his way to the front.  "It isn't the law, and in this
+country it's the law that counts.  It's the Gover'ment's right to attend
+to that drunken dago that threw the horseshoe, and we've got to let the
+Gover'ment do it.  No lynching on my plate, thank you.  If Ingolby could
+speak to us, you can bet your boots it's what he'd say."
+
+"What's your opinion, boss?" asked Billy Kyle of Gabriel Druse, who had
+stood listening, his chin on his breast, his sombre eyes fixed on them
+abstractedly.
+
+At Kyle's question his eyes lighted up with a fire that was struck from a
+flint in other spheres, and he answered: "It is for the ruler to take
+life, not the subject.  If it is a man that rules, it is for him; if it
+is the law that rules, it is for the law.  Here, it is the law.  Then it
+is not for the subject, and it is not for you."
+
+"If he was your son?" asked Billy Kyle.
+
+"If he was my son, I should be the ruler, not the law," was the grim,
+enigmatic reply, and the old man stalked away from them towards the
+bridge.
+
+"I'd bet he'd settle the dago's hash that done to his son what the
+Manitou dagos done to Ingolby--and settle it quick," remarked Lick
+Farrelly, the tinsmith.
+
+"I bet he's been a ruler or something somewhere," remarked Billy Kyle.
+
+"I bet I'm going home to breakfast," interposed Halliday, the lawyer.
+"There's a straight day's work before us, gentlemen," he added, "and we
+can't do anything here.  Orangemen, let's hoof it."
+
+Twenty Orangemen stepped out from the crowd.  Halliday was a past master
+of their lodge, and they all meant what he meant.  They marched away in
+procession--to breakfast and to a meeting of the lodge.  Others straggled
+after, but a few waited for the appearance of the doctor.  When the sun
+came up and Rockwell, pale and downcast, issued forth, they gathered
+round him, and walked with him through the town, questioning, listening
+and threatening.
+
+A few still remained behind at Ingolby's house.  They were of the devoted
+slaves of Ingolby who would follow him to the gates of Hades and back
+again, or not back if need be.
+
+The nigger barber, Berry, was one; another was the Jack-of-all-trades,
+Osterhaut, a kind of municipal odd-man, with the well-known red hair, the
+face that constantly needed shaving, the blue serge shirt with a scarf
+for a collar, the suit of canvas in the summer and of Irish frieze in the
+winter; the pair of hands which were always in his own pocket, never in
+any one else's; the grey eye, doglike in its mildness, and the long nose
+which gave him the name of Snorty.  Of the same devoted class also was
+Jowett who, on a higher plane, was as wise and discerning a scout as any
+leader ever had.
+
+While old Berry and Osterhaut and all the others were waiting at
+Ingolby's house, Jowett was scouting among the Manitou roughs for the
+Chief Constable of Lebanon, to find out what was forward.  What he had
+found was not reassuring, because Manitou, conscious of being in the
+wrong, realized that Lebanon would try to make her understand her wrong-
+doing; and that was intolerable.  It was clear to Jowett that, in spite
+of all, there would be trouble at the Orange funeral, and that the
+threatened strike would take place at the same time in spite of Ingolby's
+catastrophe.  Already in the early morning revengeful spirits from
+Lebanon had invaded the outer portions of Manitou and had taken
+satisfaction out of an equal number of "Dogans," as they called the Roman
+Catholic labourers, one of whom was carried to the hospital with an elbow
+out of joint and a badly injured back.
+
+With as much information as he needed, Jowett made his way back to
+Lebanon, when, at the approach to the bridge, he met Fleda hurrying with
+bent head and pale, distressed face in his own direction.  Of all Western
+men none had a better appreciation of the sex that takes its toll of
+every traveller after his kind than Aaron Jowett.  He had been a real
+buck in his day among those of his own class, and though the storm of his
+romances had become but a faint stirring of leaves which had tinges of
+days that are sear, he still had an eye unmatched for female beauty.  The
+sun which makes that northern land a paradise in summer caught the gold-
+brown hair of Gabriel Druse's daughter, and made it glint and shine.  It
+coquetted with the umber of her eyes and they grew luminous as a jewel;
+it struck lightly across the pale russet of her cheek and made it like an
+apple that one's lips touch lovingly, when one calls it "too good to
+eat."  It made an atmosphere of half-silver and half-gold with a touch of
+sunrise crimson for her to walk in, translating her form into melting
+lines of grace.
+
+Jowett knew that Druse's daughter was on her way to the man who had
+looked once, looked twice, looked thrice into her eyes and had seen there
+his own image; and that she had done the same; and that the man, it might
+be, would never look into their dark depths again.  He might speak once,
+he might speak twice, he might speak thrice, but would it ever be the
+same as the look that needed no words?
+
+When he crossed Fleda Druse's pathway she stopped short.  She knew that
+Jowett was Ingolby's true friend.  She had seen him often, and he was
+intimately associated with that day when she had run the Carillon Rapids
+and had lain (for how long she never dared to think) in Ingolby's arms in
+the sight of all the world.  First among those who crowded round her at
+Carillon that day were Jowett and Osterhaut, who had tried to warn her.
+
+"You are going to him?" she said now with confidence in her eyes, and by
+the intimacy of the phrase (as though she could speak of Ingolby only as
+him) their own understanding was complete.
+
+"To see how he is and then to do other things," Jowett answered.
+
+There was silence for a moment in which they moved slowly forward, and
+then she said: "You were at Barbazon's last night?"
+
+"When that Gipsy son of a dog gave him away!" he assented.  "I never
+heard anything like the speech Ingolby made.  He had them in the throat.
+The Gipsy would have had nothing out of it, if it hadn't been for the
+horseshoe.  But in spite of the giveaway, Ingolby was getting them where
+they were soft-fairly drugging them with good news.  You never heard such
+dope.  My, he was smooth!  The golden, velvet truth it was, too.  That's
+the only kind he has in stock; and they were sort of stupefied and locoed
+as they chewed his word-plant.  Cicero must have been a saucy singer of
+the dictionary, and Paul the Apostle had a dope of his own you couldn't
+buy, but the gay gamut that Ingolby run gives them all the cold good-
+bye."
+
+She held herself very still as he spoke.  There was, however, a strange,
+lonely look in her eyes.  The man lying asleep in the darkness of body
+and mind yonder was not really her lover, for he had said no word direct
+of love to her, and she knew him so little, how could she love him?  Yet
+there was something between them which had its authority over their
+lives, overcoming even that maiden modesty which was in contrast to the
+bold, physical thing she had done in running the Carillon Rapids those
+centuries ago when she was young and glad-wistfully glad.  So much had
+come since that day, she had travelled so far on the highway of Fate,
+that she looked back from peak to peak of happening to an almost
+invisible horizon.  So much had occurred and she felt so old this
+morning; and yet there was in her heart the undefined feeling that she
+must keep her radiant Spring of life for the blind Gorgio if he needed
+it-if he needed it.  Would he need it, robbed of sight and with his life-
+work murdered?
+
+She shuddered as she thought of what it meant to him.  If a man is to
+work, he must have eyes to see.  Yet what had she to do with it, after
+all?  She had no right to go to him even as she was going.  Yet had she
+not the right of common humanity?  This Gorgio was her friend.  Did not
+the world know that he had saved her life?
+
+As they came to the Lebanon end of the bridge, Fleda turned to Jowett
+and, commenting on his description of the scene at Barbazon, said:
+"He is a great man, but he trusts too much and risks too much.  That was
+no place for him."
+
+"Big men like him think they can do anything," Jowett replied, a little
+ironically, subtly trying to force a confession of her preference for
+Ingolby.
+
+He succeeded.  Her eye lighted with indignation.  She herself might
+challenge him, but she would not allow another to do so.
+
+"It is not the truth," she rejoined sharply.  "He does not measure
+himself against the world so.  He is like--like a child," she added.
+
+"It seems to me all big men are like that," Jowett rejoined; "and he's
+the biggest man the West has seen.  He knows about every man's business
+as though it was his own.  I can get a margin off most any man in the
+West on a horse-trade, but I'd look shy about doing a trade with him.
+You can't dope a horse so he won't know.  He's on to it, sees it-sees it
+like as if it was in glass.  Sees anything and everything, and--" He
+stopped short.  The Master Gorgio could no longer see, and his henchman
+flushed like a girl at his "break"; though, as a horse-dealer, he had in
+his time listened without shame to wilder, angrier reproaches than most
+men living.
+
+She glanced at him, saw his confusion, forgave and understood him.
+
+"It was not the horseshoe, it was not the Gipsy," she returned.  "They
+did not set it going.  It would not have happened but for one man."
+
+"Yes, it's Marchand, right enough," answered Jowett, "but we'll get him
+yet.  We'll get him with the branding-iron hot."
+
+"That will not put things right if--" she paused, then with a great
+effort she added: "Does the doctor think he will get it back and that--"
+
+She stopped suddenly in an agitation he did not care to see and he turned
+away his head.
+
+"Doctor doesn't know," he answered.  "There's got to be an expert.  It'll
+take time before he gets here, but--" he could not help but say it,
+seeing how great her distress was--"but it's going to come back.  I've
+seen cases--I saw one down on the Border"--how easily he lied!--"just
+like his.  It was blasting that done it--the shock.  But the sight come
+back all right, and quick too--like as I've seen a paralizite get up all
+at once and walk as though he'd never been locoed.  Why, God Almighty
+don't let men like Ingolby be done like that by reptiles same's
+Marchand."
+
+"You believe in God Almighty?" she said half-wonderingly, yet with
+gratitude in her tone.  "You understand about God?"
+
+"I've seen too many things not to try and deal fair with Him and not try
+to cheat Him," he answered.  "I see things lots of times that wasn't ever
+born on the prairie or in any house.  I've seen--I've seen enough," he
+said abruptly, and stopped.
+
+"What have you seen?" she asked eagerly.  "Was it good or bad?"
+
+"Both," he answered quickly.  "I was stalked once--stalked I was by night
+and often in the open day, by some sickly, loathsome thing, that even
+made me fight it with my hands--a thing I couldn't see.  I used to fire
+buckshot at it, enough to kill an army, till I near went mad.  I was
+really and truly getting loony.  Then I took to prayin' to the best woman
+I ever knowed.  I never had a mother, but she looked after me--my sister,
+Sara, it was.  She brought me up, and then died and left me without
+anything to hang on to.  I didn't know all I'd lost till she was gone.
+But I guess she knew what I thought of her; for she come back--after I'd
+prayed till I couldn't see.  She come back into my room one night when
+the cursed 'haunt' was prowling round me, and as plain as I see you, I
+saw her.  'Be at peace,' she said, and I spoke to her, and said, 'Sara-
+why, Sara' and she smiled, and went away into nothing--like a bit o'
+cloud in the sun."
+
+He stopped, and was looking straight before him as though he saw a
+vision.
+
+"It went?" she asked breathlessly.
+
+"It went like that--" He made a swift, outward gesture.  "It went and it
+never came back; and she didn't either--not ever.  My idee is," he added,
+"that there's evil things that mebbe are the ghost-shapes of living men
+that want to do us harm; though, mebbe, too, they're the ghost-shapes of
+men that's dead, but that can't get on Over There.  So they try to get
+back to us here; and they can make life Hell while they're stalking us."
+
+"I am sure you are right," she said.
+
+She was thinking of the loathsome thing which haunted her room last
+night.  Was it the embodied second self of Jethro Fawe, doing the evil
+that Jethro Fawe, the visible corporeal man, wished to do?  She
+shuddered, then bent her head and fixed her mind on Ingolby, whose house
+was not far away.  She felt strangely, miserably alone this morning.  She
+was in that fluttering state which follows a girl's discovery that she is
+a woman, and the feeling dawns that she must complete herself by joining
+her own life with the life of another.
+
+She showed no agitation, but her repression gave an almost statuesque
+character to her face and figure.  The adventurous nature of her early
+life had given her a power to meet shock and danger with coolness, and
+though the news of Ingolby's tragedy had seemed to freeze the vital
+forces in her, and all the world became blank for a moment, she had
+controlled herself and had set forth to go to him, come what might.
+
+As she entered the street where Ingolby lived, she suddenly realized the
+difficulty before her.  She might go to him, but by only one right could
+she stay and nurse him, and that right she did not possess.  He would,
+she knew, understand her, no matter how the world babbled.  Why should
+the world babble?  What woman could have designs upon a blind man?  Was
+not humanity alone sufficient warrant for staying by his side?  Yet would
+he wish it?  Suddenly her heart sank; but again she remembered their last
+parting, and once more she was sure he would be glad to have her with
+him.
+
+It flashed upon her how different it would have been, if he and she had
+been Romanys, and this thing had happened over there in the far lands she
+knew so well.  Who would have hinted at shame, if she had taken him to
+her father's tan or gone to his tan and tended him as a man might tend a
+man?  Humanity would have been the only convention; there would have been
+no sex, no false modesty, no babble, no reproach.  If it had been a man
+as old as the oldest or as young as Jethro Fawe it would have made no
+difference.
+
+As young as Jethro Fawe!  Why was it that now she could never think of
+the lost and abandoned Romany life without thinking also of Jethro Fawe?
+Why should she hate him, despise him, revolt against him, and yet feel
+that, as it were by invisible cords, he drew her back to that which she
+had forsworn, to the Past which dragged at her feet?  The Romany was not
+dead in her; her real struggle was yet to come; and in a vague but
+prophetic way she realized it.  She was not yet one with the settled
+western world.
+
+As they came close to Ingolby's house she heard marching footsteps, and
+in the near distance she saw fourscore or more men tramping in military
+order.  "Who are they?" she asked of Jowett.
+
+"Men that are going to see law and order kept in Lebanon," he answered.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+SUCH THINGS MAY NOT BE
+
+A few hours later Fleda slowly made her way homeward through the woods on
+the Manitou side of the Sagalac.  Leaving Ingolby's house, she had seen
+men from the ranches and farms and mines beyond Lebanon driving or riding
+into the town, as though to a fair or fete-day.  Word of anticipated
+troubles had sped through the countryside, and the innate curiosity of
+a race who greatly love a row brought in sensation-lovers.  Some were
+skimming along in one-horse gigs, a small bag of oats dangling beneath
+like the pendulum of a great clock.  Others were in double or triple-
+seated light wagons--"democrats" they were called.  Women had a bit of
+colour in their hats or at their throats, and the men had on clean white
+collars and suits of "store-clothes"--a sign of being on pleasure bent.
+Young men and girls on rough but serviceable mounts cantered past,
+laughing and joking, and their loud talking grated on the ear of the girl
+who had seen a Napoleon in the streets of his Moscow.
+
+Presently there crossed her path a gruesomely ugly hearse, with glass
+sides and cheap imitation ostrich plumes drawn by gorged ravens of horses
+with egregiously long tails, and driven by an undertaker's assistant,
+who, with a natural gaiety of soul, displayed an idiotic solemnity by
+dragging down the corners of the mouth.  She turned away in loathing.
+
+Her mind fled to a scene far away in the land of the Volga when she was a
+child, where she had seen buried two men, who had fought for their
+insulted honour till both had died of their wounds.  She remembered the
+white and red sashes and the gay scarfs worn by the women at the burial,
+the jackets with great silver buttons worn by the men, and the silver-
+mounted pistols and bright steel knives in the garish belts.  She saw
+again the bodies of the two gladiators, covered with crimson robes,
+carried shoulder-high on a soft bed of interlaced branches to the graves
+beneath the trees.  There, covered with flowers and sprigs and
+evergreens, ribbons and favours, the kindly earth hid them, cloaked for
+their long sleep, while women wept, and men praised the dead, and went
+back to the open road again cheerily, as the dead would have them do.
+
+If he had died--the man she had just left behind in that torpid sleep
+which opiates bring--his body would have been carried to his last home in
+just such a hideous equipage as this hearse.  A shiver of revolt went
+through her frame, and her mind went to him as she had seen him lying
+between the white sheets of his bed, his hands, as they had lain upon the
+coverlet, compact of power and grace, knit and muscular and vital--not
+the hand for a violin but the hand for a sword.
+
+As she had laid her hand upon his hot forehead and over his eyes, he had
+unconsciously spoken her name.  That had told her more of what really was
+between them than she had ever known.  In the presence of the catastrophe
+that must endanger, if not destroy the work he had done, the career he
+had made, he thought of her, spoke her name.
+
+What could she do to prevent his ruin?  She must do something, else she
+had no right to think of him.  As though her thoughts had summoned him,
+she came suddenly upon Felix Marchand at a point where her path resolved
+itself into two, one leading to Manitou, the other to her own home.
+
+There was a malicious glint in the greenish eyes of the dissolute
+demagogue as he saw her.  His hat made a half-circle before it found his
+head again.
+
+"You pay early visits, mademoiselle," he said, his teeth showing rat-
+like.
+
+"And you late ones?" she asked meaningly.
+
+"Not so late that I can't get up early to see what's going on," he
+rejoined in a sour voice.
+
+"Is it that those who beat you have to get up early?" she asked
+ironically.
+
+"No one has got up earlier than me lately," he sneered.
+
+"All the days are not begun," she remarked calmly.
+
+"You have picked up quite an education since you left the road and the
+tan," he said with the look of one who delivers a smashing blow.
+
+"I am not yet educated enough to know how you get other people to commit
+your crimes for you," she retorted.
+
+"Who commits my crimes for me?"  His voice was sharp and even anxious.
+
+"The man who told you I was once a Gipsy--Jethro Fawe."
+
+Her instinct had told her this was so.  But had Jethro told all?  She
+thought not.  It would need some catastrophe which threw him off his
+balance to make him speak to a Gorgio of the inner things of Romany life;
+and child--marriage was one of them.
+
+He scoffed.  "Once a Gipsy always a Gipsy.  Race is race, and you can't
+put it off and on like--your stocking."
+
+He was going to say chemise, but race was race, and vestiges of native
+French chivalry stayed the gross simile on the lips of the degenerate.
+Fleda's eyes, however, took on a dark and brooding look which, more
+than anything else, showed the Romany in her.  With a murky flood of
+resentment rising in her veins, she strove to fight back the half-savage
+instincts of a bygone life.  She felt as though she could willingly
+sentence this man to death as her father had done Jethro Fawe that very
+morning.  Another thought, however, was working and fighting in her--that
+Marchand was better as a friend than an enemy; and that while Ingolby's
+fate was in the balance, while yet the Orange funeral had not taken place
+and the strikes had not yet come, it might be that he could be won over
+to Ingolby.  Her mind was thus involuntarily reproducing Ingolby's
+policy, as he had declared it to Jowett and Rockwell.  It was to find
+Felix Marchand's price, and to buy off his enmity--not by money, for
+Marchand did not need that, but by those other coins of value which are
+individual to each man's desires, passions and needs.
+
+"Once a Frenchman isn't always a Frenchman," she replied coolly,
+disregarding the coarse insolence of his last utterance.  "You yourself
+do not now swear faith to the tricolour or the fleur-de-lis."
+
+He flushed.  She had touched a tender nerve.
+
+"I am a Frenchman always," he rejoined angrily.  "I hate the English.
+I spit on the English flag."
+
+"Yes, I've heard you are an anarchist," she rejoined.  "A man with no
+country and with a flag that belongs to no country--quelle affaire et
+quelle drolerie!"
+
+She laughed.  Taken aback in spite of his anger, he stared at her.  How
+good her French accent was!  If she would only speak altogether in that
+beloved language, he could smother much malice.  She was beautiful and--
+well, who could tell?  Ingolby was wounded and blind, maybe for ever, and
+women are always with the top dog--that was his theory.  Perhaps her
+apparent dislike of him was only a mood.  Many women that he had
+conquered had been just like that.  They had begun by disliking him--from
+Lil Sarnia down--and had ended by being his.  This girl would never be
+his in the way that the others had been, but--who could tell?--perhaps he
+would think enough of her to marry her?  Anyway, it was worth while
+making such a beauty care for him.  The other kind of women were easy
+enough to get, and it would be a piquant thing to have one irreproachable
+affaire.  He had never had one; he was not sure that any girl or woman he
+had ever known had ever loved him, and he was certain that he had never
+loved any girl or woman.  To be in love would be a new and piquant
+experience for him.  He did not know love, but he knew what passion was.
+He had ever been the hunter.  This trail might be dangerous, too, but he
+would take his chances.  He had seen her dislike of him whenever they had
+met in the past, and he had never tried to soften her attitude towards
+him.  He had certainly whistled, but she had not come.  Well, he would
+whistle again--a different tune.
+
+"You speak French much?" he asked almost eagerly, the insolence gone from
+his tone.  "Why didn't I know that?"
+
+"I speak French in Manitou," she replied, "but nearly all the French
+speak English there, and so I speak more English than French."
+
+"Yes, that's it," he rejoined almost angrily again.  "The English will
+not learn French, will not speak French.  They make us learn English,
+and--"
+
+"If you don't like the flag and the country, why don't you leave it?" she
+interrupted, hardening, though she had meant to try and win him over to
+Ingolby's side.
+
+His eyes blazed.  There was something almost real in the man after all.
+
+"The English can kill us, they can grind us to the dust," he rejoined in
+French, "but we will not leave the land which has always been ours.  We
+settled it; our fathers gave their lives for it in a thousand places.
+The Indians killed them, the rivers and the storms, the plague and the
+fire, the sickness and the cold wiped them out.  They were burned alive
+at the stake, they were flayed; their bones were broken to pieces by
+stones--but they blazed trails with their blood in the wilderness from
+New Orleans to Hudson's Bay.  They paid for the land with their lives.
+Then the English came and took it, and since that time--one hundred and
+fifty years--we have been slaves."
+
+"You do not look like a slave," she answered, "and you have not acted
+like a slave.  If you were to do the things in France that you've done
+here, you wouldn't be free as you are to-day."
+
+"What have I done?" he asked darkly.
+
+"You were the cause of what happened at Barbazon's last night,"--he
+smiled evilly--"you are egging on the roughs to break up the Orange
+funeral to-day; and there is all the rest you know so well."
+
+"What is the rest I know so well?"  He looked closely at her, his long,
+mongrel eyes half-closing with covert scrutiny.
+
+"Whatever it is, it is all bad and it is all yours."
+
+"Not all," he retorted coolly.  "You forget your Gipsy friend.  He did
+his part last night, and he's still free."
+
+They had entered the last little stretch of wood in which her home lay,
+and she slackened her footsteps slightly.  She felt that she had been
+unwise in challenging him; that she ought to try persistently to win him
+over.  It was repugnant to her, still it must be done even yet.  She
+mastered herself for Ingolby's sake and changed her tactics.
+
+"As you glory in what you have done, you won't mind being responsible
+for all that's happened," she replied in a more friendly tone.
+
+She made an impulsive gesture towards him.
+
+"You have shown what power you have--isn't that enough?" she asked.
+"You have made the crowd shout, 'Vive Marchand !' You can make everything
+as peaceful as it is now upset.  If you don't do so, there will be much
+misery.  If peace must be got by force, then the force of government will
+get it in the end.  You have the gift of getting hold of the worst men
+here, and you have done it; but won't you now master them again in the
+other way?  You have money and brains; why not use them to become a
+leader of those who will win at last, no matter what the game may be?"
+
+He came close to her.  She shrank inwardly, but she did not move.  His
+greenish eyes were wide open in the fulness of eloquence and desire.
+
+"You have a tongue like none I ever heard," he said impulsively.  "You've
+got a mind that thinks, you've got dash and can take risks.  You took
+risks that day on the Carillon Rapids.  It was only the day before that
+I'd met you by the old ford of the Sagalac, and made up to you.  You
+choked me off as though I was a wolf or a devil on the loose.  The next
+day when I saw Ingolby hand you out to the crowd from his arms, I got
+nasty--I have fits like that sometimes, when I've had a little too much
+liquor.  I felt it more because you're the only kind of woman that could
+ever get a real hold on me.  It was you made me get the boys rampaging
+and set the toughs moving.  As you say, I can get hold of a crowd.  It's
+not hard--with money and drink.  You can buy human nature cheap.  Every
+man has his price they say--and every woman too--bien sur!  The thing is
+to find out what is the price, and then how to buy.  You can't buy
+everyone in the same way, even if you use a different price.  You've got
+to find out how they want the price--whether it's to be handed over the
+counter, so to speak, or to be kept on the window-sill, or left in a
+pocket, or dropped in a path, or dug up like a potato, with a funny make-
+believe that fools nobody, but just plays to the hypocrite in everyone
+everywhere.  I'm saying this to you because you've seen more of the
+world, I bet, than one in a million, even though you're so young.  I
+don't see why we can't come together.  I'm to be bought.  I don't say
+that my price isn't high.  You've got your price, too.  You wouldn't fuss
+yourself about things here in Manitou and Lebanon, if there wasn't
+something you wanted to get.  Tout ca!  Well, isn't it worth while making
+the bargain?  You've got such gift of speech that I'm just as if I'd been
+drugged, and all round, face, figure, eyes, hair, foot, and girdle,
+you're worth giving up a lot for.  I've seen plenty of your sex, and I've
+heard crowds of them talk, but they never had anything for me beyond the
+minute.  You've got the real thing.  You're my fancy.  You've been
+thinking and dreaming of Ingolby.  He's done.  He's a back number.
+There's nothing he's done that isn't on the tumble since last night.
+The financial gang that he downed are out already against him.  They'll
+have his economic blood.  He made a splash while he was at it, but the
+alligator's got him.  It's 'Exit Ingolby,' now."
+
+She made a passionate gesture, and seemed about to speak, but he went on:
+"No, don't say anything.  I know how you feel.  You've had your face
+turned his way, and you can't look elsewhere all at once.  But Time cures
+quick, if you're a good healthy human being.  Ingolby was the kind likely
+to draw a girl.  He's a six-footer and over; he spangled a lot, and he
+smiled pretty--comme le printemps, and was sharp enough to keep clear of
+women that could hurt him.  That was his strongest point after all, for a
+little, sly sprat of a woman that's made eyes at you and led you on, till
+you sent her a note in a hurry some time with some loose hot words in it,
+and she got what she'd wanted, will make you pay a hundred times for the
+goods you get.  Ingolby was sharp enough to walk shy, until you came his
+way, and then he lost his underpinning.  But last night got him in the
+vitals--hit him between the eyes; and his stock's not worth ten cents in
+the dollar to-day.  But though the pumas are out, and he's done, and'll
+never see his way out of the hole he's in"--he laughed at his grisly
+joke"--it's natural to let him down easy.  You've looked his way; he did
+you a good turn at the Carillon Rapids, and you'd do one for him if you
+could.  I'm the only one can stop the worst from happening.  You want to
+pay your debt to him.  Good.  I can help you do it.  I can stop the
+strikes on the railways and in the mills.  I can stop the row at the
+Orange funeral.  I can stop the run on his bank and the drop in his
+stock.  I can fight the gang that's against him--I know how.  I'm the
+man that can bring things to pass."
+
+He paused with a sly, mean smile of self-approval and conceit, and his
+tongue licked the corners of his mouth in a way that drunkards have in
+the early morning when the effect of last night's drinking has worn off.
+He spread out his hands with the air of a man who had unpacked his soul,
+but the chief characteristic of his manner was egregious belief in
+himself.
+
+At first, in her desire to find a way to meet the needs of Ingolby, Fleda
+had listened to him with fortitude and even without revolt.  But as he
+began to speak of women, and to refer to herself with a look of gloating
+which men of his breed cannot hide, her angry pulses beat hard.  She did
+not quite know where he was leading, but she was sure he meant to say
+something which would vex her beyond bearing.  At one moment she meant to
+cut short his narrative, but he prevented her, and when at last he ended,
+she was almost choking with agitation.  It had been borne in upon her as
+his monologue proceeded, that she would rather die than accept anything
+from this man--anything of any kind.  To fight him was the only thing.
+Nothing else could prevail in the end.  His was the service of the
+unpenitent thief.
+
+"And what is it you want to buy from me?" she asked evenly.
+
+He did not notice, and he could not realize that ominous thing in her
+voice and face.  "I want to be friends with you.  I want to see you here
+in the woods, to meet you as you met Ingolby.  I want to talk with you,
+to hear you talk; to learn things from you I never learned before; to--"
+
+She interrupted him with a swift gesture.  "And then--after that?  What
+do you want at the end of it all?  One cannot spend one's time talking
+and wandering in the woods and teaching and learning.  After that, what?"
+
+"I have a house in Montreal," he said evasively.  "I don't want to live
+there alone."  He laughed.  "It's big enough for two, and at the end it
+might be us two, if--"
+
+With sharp anger, yet with coolness and dignity, she broke in on his
+words.  "Might be us two!" she exclaimed.  "I have never thought of
+making my home in a sewer.  Do you think--but, no, it isn't any use
+talking!  You don't know how to deal with man or woman.  You are
+perverted."
+
+"I did not mean what you mean; I meant that I should want to marry you,"
+he protested.  "You think the worst of me.  Someone has poisoned your
+mind against me."
+
+"Everyone has poisoned my mind against you," she returned, "and yourself
+most of all.  I know you will try to injure Mr. Ingolby; and I know that
+you will try to injure me; but you will not succeed."
+
+She turned and moved away from him quickly, taking the path towards her
+own front door.  He called something after her, but she did not or would
+not hear.
+
+As she entered the open space in front of the house, she heard footsteps
+behind her and turned quickly, not without apprehension.  A woman came
+hurrying towards her.  She was pale, agitated, haggard with fatigue.
+
+"May I speak with you?" she asked in French.  "Surely," replied Fleda.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE WOMAN FROM WIND RIVER
+
+"What is it?" asked Fleda, opening the door of the house.
+
+"I want to speak to you about m'sieu'," replied the sad-faced woman.
+She made a motion of her head backwards towards the wood.  "About M'sieu'
+Marchand."
+
+Fleda's face hardened; she had had more than enough of "M'sieu'
+Marchand."  She was bitterly ashamed that she had, even for a moment,
+thought of using diplomacy with him.  But this woman's face was so
+forlorn, apart, and lonely, that the old spirit of the Open Road worked
+its will.  In far-off days she had never seen a human being turned away
+from a Romany tent, or driven from a Romany camp.  She opened the door
+and stood aside to admit the wayfarer.
+
+A few moments later, the woman, tidied and freshened, sat at the ample
+breakfast which was characteristic of Romany home-life.  The woman's
+plate was bountifully supplied by Fleda, and her cup filled more than
+once by Madame Bulteel, while old Gabriel Druse bulked friendly over all.
+His face now showed none of the passion and sternness which had been
+present when he passed the Sentence of the Patrin upon Jethro Fawe;
+nothing of the gloom filling his eyes as he left Ingolby's house.  The
+gracious, bountiful look of the patriarch, of the head of the clan, was
+upon him.
+
+The husband of one wife, the father of one child, yet the Ry of Rys had
+still the overlooking, protective sense of one who had the care of great
+numbers of people.  His keen eyes foresaw more of the story the woman was
+to tell presently than either of the women of his household.  He had seen
+many such women as this, and had inflexibly judged between them and those
+who had wronged them.
+
+"Where have you come from?" he asked, as the meal drew to a close.
+
+"From Wind River and under Elk Mountain," the woman answered with a look
+of relief.  Her face was of those who no longer can bear the soul's
+secrets.
+
+There was silence while the breakfast things were cleared away, and the
+window was thrown wide to the full morning sun.  It broke through the
+branches of pine and cedar and juniper; it made translucent the leaves of
+the maples; it shimmered on Fleda's brown hair as she pulled a rose from
+the bush at the window, and gave it to the forlorn creature in the grey
+"linsey-woolsey" dress and the loose blue flannel jacket, whose skin was
+coarsened by outdoor life, but who had something of real beauty in the
+intense blue of her eyes.  She had been a very comely figure in her best
+days, for her waist was small, her bosom gently and firmly rounded, and
+her hands were finer than those of most who live and work much in the
+open air.
+
+"You said there was something you wished to tell me," said Fleda, at
+last.
+
+The woman gazed slowly round at the three, as though with puzzled appeal.
+There was the look of the Outlander in her face; of one who had been
+exiled from familiar things and places.  In manner she was like a child.
+Her glance wandered over the faces of the two women, then her eyes met
+those of the Ry, and stayed there.
+
+"I am old and I have seen many sorrows," said Gabriel Druse, divining
+what was in her mind.  "I will try to understand."
+
+"I have known all the bitterness of life," interposed the low, soft voice
+of Madame Bulteel.
+
+"All ears are the same here," Fleda added, looking the woman in the eyes.
+
+"I will tell everything," was the instant reply.  Her fingers twined and
+untwined in her lap with a nervousness shown by neither face nor body.
+Her face was almost apathetic in its despair, but her body had an upright
+courage.
+
+She sighed heavily and began.
+
+"My name is Arabella Stone.  I was married from my home over against Wind
+River by the Jumping Sandhills.
+
+"My father was a lumberman.  He was always captain of the gang in the
+woods, and captain of the river in the summer.  My mother was deaf and
+dumb.  It was very lonely at times when my father was away.  I loved a
+boy--a good boy, and he was killed breaking horses.  When I was twenty-
+one years old my mother died.  It was not good for me to be alone, my
+father said, so he must either give up the woods and the river, or he or
+I must marry.  Well, I saw he would not marry, for my mother's face was
+one a man could not forget."
+
+The old man stirred in his seat.  "I have seen such," he said in his deep
+voice.
+
+"So it was I said to myself I would marry," she continued, "though I had
+loved the Boy that died under the hoofs of the black stallion.  There
+weren't many girls at the Jumping Sandhills, and so there were men, now
+one, now another, to say things to me which did not touch my heart; but I
+did not laugh, because I understood that they were lonely.  Yet I liked
+one of them more than all the others.
+
+"So, for my father's sake, I came nearer to Dennis, and at last it seemed
+I could bear to look at him any time of the day or night he came to me.
+He was built like a pine-tree, and had a playful tongue, and also he was
+a ranchman like the Boy that was gone.  It all came about on the day he
+rode in from the range the wild wicked black stallion which all range-
+riders had tried for years to capture.  It was like a brother of the
+horse which had killed my Boy, only bigger.  When Dennis mastered him and
+rode him to my door I made up my mind, and when he whispered to me over
+the dipper of buttermilk I gave him, I said, 'Yes.' I was proud of him.
+He did things that a woman likes, and said the things a woman loves to
+hear, though they be the same thing said over and over again."
+
+Madame Bulteel nodded her head as though in a dream, and the Ry of Rys
+sat with his two great hands on the chair-arm and his chin dropped on his
+chest.  Fleda's hands were clasped in her lap, and her big eyes never
+left the woman's face.
+
+"Before a month was gone I had married him," the, low, tired voice went
+on.  "It was a gay wedding; and my father was very happy, for he thought
+I had got the desire of a woman's life--a home of her own.  For a time
+all went well.  Dennis was gay and careless and wilful, but he was easy
+to live with, too, except when he came back from the town where he sold
+his horses.  Then he was different, because of the drink, and he was
+quarrelsome with me--and cruel, too.
+
+"At last when he came home with the drink upon him, he would sleep on the
+floor and not beside me.  This wore upon my heart.  I thought that if I
+could only put my hand on his shoulder and whisper in his ear, he would
+get better of his bad feeling; but he was sulky, and he would not bear
+with me.  Though I never loved him as I loved my Boy, still I tried to be
+a good wife to him, and never turned my eyes to any other man."
+
+Suddenly she stopped as though the pain of speaking was too great.
+Madame Bulteel murmured something, but the only word that reached the
+ears of the others was the Arabic word 'mafish'.  Her pale face was
+suffused as she said it.
+
+Two or three times the woman essayed to speak again, but could not.  At
+last, however, she overcame her emotion and said: "So it was when M'sieu'
+Felix Marchand came up from the Sagalac."
+
+The old man started and muttered harshly, but Fleda had foreseen the
+entrance of the dissolute Frenchman into the tale, and gave no sign of
+surprise.
+
+"M'sieu' Marchand bought horses," the sad voice trailed on.  "One day he
+bought the mining-claims Dennis had been holding till he could develop
+them or sell them for good money.  When Dennis went to town again he
+brought me back a present of a belt with silver clasps; but yet again
+that night he slept upon the floor alone.  So it went on.  M. Marchand,
+he goes on to the mountains and comes back; and he buys more horses, and
+Dennis takes them to Yargo, and M. Marchand goes with him, but comes back
+before Dennis does.  It was then M'sieu' begun to talk to me; to say
+things that soothe a woman when she is hurt.  I knew now Dennis did not
+want me as when he first married me.  He was that kind of man--quick to
+care and quicker to forget.  He was weak, he could not fasten where he
+stood.  It pleased him to be gay and friendly with me when he was sober,
+but there was nothing behind it--nothing, nothing at all.  At last I
+began to cry when I thought of it, for it went on and on, and I was too
+much alone.  I looked at myself in the glass, and I saw I was not old or
+lean.  I sang in the trees beside the brook, and my voice was even a
+little better than in the days when Dennis first came to my father's
+house.  I looked to my cooking, and I knew that it was as good as ever.
+I thought of my clothes, and how I did my hair, and asked myself if I
+was as fresh to see as when Dennis first came to me.  I could see no
+difference.  There was a clear pool not far away under the little hills
+where the springs came together.  I used to bathe in it every morning and
+dry myself in the sun; and my body was like a child's.  That being so,
+should my own man turn his head away from me day or night?  What had I
+done to be used so, less than two years after I had married!"
+
+She paused and hung her head, weeping gently.  "Shame stings a woman like
+nothing else," Madame Bulteel said with a sigh.
+
+"It was so with me," continued Dennis's wife.  "Then at last the thought
+came that there was another woman.  And all the time M. Marchand kept
+coming and going, at first when Dennis was there, and always with some
+good reason for coming--horses, cattle, shooting, or furs bought of the
+Indians.  When Dennis was not there, he came at first for an hour or two,
+as if by chance, then for a whole day, because he said he knew I was
+lonely.  One day, I was sitting by the pool--it was in the evening.
+I was crying because of the thought that followed me of another woman
+somewhere, who made Dennis turn from me.  Then it was M'sieu' came and
+put a hand on my shoulder--he came so quietly that I did not hear him
+till he touched me.  He said he knew why I cried, and it saddened his
+soul."
+
+"His soul--the jackal!" growled the old man in his beard.
+
+The woman nodded wearily and went on.  "For all of ten days I had been
+alone, except for the cattlemen camping a mile away and an old Indian
+helper who slept in his tepee within call.  Loneliness makes you weak
+when there's something tearing at the heart.  So I let M'sieu' Marchand
+talk to me.  At last he told me that there was a woman at Yargo--that
+Dennis did not go there for business, but to her.  Everyone knew it
+except me, he said.  He told me to ask old Throw Hard, the Indian helper,
+if he had spoken the truth.  I was shamed, and angry and crazy, too, I
+think, so I went to old Throw Hard and asked him.  He said he could not
+tell the truth, and that he would not lie to me.  So I knew it was all
+true.
+
+"How do I know what was in my mind?  Is a woman not mad at such a time!
+There I was, tossed aside for a flyaway, who was for any man that would
+come her way.  Yes, I think I was mad.  The pride in me was hurt--as only
+a woman can understand."  She paused and looked at the two women who
+listened to her.  Fleda's eyes were on the world beyond the window
+of the room.
+
+"Surely we understand," whispered Madame Bulteel.
+
+The woman's courage returned, and she continued: "I could not go to my
+father, for he was riding the river scores of miles away.  I was terribly
+alone.  It was then that M'sieu' Marchand, who had bribed the woman to
+draw Dennis away, begged me to go away with him.  He swore I should marry
+him as soon as I could be free of Dennis.  I scarcely knew what I said or
+thought; but the place I had loved was hateful to me, so I went away with
+him."
+
+A sharp, pained exclamation broke from the lips of Madame Bulteel, but
+presently she reached out and laid a hand upon the woman's arm.  "Of
+course you went with him," she said.  "You could not stay where you were
+and face the return of Dennis.  There was no child to keep you, and the
+man that tempted you said he adored you?"
+
+The woman looked gratefully at her.  "That was what he said," she
+answered.  "He said he was tired of wandering, and that he wanted a home-
+and there was a big house in Montreal."
+
+She stopped suddenly upon an angry, smothered word from Fleda's lips.  A
+big house in Montreal!  Fleda's first impulse was to break in upon the
+woman's story and tell her father what had happened just now outside
+their own house; but she waited.
+
+"Yes, there was a big house in Montreal?" said Fleda, her eyes now
+resting sadly upon the woman.
+
+"He said it should be mine.  But that did not count.  To be far away from
+all that had been was more than all else.  I was not thinking of the man,
+or caring for him, I was flying from my shame.  I did not see then the
+shame to which I was going.  I was a fool, and I was mad and bad also.
+When I waked--and it was soon--there was quick understanding between us.
+The big house in Montreal--that was never meant for me.  He was already
+married."
+
+The old man stretched heavily to his feet, leaned both hands on the
+table, and looked at the woman with glowering eyes, while Fleda's heart
+seemed to stop beating.
+
+"Married!" growled Gabriel Druse, with a blur of passion in his voice.
+He knew that Felix Marchand had followed his daughter as though he were a
+single man.
+
+Fleda saw what was working in his mind.  Since her father suspected, he
+should know all.
+
+"He almost offered me the big house in Montreal this morning," she said
+evenly and coldly.
+
+A malediction broke from the old man's lips.
+
+"He almost thought he wanted me to marry him," Fleda added scornfully.
+
+"And what did you say?" Druse asked.
+
+"There could only be one thing to say.  I told him I had never thought of
+making my home in a sewer."  A grim smile broke over the old man's face,
+and he sat down again.
+
+"Because I saw him with you I wanted to warn you," the woman continued.
+"Yesterday, I came to warn him of his danger, and he laughed at me.  From
+Madame Thibadeau I heard he had said he would make you sing his song.
+When I came to tell you, there he was with you.  But when he left you I
+was sure there was no need to speak.  Still I felt I must tell you--
+perhaps because you are rich and strong, and will stop him from doing
+more harm."
+
+"How do you know we are rich?" asked Druse in a rough tone.
+
+"It is what the world says," was the reply.  "Is there harm in that?  In
+any case it was right to tell you all; so that one who had herded with a
+woman like me should not be friends with you."
+
+"I have seen worse women than you," murmured the old man.
+
+"What danger did you come to warn M. Marchand about?" asked Fleda.
+
+"To his life," answered the woman.
+
+"Do you want to save his life?" asked the old man.
+
+"Ah, is it not always so?" intervened Madame Bulteel in a low, sad
+voice.  "To be wronged like that does not make a woman just."
+
+"I am just," answered the woman.  "He deserves to die, but I want to save
+the man that will kill him when they meet."
+
+"Who will kill him?" asked Fleda.  "Dennis--he will kill Marchand if he
+can."
+
+The old man leaned forward with puzzled, gloomy interest.  "Why?  Dennis
+left you for another.  You say he had grown cold.  Was that not what he
+wanted--that you should leave him?"
+
+The woman looked at him with tearful eyes.  "If I had known Dennis
+better, I should have waited.  What he did is of the moment only.  A man
+may fall and rise again, but it is not so with a woman.  She thinks and
+thinks upon the scar that shows where she wounded herself; and she never
+forgets, and so her life becomes nothing--nothing."
+
+No one saw that Madame Bulteel held herself rigidly, and was so white
+that even the sunlight was gold beside her look.  Yet the strangest,
+saddest smile played about her lips; and presently, as the eyes of the
+others fastened on the woman and did not leave her, she regained her
+usual composure.
+
+The woman kept looking at Gabriel Druse.  "When Dennis found that I had
+gone, and knew why--for I left word on a sheet of paper--he went mad like
+me.  Trailing to the south, to find M'sieu' Marchand, he had an accident,
+and was laid up in a shack for weeks on the Tanguishene River, and they
+could not move him.  But at last a ranchman wrote to me, and the letter
+found me on the very day I left M'sieu'.  When I got that letter begging
+me to go to the Tanguishene River, to nurse Dennis who loved me still, my
+heart sank.  I said to myself I could not go; and Dennis and I must be
+apart always to the end of time.  But then I thought again.  He was ill,
+and his body was as broken as his mind.  Well, since I could do his mind
+no good, I would try to help his body.  I could do that much for him.  So
+I went.  But the letter to me had been long on the way, and when I got to
+the Tanguishene River he was almost well."
+
+She paused and rocked her body to and fro for a moment as though in pain.
+
+"He wanted me to go back to him then.  He said he had never cared for the
+woman at Yargo, and that what he felt for me now was different from what
+it had ever been.  When he had settled accounts we could go back to the
+ranch and be at peace.  I knew what he meant by settling accounts, and it
+frightened me.  That is why I am here.  I came to warn the man, Marchand,
+for if Dennis kills him, then they will hang Dennis.  Do you not see?
+This is a country of law.  I saw that Dennis had the madness in his
+brain, and so I left him again in the evening of the day I found him, and
+came here--it is a long way.  Yesterday, M'sieu' Marchand laughed at me
+when I warned him.  He said he could take care of himself.  But such men
+as Dennis stop at nothing; there will be killing, if M'sieu' stays here."
+
+"You will go back to Dennis?" asked Fleda gently.  "Some other woman
+will make him happy when he forgets me," was the cheerless, grey reply.
+
+The old man got up and, coming over, laid a hand upon her shoulder.
+
+"Where did you think of going from here?" he asked.
+
+"Anywhere--I don't know," was the reply.
+
+"Is there no work here for her?" he asked, turning to Madame Bulteel.
+
+"Yes, plenty," was the reply.  "And room also?" he asked again.
+
+"Was ever a tent too full, when the lost traveller stumbled into camp in
+the old days?" rejoined Fleda.  The woman trembled to her feet, a glad
+look in her eyes.  "I ought to go, but I am tired and I will gladly
+stay," she said and swayed against the table.
+
+Madame Bulteel and Fleda put their arms round her, steadying her.
+
+"This is not the way to act," said Fleda with a touch of sharp reproof.
+Had she not her own trouble to face?
+
+The stricken woman drew herself up and looked Fleda in the eyes.  "I will
+find the right way, if I can," she said with courage.
+
+A half-hour later, as the old man sat alone in the room where he had
+breakfasted, a rifle-shot rang out in the distance.
+
+"The trouble begins," he said, as he rose and hastened into the hallway.
+
+Another shot rang out.  He caught up his wide felt hat, reached for a
+great walking-stick in the corner, and left the house hurriedly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE MAYOR FILLS AN OFFICE
+
+It was a false alarm which had startled Gabriel Druse, but it had
+significance.  The Orange funeral was not to take place until eleven
+o'clock, and it was only eight o'clock when the Ry left his home.  A
+rifle-shot had, however, been fired across the Sagalac from the Manitou
+side, and it had been promptly acknowledged from Lebanon.  There was a
+short pause, and then came another from the Lebanon side.  It was merely
+a warning and a challenge.  The only man who could have controlled the
+position was blind and helpless.
+
+As Druse walked rapidly towards the bridge, he met Jowett.  Jowett was
+one of the few men in either town for whom the Ry had regard, and the
+friendliness had had its origin in Jowett's knowledge of horseflesh.
+This was a field in which the Ry was himself a master.  He had ever been
+too high-placed among his own people to trade and barter horses except
+when, sending a score of Romanys on a hunt for wild ponies on the hills
+of Eastern Europe, he had afterwards sold the tamed herd to the highest
+bidders in some Balkan town; but he had an infallible eye for a horse.
+
+It was a curious anomaly also that the one man in Lebanon who would not
+have been expected to love and pursue horse-flesh was the Reverend Reuben
+Tripple to whom Ingolby had given his conge, but who loved a horse as he
+loved himself.
+
+He was indeed a greater expert in horses than in souls.  One of the
+sights of Lebanon had been the appearance in the field of the "Reverend
+Tripple," who owned a great, raw-boned bay mare of lank proportions, the
+winner of a certain great trotting-race which had delighted the mockers.
+
+For two years Jowett had eyed Mr. Tripple's rawbone with a piratical eye.
+
+Though it had won only a single great race, that, in Jowett's view, was
+its master's fault.  As the Arabs say, however, Allah is with the
+patient; and so it was that on the evening of the day in which Ingolby
+met disaster, Mr. Tripple informed Jowett that he was willing to sell his
+rawbone.
+
+He was mounted on the gawky roadster when he met Gabriel Druse making for
+the bridge.  Their greeting was as cordial as hasty.  Anxious as was the
+Ry to learn what was going on in the towns, Jowett's mount caught his
+eye.  It was but a little time since they had met at Ingolby's house, and
+they were both full of the grave events afoot, but here was a horse-deal
+of consequence, and the bridle-rein was looseflung.
+
+"Yes, I got it," said Jowett, with a chuckle, interpreting the old man's
+look.  "I got it for good--a wonder from Wonderville.  Damned queer-
+looking critter, but there, I guess we know what I've got.  Outside like
+a crinoline, inside like a pair of ankles of the Lady Jane Plantagenet.
+Yes, I got it, Mr. Druse, got it dead-on!"
+
+"How?" asked the Ry, feeling the clean fetlocks with affectionate
+approval.
+
+"He's off East, so he says," was the joyous reply; "sudden but sure, and
+I dunno why.  Anyway, he's got the door-handle offered, and he's off
+without his camel."  He stroked the neck of the bay lovingly.  "How
+much?"
+
+Jowett held up his fingers.  The old man lifted his eyebrows quizzically.
+"That-h'm!  Does he preach as well as that?" he asked.
+
+Jowett chuckled.  "He knows the horse-country better than the New
+Jerusalem, I guess; and I wasn't off my feed, nor hadn't lost my head
+neither.  I wanted that dust-hawk, and he knew it; but I got in on him
+with the harness and the sulky.  The bridle he got from a Mexican that
+come up here a year ago, and went broke and then went dead; and there
+being no padre, Tripple did the burying, and he took the bridle as his
+fee, I s'pose.  It had twenty dollars' worth of silver on it--look at
+these conchs."
+
+He trifled with the big beautiful buttons on the head-stall.  "The
+sulky's as good as new, and so's the harness almost; and there's the
+nose-bag and the blankets, and a saddle and a monkey-wrench and two
+bottles of horse-liniment, and odds and ends.  I only paid that"--and he
+held up his fingers again as though it was a sacred rite--"for the lot.
+Not bad, I want to say.  Isn't he good for all day, this one?"
+
+The old man nodded, then turned towards the bridge.  "The gun-shots--
+what?" he asked, setting forward at a walk which taxed the rawbone's
+stride.
+
+"An invite--come to the wedding; that's all.  Only it's a funeral this
+time, and, if something good doesn't happen, there'll be more than one
+funeral on the Sagalac to-morrow.  I've had my try, but I dunno how it'll
+come out.  He's not a man of much dictionary is the Monseenoor."
+
+"The Monseigneur Lourde?  What does he say?"
+
+"He says what we all say, that he is sorry.  'But why have the Orange
+funeral while things are as they are?' he says, and he asks for the red
+flag not to be shook in the face of the bull."
+
+"That is not the talk of a fool, as most priests are," growled the other.
+
+"Sure.  But it wants a real wind-warbler to make them see it in Lebanon.
+They've got the needle.  They'll pray to-day with the taste of blood in
+their mouths.  It's gone too far.  Only a miracle can keep things right.
+The Mayor has wired for the mounted police--our own battalion of militia
+wouldn't serve, and there'd be no use ordering them out--but the Riders
+can't get here in time.  The train's due the very time the funeral's to
+start, but that train's always late, though they say the ingine-driver is
+an Orangeman!  And the funeral will start at the time fixed, or I don't
+know the boys that belong to the lodge.  So it's up to We, Us & Co.  to
+see the thing through, or go bust.  It don't suit me.  It wouldn't have
+been like this, if it hadn't been for what happened to the Chief last
+night.  There's no holding the boys in.  One thing's sure, the Gipsy that
+give Ingolby away has got to lie low if he hasn't got away, or there'll
+be one less of his tribe to eat the juicy hedgehog.  Yes, sir-ee!"
+
+To the last words of Jowett the Ry seemed to pay no attention, though his
+lips shut tight and a menacing look came into his eyes.  They were now
+upon the bridge, and could see what was forward on both sides of the
+Sagalac.  There was unusual bustle and activity in the streets and on the
+river-bank of both towns.  It was noticeable also that though the mills
+were running in Manitou, there were fewer chimneys smoking, and far more
+men in the streets than usual.  Tied up to the Manitou shore were a half-
+dozen cribs or rafts of timber which should be floating eastward down the
+Sagalac.
+
+"If the Monseenoor can't, or don't, step in, we're bound for a shindy
+over a corpse," continued Jowett after a moment.
+
+"Can the Monseigneur cast a spell over them all?" remarked the Ry
+ironically, for he had little faith in priests, though he had for this
+particular one great respect.
+
+"He's a big man, that preelate," answered Jowett quickly and forcibly.
+"He kept the Crees quiet when they was going to rise.  If they'd got up,
+there'd have been hundreds of settlers massacreed.  He risked his life to
+do that--went right into the camp in face of levelled rifles, and sat
+down and begun to talk.  A minute afterwards all the chiefs was
+squatting, too.  Then the tussle begun between a man with a soul and a
+heathen gang that eat dog, kill their old folks, their cripples and their
+deformed children, and run sticks of wood through their bleeding chests,
+just to show that they're heathens.  But he won out, this Jesueete friend
+o' man.  That's why I'm putting my horses and my land and my pants and my
+shirt and the buff that's underneath on the little preelate."
+
+Gabriel Druse's face did not indicate the same confidence.  "It is not an
+age of miracles; the priest is not enough," he said sceptically.
+
+By twos, by threes, by tens, men from Manitou came sauntering across the
+bridge into Lebanon, until a goodly number were scattered at different
+points through the town.  They seemed to distribute themselves by a
+preconceived plan, and they were all habitants.  There were no Russians,
+Finns, Swedes, Norwegians, or Germans among them.  They were low-browed,
+sturdy men, dressed in red or blue serge shirts, some with sashes around
+their waists, some with ear-rings in their ears, some in knee-boots, and
+some with the heavy spiked boots of the river-driver.  None appeared to
+carry any weapon that would shoot, yet in their belts was the sheath-
+knife, the invariable equipment of their class.  It would have seemed
+more suspicious if they had not carried them.  The railwaymen, miners,
+carters, mill-hands, however, appeared to carry nothing save their strong
+arms and hairy hands, and some were as hairy as animals.  These
+backwoodsmen also could, without weapons, turn a town into a general
+hospital.  In battle they fought not only with hands but also with teeth
+and hoofs like wild stallions.  Teeth tore off an ear or sliced away a
+nose, hands smote like hammers or gouged out eyes, and their nailed boots
+were weapons of as savage a kind as could be invented.  They could spring
+and strike an opponent with one foot in the chest or in the face, and
+spoil the face for many a day, or for ever.  It was a gift of the
+backwoods and the lumber-camps, practised in hours of stark monotony when
+the devils which haunt places of isolation devoid of family life, where
+men herd together like dogs in a kennel, break loose.  There the man that
+dips his fingers "friendly-like" in the dish of his neighbour one minute
+wants the eye of that neighbour the next not so much in innate or
+momentary hatred, as in innate savagery and the primeval sense of combat,
+the war which was in the blood of the first man.
+
+The unarmed appearance of these men did not deceive the pioneer folk
+of Lebanon.  To them the time had come when the reactionary forces of
+Manitou must receive a check.  Even those who thought the funeral
+fanatical and provocative were ready to defend it.
+
+The person who liked the whole business least was Rockwell.  He was
+subject to the same weariness of the flesh and fatigue of the spirit as
+all men; yet it was expected of him that at any hour he should be at the
+disposal of suffering humanity--of criminal or idiotic humanity--patient,
+devoted, calm, nervestrung, complete.  He was the one person in the
+community who was the universal necessity, and yet for whom the community
+had no mercy in its troubles or out of them.  There were three doctors in
+Lebanon, but none was an institution, none had prestige save Rockwell,
+and he often wished that he had less prestige, since he cared nothing for
+popularity.
+
+He had made his preparations for possible "accidents" in no happy mood.
+Fresh from the bedside of Ingolby, having had no sleep, and with many
+sick people on his list, he inwardly damned the foolishness of both
+towns.  He even sharply rebuked the Mayor, who urged surgical
+preparations upon him, for not sending sooner to the Government for a
+force which could preserve order or prevent the procession.
+
+It was while he was doing so that Jowett appeared with Gabriel Druse to
+interview the Mayor.
+
+"It's like this," said Jowett.  "In another hour the funeral will start.
+There's a lot of Manitou huskies in Lebanon now, and their feet is
+loaded, if their guns ain't.  They're comin' by driblets, and by-and-bye,
+when they've all distributed themselves, there'll be a marching column of
+them from Manitou.  It's all arranged to make trouble and break the law.
+It's the first real organized set-to we've had between the towns, and
+it'll be nasty.  If the preelate doesn't dope them, there'll be pertikler
+hell to pay."
+
+He then gave the story of his visit to Monseigneur Lourde, and the
+details of what was going forward in Manitou so far as he had learned.
+Also the ubiquitous Osterhaut had not been idle, and his bulletin had
+just been handed to Jowett.
+
+"There's one thing ought to be done and has got to be done," Jowett
+added, "if the Monseenoor don't pull if off.  The leaders have to be
+arrested, and it had better be done by one that, in a way, don't belong
+to either Lebanon or Manitou."
+
+The Mayor shook his head.  "I don't see how I can authorize Marchand's
+arrest--not till he breaks the law, in any case."
+
+"It's against the law to conspire to break the law," replied Jowett.
+"You've been making a lot of special constables.  Make Mr. Gabriel Druse
+here a special constable, then if the law's broke, he can have a right to
+take a hand in."
+
+The giant Ry had stood apart, watchful and ruminant, but he now stepped
+forward, as the Mayor turned to him and stretched out a hand.
+
+"I am for peace," the old man said.  "To keep the peace the law must be
+strong."
+
+In spite of the gravity of the situation the Mayor smiled.  "You wouldn't
+need much disguise to stand for the law, Mr. Druse," he remarked.  "When
+the law is seven feet high, it stands well up."
+
+The Ry did not smile.  "Make me the head of the constables, and I will
+keep the peace," he said.  There was a sudden silence.  The proposal had
+come so quietly, and it was so startling, that even the calm Rockwell was
+taken aback.  But his eye and the eye of the Mayor met, and the look in
+both their faces was the same.
+
+"That's bold play," the Mayor said, "but I guess it goes.  Yesterday it
+couldn't be done.  To-day it can.  The Chief Constable's down with
+smallpox.  Got it from an Injun prisoner days ago.  He's been bad for
+three days, but hung on.  Now he's down, and there's no Chief.  I was
+going to act myself, but the trouble was, if anything happened to me,
+there'd be no head of anything.  It's better to have two strings to your
+bow.  It's a go-it's a straight go, Mr. Druse.  Seven foot of Chief
+Constable ought to have its weight with the roughnecks."
+
+A look of hopefulness came into his face.  This sage, huge, commanding
+figure would have a good moral effect on the rude elements of disorder.
+
+"I'll have you read the Riot Act instead of doing it myself," added the
+Mayor.  "It'll be a good introduction for you, and as you live in
+Manitou, it'll be a knock-out blow to the toughs.  Sometimes one man is
+as good as a hundred.  Come on to the Courthouse with me," he continued
+cheerfully.  "We'll fix the whole thing.  All the special constables are
+waiting there with the regular police.  An extra foot on a captain's
+shoulders is as good as a battery of guns."
+
+"You're sure it's according to Hoyle?" asked Jowett quizzically.
+
+He was so delighted that he felt he must "make the Mayor show off self,"
+as he put it afterwards.  He did not miscalculate; the Mayor rose to his
+challenge.
+
+"I'm boss of this show," he said, "and I can go it alone if necessary
+when the town's in danger and the law's being hustled.  I've had a
+meeting of the Council and I've got the sailing-orders I want.  I'm boss
+of the place, and Mr. Druse is my--" he stopped, because there was a look
+in the eyes of the Ry which demanded consideration--"And Mr. Druse is
+lawboss," he added.
+
+The old ineradicable look of command shone in the eyes of Gabriel Druse.
+Leadership was written all over him.  Power spoke in every motion.  The
+square, unbowed shoulders, the heavily lined face, with the patriarchal
+beard, the gnarled hands, the rough-hewn limbs, the eye of bright,
+brooding force proclaimed authority.
+
+Indeed in that moment there came into the face of the old Nomad the look
+it had not worn for many a day.  The self-exiled ruler had paid a heavy
+price for his daughter's vow, though he had never acknowledged it to
+himself.  His self-ordained impotency, in a camp that was never moved,
+within walls which never rose with the sunset and fell with the morning;
+where his feet trod the same roadway day after day; where no man asked
+for justice or sought his counsel or fell back on his protection; where
+he drank from the same spring and tethered his horse in the same paddock
+from morn to morn: all these things had eaten at his heart and bowed his
+spirit in spite of himself.
+
+He was not now of the Romany world, and he was not of the Gorgio world;
+but here at last was the old thing come back to him in a new way, and his
+bones rejoiced.  He would entitle his daughter to her place among the
+Gorgios.  Perhaps also it would be given him, in the name of the law, to
+deal with a man he hated.
+
+"We've got Mister Marchand now," said Jowett softly to the old chieftain.
+
+The Ry's eyes lighted and his jaw set.  He did not speak, but his hands
+clenched, opened and clenched again.  Jowett saw and grinned.
+
+"The Mayor and the law-boss'll win out, I guess," he said to himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE MONSEIGNEUR AND THE NOMAD
+
+Even more than Dr. Rockwell, Berry, the barber, was the most troubled man
+in Lebanon on the day of the Orange funeral.  Berry was a good example of
+an unreasoning infatuation.  The accident which had come to his idol,
+with the certain fall of his fortunes, hit him so hard, that, for the
+first time since he became a barber, his razor nipped the flesh of more
+than one who sat in his red-upholstered chair.
+
+In his position, Berry was likely to hear whatever gossip was going.  Who
+shall have perfect self-control with a giant bib under the chin, tipped
+back on a chair that cannot be regulated, with a face covered by lather,
+and two plantation fingers holding the nose?  In these circumstances,
+with much diplomacy, Berry corkscrewed his way into confidence, and when
+he dipped a white cloth in bay-rum and eau-de-cologne, and laid it over
+the face of the victim, with the finality of a satisfied inquisitor, it
+was like giving the last smother to human individuality.  An artist after
+his kind, he no sooner got what he wanted than he carefully coaxed his
+victim away from thoughts of the disclosures into the vague distance of
+casual gossip once more.
+
+Gradually and slowly he shepherded his patient back to the realms of
+self-respect and individual personality.  The border-line was at the
+point where the fingers of his customer fluttered at a collar-button; for
+Berry, who realized the power that lies in making a man look ridiculous,
+never allowed a customer to be shaved or have his hair cut with a collar
+on.  When his customers had corns, off came the boots also, and then
+Berry's triumph over the white man was complete.  To call attention to an
+exaggerated bunion when the odorous towel lay upon the hidden features of
+what once was a "human," was the last act in the drama of the Unmaking of
+Man.
+
+Only when the client had felt in his pocket for the price of the flaying,
+and laid it, with a ten-cent fee, on the ledge beneath the mirror, where
+all the implements of the inquisition and the restoration were assembled,
+did he feel manhood restored.  If, however, he tried to keep a vow of
+silence in the chair of execution, he paid a heavy price; for Berry had
+his own methods of punishment.  A little tighter grasp of the nose; a
+little rougher scrape of the razor, and some sharp, stinging liquid
+suddenly slapped with a cold palm on the excoriated spot, with the
+devilish hypocrisy of healing it; a longer smothering-period under the
+towel, when the corners of it were tucked behind the ears and a crease of
+it in the mouth-all these soon induced vocal expression again, and Berry
+started on his inquisition with gentle certainty.  When at last he dusted
+the face with a little fine flour of oatmeal, "to heal the cuticle and
+'manoor' the roots," and smelled with content the hands which had
+embalmed the hair in verbena-scented oil, a man left his presence
+feeling that he was ready for the wrath to come.
+
+Such was Berry when he had under his razor one of Ingolby's business foes
+of Manitou, who had of late been in touch with Felix Marchand.  Both were
+working for the same end, but with different intentions.  Marchand worked
+with that inherent devilishness which sometimes takes possession of low
+minds; but the other worked as he would have done against his own
+brother, for his own business success; and it was his view that one man
+could only succeed by taking the place of another, as though the Age of
+Expansion had ceased and the Age of Smother had begun.
+
+From this client while in a state of abject subjection, Berry, whose
+heart was hard that day, but whose diplomacy was impeccable, discovered
+a thing of moment.  There was to be a procession of strikers from two
+factories in Manitou, who would throw down their tools or leave their
+machines at a certain moment.  Falling into line these strikers would
+march across the bridge between the towns at such time as would bring
+them into touch with the line of the Orange funeral--two processions
+meeting at right angles.  If neither procession gave way, the Orange
+funeral could be broken up, ostensibly not from religious fanaticism,
+but from the "unhappy accident" of two straight lines colliding.  It was
+a juicy plot; and in a few minutes the Mayor and Gabriel Druse knew of
+it from the faithful Berry.
+
+The bell of the meeting-house began to toll as the Orangeman whose death
+had caused such commotion was carried to the waiting carriage where he
+would ride alone.  Almost simultaneously with the starting of the gaudy
+yet sombre Orange cortege, with its yellow scarfs, glaring banners,
+charcoal plumes and black clothes, the labour procession approached the
+Manitou end of the Sagalac bridge.  The strikers carried only three or
+four banners, but they had a band of seven pieces, with a drum and a pair
+of cymbals.  With frequent discord, but with much spirit, the Bleaters,
+as these musicians were called in Lebanon, inspired the steps of the
+Manitou fanatics and toughs.  As they came upon the bridge they were
+playing a gross paraphrase of The Marseillaise.
+
+At the head of the Orange procession was a silver-cornet band which the
+enterprise of Lebanon had made possible.  Its leader was a ne'er-do-well
+young Welshman, who had been dismissed from leadership after leadership
+of bands in the East till at last he had drifted into Lebanon.  Here,
+strange to say, he had never been drunk but once; and that was the night
+before he married the widow of a local publican, who had a nice little
+block of stock in one of Ingolby's railways, which yielded her seven per
+cent., and who knew how to handle the citizens of the City of Booze.
+When she married Tom Straker, her first husband, he drank on an average
+twenty whiskies a day.  She got him down to one; and then he died and had
+as fine a funeral as a judge.  There were those who said that if Tom's
+whiskies hadn't been cut down so--but there it was: Tom was in the bosom
+of Abraham, and William Jones, who was never called anything else than
+Willy Welsh, had been cut down from his unrecorded bibulations to none at
+all; but he smoked twenty-cent cigars at the ex-widow's expense.
+
+To-day Willy Welsh played with heart and courage, "I'm Going Home to
+Glory," at the head of the Orange procession; for who that has faced such
+a widow as was his for one whole year could fear the onset of faction
+fighters!  Besides, as the natives of the South Seas will never eat a
+Chinaman, so a Western man will never kill a musician.  Senators,
+magistrates, sheriffs, police, gamblers, horse-stealers, bankers, and
+broncho-riders all die unnatural deaths at times, but a musician in the
+West is immune from all except the hand of Fate.  Not one can be spared.
+Even a tough convicted of cheating at cards, or breaking a boom on a
+river, has escaped punishment because he played the concertina.
+
+The discord and jangle between the two bands was the first collision of
+this fateful day.  While yet there was a space between the two
+processions, the bands broke into furious contest.  It was then that,
+through the long funeral line, men with hard-set faces came closer up
+together, and forty, detaching themselves from the well-kept run of
+marching lodgemen, closed up around the horses and the hearse, making a
+solid flanking force.  At stated intervals also, outside the lodgemen in
+the lines, were special constables, many of whom had been the stage-
+drivers, hunters, cattlemen, prospectors, and pioneers of the early days.
+Most of them had come of good religious stock-Presbyterians, Baptists,
+Methodists, Unitarians; and though they had little piety, and had never
+been able to regain the religious customs and habits of their childhood,
+they "Stood for the Thing the Old Folks stand for."  They were in a mood
+which would tear cotton, as the saying was.  There was not one of them
+but expected that broken heads and bloodshed would be the order of the
+day, and they were stonily, fearlessly prepared for the worst.
+
+Since the appearance of Gabriel Druse on the scene, the feeling had grown
+that the luck would be with them.  When he started at the head of the
+cortege, they could scarce forbear to cheer.  Such a champion in
+appearance had never been seen in the West, and, the night before,
+he had proved his right to the title by shaking a knot of toughs into
+spots of disconcerted humanity.
+
+As they approached the crossroads of the bridge, his voice, clear and
+sonorous, could be heard commanding the Orange band to cease playing.
+
+When the head of the funeral procession was opposite the bridge--the
+band, the hearse, the bodyguard of the hearse--Gabriel Druse stood aside,
+and took his place at the point where the lines of the two processions
+would intersect.
+
+It was at this moment that the collision came.  There were only about
+sixty feet of space between the two processions, when a voice rang out in
+a challenge so offensive, that the men of Manitou got their cue for
+attack without creating it themselves.  Every Orangeman of the Lodge of
+Lebanon afterwards denied that he had raised the cry; and the chances are
+that every one spoke the truth.  It was like Felix Marchand to arrange
+for just such an episode, and so throw the burden of responsibility on
+the Orangemen.
+
+"To hell with the Pope!  To hell with the Pope!" the voice rang out, and
+it had hardly ceased before the Manitou procession made a rush forward.
+The apparent leader of the Manitou roughs was a blackbearded man of
+middle height, who spoke raucously to the crowd behind him.
+
+Suddenly a powerful voice rang out.
+
+"Halt, in the name of the Queen!" it called.  Surprise is the very
+essence of successful war.  The roughs of Manitou had not looked for
+this.  They had foreseen the appearance of the official Chief Constable
+of Lebanon; they had expected his challenge and warning in the
+vernacular; but here was something which struck them with consternation
+--first, the giant of Manitou in the post of command, looking like some
+berserker; and then the formal reading of that stately document in the
+name of the Queen.
+
+Far back in the minds of every French habitant present was the old
+monarchical sense.  He makes, at worst, a poor anarchist, though he is a
+good revolutionist; and the French colonials had never been divorced from
+monarchical France.
+
+In the eyes of the most forward of those on the Sagalac bridge, there
+was a sudden wonderment and confusion.  To the dramatic French mind,
+ceremonial is ever welcome; and for a moment it had them in its grip,
+as old Gabriel Druse read out in his ringing voice, the trenchant royal
+summons.
+
+It was a strange and dramatic scene--the Orange funeral standing still,
+garish yet solemn, with hundreds of men, rough and coarse, quiet and
+refined, dissolute and careless, sober and puritanic, broad and tolerant,
+sharp and fanatical; the labour procession, polyglot in appearance, but
+with Gallic features and looseness of dress predominating; excitable,
+brutish, generous, cruel; without intellect, but with an intelligence
+which in the lowest was acute, and with temperaments responsive to drama.
+
+As Druse read, his eyes now and then flashed, at first he knew not why,
+to the slim, bearded figure of the apparent leader.  At length he caught
+the feverish eye of the man, and held it for a moment.  It was familiar,
+but it eluded him; he could not place it.
+
+He heard, however, Jowett's voice say to him, scarce above a whisper:
+
+"It's Felix Marchand, boss!"
+
+Jowett also had been puzzled at first by the bearded figure, but it
+suddenly flashed upon him that the beard and wig were a disguise, that
+Marchand had resorted to Ingolby's device.  It might prove as dangerous
+a stratagem with him as it had to Ingolby.
+
+There was a moment's hesitation after Druse had finished reading--as
+though the men of Manitou had not quite recovered from their surprise--
+then the man with the black beard said something to those nearest him.
+There was a start forward, and someone cried, "Down with the Orangemen
+--et bas l'Orange!"
+
+Like a well-disciplined battalion the Orangemen rolled up quickly into a
+compact mass, showing that they had planned their defence well, and the
+moment was black with danger, when, suddenly, Druse strode forward.
+Flinging right and left two or three river-drivers, he caught the man
+with the black beard, snatched him out from among the oncoming crowd,
+and tore off the black beard and wig.  Felix Marchand stood exposed.
+
+A cry of fury rang out from the Orangemen behind, and a dozen men rushed
+forward, but Gabriel Druse acted with the instant decision of a real
+commander.  Seeing that it would be a mistake to arrest Marchand at that
+moment, he raised the struggling figure of the wrecker above his head
+and, with Herculean effort, threw him up over the heads of the Frenchmen
+in front of him.
+
+So extraordinary was the sight that, as if fascinated, the crowd before
+and behind followed the action with staring eyes and tense bodies.  The
+faces of all the contending forces were as concentrated for the instant,
+as though the sun were falling out of the sky.  It was so great a feat,
+one so much in consonance with the spirit of the frontier world, that
+gasps of praise broke from both crowds.  As though it were a thunderbolt,
+the Manitou roughs standing where Marchand was like to fall, instead of
+trying to catch him, broke away from beneath the bundle of falling
+humanity, and Marchand fell on the dusty cement of the bridge with a dull
+thud, like a bag of bones.
+
+For a moment there was no motion on the part of either procession.
+Banners drooped and swayed as the men holding them were lost in the
+excitement.
+
+Time had only been gained, however.  There was no reason to think that
+the trouble was over, or that the special constables who had gathered
+close behind Gabriel Druse would not have to strike heavy blows for the
+cause of peace.
+
+The sudden appearance of a new figure in the narrow, open space between
+the factions in that momentary paralysis was not a coincidence.  It was
+what Jowett had planned for, the factor for peace in which he most
+believed.
+
+A small, spare man in a scarlet cassock, white chasuble, and black
+biretta, suddenly stole out from the crowd on the Lebanon side of the
+bridge, carrying the elements of the Mass.  His face was shining white,
+and in the eyes was an almost unearthly fire.  It was the beloved
+Monseigneur Lourde.
+
+Raising the elements before him toward his own people on the bridge, he
+cried in a high, searching voice:
+
+"I prayed with you, I begged you to preserve the peace.  Last night I
+asked you in God's name to give up your disorderly purposes.  I thought
+then I had done my whole duty; but the voice of God has spoken to me.
+An hour ago I carried the elements to a dying woman here in Lebanon, and
+gave her peace.  As I did so the funeral bell rang out, and it came to
+me, as though the One above had spoken, that peace would be slain and His
+name insulted by all of you--by all of you, Catholic and Protestant.
+God's voice bade me come to you from the bed of one who has gone hence
+from peace to Peace.  In the name of Christ, peace, I say!  Peace, in the
+name of Christ!"
+
+He raised the sacred vessel high above his head, so that his eyes looked
+through the walls of his uplifted arms.  "Kneel!" he called in a clear,
+ringing voice which yet quavered with age.
+
+There was an instant's hush, and then great numbers of the crowd in front
+of him, toughs and wreckers, blasphemers, turbulent ones and evil-livers,
+yet Catholics all, with the ancient root of the Great Thing in them, sank
+down; and the banners of the labour societies drooped before the symbol
+of peace won by sacrifice.
+
+Even the Orangemen bared their heads in the presence of that Popery which
+was anathema to them, which they existed to combat, and had been taught
+to hate.  Some, no doubt, would rather have fought than have had peace at
+the price; but they could not free their minds from the sacred force
+which had brought most of the crowd of faction-fighters to their knees.
+
+With a wave of the hand, Gabriel Druse ordered the cortege forward, and
+silently the procession with its yellow banners and its sable, drooping
+plumes moved on.
+
+Once on its way again, Willy Welsh and his silver-cornet band struck up
+the hymn, "Lead, Kindly Light."  It was the one real coincidence of the
+day that this moving hymn was written by a cardinal of the Catholic
+Church.  It was also an irony that, as the crowd of sullen Frenchmen
+turned back to Manitou, the train bearing the Mounted Police, for whom
+the Mayor had sent to the capital, steamed noisily in, and redcoats
+showed at its windows and on the steps of the cars.
+
+The only casualty that the day saw was the broken arm and badly bruised
+body of Felix Marchand, who was gloomily helped back to his home across
+the Sagalac.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE BEACONS
+
+There were few lights showing in Lebanon or Manitou; but here and
+there along the Sagalac was the fading glimmer of a camp-fire, and in
+Tekewani's reservation one light glowed softly like a star.  It came
+from a finely-made and chased safety-lantern given to Tekewani by the
+Government, as a symbol of honour for having kept the braves quiet when
+an Indian and half-breed rising was threatened; and to the powerless
+chief it had become a token of his authority, the sign of the Great White
+Mother's approval.  By day a spray of eagle's feathers waved over his
+tepee, but the gleam of the brass lantern every night was like a sentry
+at the doorway of a monarch.
+
+It was a solace to his wounded spirit; it allayed the smart of
+subjection; made him feel himself a ruler in retirement, even as Gabriel
+Druse was a self-ordained exile.
+
+These two men, representing the primitive nomad life, had been drawn
+together in friendship.  So much so, that to Tekewani alone of all the
+West, Druse gave his confidence and told his story.  It came in the
+springtime, when the blood of the young bucks was simmering and, the
+ancient spell was working.  There had preceded them generations of
+hunters who had slain their thousands and their tens of thousands of wild
+animals and the fowls of the air; had killed their enemies in battle; had
+seized the comely women of their foes and made them their own.  No thrill
+of the hunter's trail now drew off the overflow of desire.  In the days
+of rising sap, there were only the young maidens or wives of their own
+tribe to pursue, and it lacked in glory.  Also in the springtime,
+Tekewani himself had his own trials, for in his blood the old medicine
+stirred.  His face turned towards the prairie North and the mountain West
+where yet remained the hunter's quarry; and he longed to be away with
+rifle and gun, with his squaw and the papooses trailing after like camp-
+followers, to eat the fruits of victory.  But that could not be; he must
+remain in the place the Great White Mother had reserved for him; he and
+his braves must assemble, and draw their rations at the appointed times
+and seasons, and grunt thanks to those who ruled over them.
+
+It was on one of these virginal days, when there was a restless stirring
+among the young bucks, who smelled the wide waters, the pines and the
+wild shrubs; who heard the cry of the loon on the lonely lake and the
+whir of the wild duck's wings, who answered to the phantom cry of ancient
+war; it was on such a day that the two chiefs opened their hearts to each
+other.
+
+Near to the boscage on a little hill overlooking the great river, Gabriel
+Druse had come upon Tekewani seated in the pine-dust, rocking to and fro,
+and chanting a low, sorrowful refrain, with eyes fixed on the setting
+sun.  And the Ry of Rys understood, with the understanding which only
+those have who live close to the earth, and also near to the heavens of
+their own gods.  He sat down beside the forlorn chief, and in the silence
+their souls spoke to each other.  There swept into the veins of the
+Romany ruler something of the immitigable sadness of the Indian chief;
+and, with a sudden premonition that he also was come to the sunset of his
+life, his big nomad eyes sought the westering rim of the heavens, and his
+breast heaved.
+
+In that hour the two men declared themselves to each other, and Gabriel
+Druse told Tekewani all that he had hidden from the people of the
+Sagalac, and was answered in kind.  It seemed to them that they were as
+brothers who were one and who had parted in ages long gone; and having
+met were to part and disappear once more, beginning still another trail
+in an endless reincarnation.
+
+"Brother," said Tekewani, "it was while there was a bridge of land
+between the continents at the North that we met.  Again I see it.  I
+forgot it, but again I see.  There was war, and you went upon one path
+and I upon another, and we met no more under all the moons till now."
+
+"'Dordi', so it was and at such a time," answered the Ry of Rys.  "And
+once more we will follow after the fire-flies which give no light to the
+safe places but only lead farther into the night."
+
+Tekewani rocked to and fro again, muttering to himself, but presently he
+said:
+
+"We eat from the hands of those who have driven away the buffalo, the
+deer, and the beaver; and the young bucks do naught to earn the joy of
+women.  They are but as lusting sheep, not as the wild-goat that chases
+its mate over the places of death, till it comes upon her at last, and
+calls in triumph over her as she kneels at his feet.  So it is.  Like
+tame beasts we eat from the hand of the white man, and the white man
+leaves his own camp where his own women are, and prowls in our camps,
+so that not even our own women are left to us."
+
+It was then that Gabriel Druse learned of the hatred of Tekewani for
+Felix Marchand, because of what he had done in the reservation, prowling
+at night like a fox or a coyote in the folds.
+
+They parted that hour, believing that the epoch of life in which they
+were and the fortunes of time which had been or were to come, were but
+turns of a wheel that still went on turning; and that whatever chanced
+of good or bad fortune in the one span of being, might be repaired in
+the next span, or the next, or the next; so, through their creed of
+reincarnation, taking courage to face the failure of the life they now
+lived.  Not by logic or the teaching of any school had they reached this
+revelation, but through an inner sense.  They were not hopeful and
+wondering and timid; they were only sure.  Their philosophy, their
+religion, whether heathen or human, was inborn.  They had comfort in it
+and in each other.
+
+After that day Gabriel Druse always set a light in his window which
+burned all night, answering to the lantern-light at the door of
+Tekewani's home--the lights of exile and of an alliance which had
+behind it the secret influences of past ages and vanished peoples.
+
+There came a night, however, when the light at the door of Tekewani's
+tepee did not burn.  At sunset it was lighted, but long before midnight
+it was extinguished.  Looking out from the doorway of his home (it was
+the night after the Orange funeral), Gabriel Druse, returned from his new
+duties at Lebanon, saw no light in the Indian reservation.  With anxiety,
+he set forth in the shine of the moon to visit it.
+
+Arrived at the chief's tepee, he saw that the lantern of honour was gone,
+and waking Tekewani, he brought him out to see.  When the old Indian knew
+his loss, he gave a harsh cry and stooped, and, gathering a handful of
+dust from the ground, sprinkled it on his head.  Then with arms
+outstretched he cursed the thief who had robbed him of what had been
+to him like a never-fading mirage, an illusion blinding his eyes to the
+bitter facts of his condition.
+
+To his mind all the troubles come to Lebanon and Manitou had had one
+source; and now the malign spirit had stretched its hand to spoil those
+already dispossessed of all but the right to live.  One name was upon the
+lips of both men, as they stood in the moonlight by Tekewani's tepee.
+
+"There shall be an end of this," growled the Romany.
+
+"I will have my own," said Tekewani, with malediction on the thief who
+had so shamed him.
+
+Black anger was in the heart of Gabriel Druse as he turned again towards
+his own home, and he was glad of what he had done to Felix Marchand at
+the Orange funeral.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THE KEEPER OF THE BRIDGE
+
+     "Like the darkness of the grave, which is darkness itself--"
+
+Most of those who break out of the zareba of life, who lay violent hands
+upon themselves, do so with a complete reasoning, which in itself is
+proof of their insanity.  It may be domestic tragedy, or ill-health,
+or crime, or broken faith, or shame, or insomnia, or betrayed trust--
+whatever it is, many a one who suffers from such things, tries to end it
+all with that deliberation, that strategy, and that cunning which belong
+only to the abnormal.
+
+A mind which has known a score or more of sleepless nights acquires an
+invincible clearness of its own, seeing an end which is without
+peradventure.  It finds a hundred perfect reasons for not going on, every
+one of which is in itself sufficient; every one of which knits into the
+other ninety and nine with inevitable affinity.
+
+To the mind of Ingolby came a hundred such reasons for breaking out of
+life's enclosure, as the effect of the opiate Rockwell had given him wore
+off, and he regained consciousness.  As he did so, someone in the room
+was telling of that intervention of Gabriel Druse and the Monseigneur at
+the Orange funeral, which had saved the situation.  At first he listened
+to what was said--it was the nurse talking to Jim Beadle with no sharp
+perception of the significance of the story; though it slowly pierced the
+lethargy of his senses, and he turned over in the bed to face the
+watchers.
+
+"What time is it, Jim?" he asked heavily.  They told him it was sunset.
+
+"Is it quiet in both towns?" he asked after a pause.  They told him that
+it was.
+
+"Any telegrams for me?" he asked.
+
+There was an instant's hesitation.  They had had no instructions on this
+point, and they hardly knew what to say; but Jim's mind had its own
+logic, and the truth seemed best to him now.  He answered that there were
+several wires, but that they "didn't amount to nothin'."
+
+"Have they been opened?" Ingolby asked with a frown, half-raising
+himself.  It was hard to resign the old masterfulness and self-will.
+
+"I'd like to see anybody open 'em 'thout my pe'mision," answered Jim
+imperiously.  "When you's asleep, Chief, I'm awake; and I take care of
+you' things, same as ever I done.  There ain't no wires been opened, and
+there ain't goin' to be whiles I'm runnin' the show for you."
+
+"Open and read them to me," commanded Ingolby.  Again Ingolby was
+conscious of hesitation on Jim's part.  Already the acuteness of the
+blind was possessing him, sharpening the senses left unimpaired.
+Although Jim moved, presumably, towards the place where the telegrams
+lay, Ingolby realized that his own authority was being crossed by that
+of the doctor and the nurse.
+
+"You will leave the room for a moment, nurse," he said with a brassy
+vibration in the voice--a sign of nervous strain.  With a smothered
+protest the nurse left, and Jim stood beside the bed with the telegrams.
+
+"Read them to me, Jim," Ingolby repeated irritably.  "Be quick."
+
+They were not wires which Ingolby should have heard at the time, when his
+wound was still inflamed, when he was still on the outer circle of that
+artificial sleep which the opiates had secured.  They were from Montreal
+and New York, and, resolved from their half-hidden suggestion into bare
+elements, they meant that henceforth others would do the work he had
+done.  They meant, in effect, that save for the few scores of thousand
+dollars he had made, he was now where he was when he came West.
+
+When Jim had finished reading them, Ingolby sank back on the pillows and
+said quietly:
+
+"All right, Jim.  Put them in the drawer of the table and I'll answer
+them to-morrow.  I want to get a little more sleep, so give me a drink,
+and then leave me alone--both nurse and you--till I ring the bell.
+There's a bell on the table, isn't there?"
+
+He stretched out a hand towards the table beside the bed, and Jim softly
+pushed the bell under his fingers.
+
+"That's right," he added.  "Now, I'm not to be disturbed unless the
+doctor comes.  I'm all right, and I want to be alone and quiet.  No one
+at all in the room is what I want.  You understand, Jim?"
+
+"My head's just as good to get at what you want as ever it was, and you
+goin' have what you want, I guess, while I'm on deck," was Jim's reply.
+
+Jim put a glass of water into his hand.  He drank very slowly, was indeed
+only mechanically conscious that he was drinking, for his mind was far
+away.
+
+After he had put the glass down, Jim still stood beside the bed, looking
+at him.
+
+"Why don't you go, as I tell you, Jim?" Ingolby asked wearily.
+
+"I'm goin'"--Jim tucked the bedclothes in carefully--"I'm goin', but,
+boss, I jes' want to say dat dis thing goin' to come out all right bime-
+by.  There ain't no doubt 'bout dat.  You goin' see everything, come jes'
+like what you want--suh!"
+
+Ingolby did not reply.  He held out his hand, and black fingers shot over
+and took it.  A moment later the blind man was alone in the room.
+
+The light of day vanished, and the stars came out.  There was no moon,
+but it was one of those nights of the West when millions of stars glimmer
+in the blue vault above, and every planet and every star and cluster of
+stars are so near that it might almost seem they could be caught by an
+expert human hand.  The air was very still, and a mantle of peace was
+spread over the tender scene.  The window and the glass doors that gave
+from Ingolby's room upon the veranda on the south side of the house, were
+open, and the air was warm as in Midsummer.  Now and then the note of a
+night-bird broke the stillness, but nothing more.
+
+It was such a night as Ingolby loved; it was such a night as often found
+him out in the restful gloom of the trees, thinking and brooding,
+planning, revelling in memories of books he had read, and in dreaming of
+books he might write-if there were time.  Such a night insulated the dark
+moods which possessed him occasionally almost as effectively as fishing
+did; and that was saying much.
+
+But the darkest mood of all his days was upon him now.  When Rockwell
+came, soon after Jim and the nurse left him, he simulated sleep, for he
+had no mind to talk; and the doctor, deceived by his even breathing, had
+left, contented.  At last he was wholly alone with his own thoughts, as
+he desired.  From the moment Jim had read him the wires, which were the
+real revelation of the situation to which he had come, he had been
+travelling hard on the road leading to a cul-de-sac, from which there
+was no egress save by breaking through the wall.  Never, it might have
+seemed, had his mind been clearer, but it was a clearness belonging to
+the abnormal.  It was a straight line of thought which, in its intensity,
+gathered all other thoughts into its wake, reduced them to the control of
+an obsession.  It was borne in on his mind that his day was done, that
+nothing could right the disorder which had strewn his path with broken
+hopes and shattered ambitions.  No life-work left, no schemes to
+accomplish, no construction to achieve, no wealth to gain, no public
+good to be won, no home to be his, no woman, his very own, to be his
+counsellor and guide in the natural way!
+
+As myriad thoughts drove through his brain on this Indian-summer night,
+they all merged into the one obsession that he could no longer stay.  The
+irresistible logic of the brain stretched to an abnormal tenuity, and an
+intolerable brightness was with him.  He was in the throes of that
+intense visualization which comes with insomnia, when one is awake yet
+apart from the waking world, where nothing is really real and nothing
+normal.  He had a call to go hence, and he must go.  Minute after minute
+passed, hours passed, and the fight of the soul to maintain itself
+against the disordered mind went on.  All his past seemed but part
+of a desert, lonely and barren and strange.
+
+In the previous year he had made a journey to Arizona with Jowett, to see
+some railway construction there, and at a ranch he had visited he came
+upon some verses which had haunted his mind ever since.  They fastened
+upon his senses now.  They were like a lonesome monotone which at length
+gave calm to his torturing reflections.  In his darkness the verses kept
+repeating themselves:
+
+         "I heard the desert calling, and my heart stood still
+          There was Winter in my world and in my heart:
+          A breath came from the mesa and a message stirred my will,
+          And my soul and I arose up to depart.
+
+          I heard the desert calling; and I knew that over there,
+          In an olive-sheltered garden where the mesquite grows,
+          Was a woman of the sunrise, with the starshine in her hair,
+          And a beauty that the almond-blossom blows.
+
+          In the night-time when the ghost-trees glimmered in the moon,
+          Where the mesa by the watercourse was spanned,
+          Her loveliness enwrapped me like the blessedness of June,
+          And all my life was thrilling in her hand.
+
+          I hear the desert calling, and my heart stands still;
+          There is Summer in my world and in my heart;
+          A breath comes from the mesa, and a will beyond my will
+          Binds my footsteps as I rise up to depart."
+
+This strange, half-mystic song of the mesa and the olive-groves, of the
+ghost-trees and the moon, kept playing upon his own heated senses like
+the spray from a cooling stream, and at last it quieted him.  The dark
+spirit of self-destruction loosened its hold.
+
+His brain had been strained beyond the normal, almost unconsciously his
+fingers had fastened on the pistol in the drawer of the table by his bed.
+It had been there since the day when he had travelled down from Alaska--
+loaded as it had been when he had carried it down the southern trail.
+But as his fingers tightened on the little engine of death, from the
+words which had been ringing in his brain came the flash of a revelation:
+
+              ".  .  .  And a will beyond my will
+               Binds my footsteps as I rise up to depart."
+
+A will beyond his will!  It was as though Fleda's fingers were laid upon
+his own; as though she whispered in his ear and her breath swept his
+cheek; as though she was there in the room beside him, making the
+darkness light, tempering the wind of chastisement to his naked soul.
+In the overstrain of his nervous system the illusion was powerful.  He
+thought he heard her voice.  The pistol slipped from his fingers, and he
+fell back on the pillow with a sigh.  The will beyond his will bound his
+footsteps.
+
+Who can tell?  The grim, malign experience of Fleda in her bedroom with
+the Thing she thought was from beyond the bounds of her own life; the
+voice that spoke to Ingolby, and the breath that swept over his cheek
+were, perhaps, as real in a sense as would have been the corporeal
+presence of Jethro Fawe in one case and of Fleda Druse in the other.
+It may be that in very truth Fleda Druse's spirit with its poignant
+solicitude controlled his will as he "rose up to depart."  But if it was
+only an illusion, it was not less a miracle.  Some power of suggestion
+bound his fleeing footsteps, drew him back from the Brink.
+
+He slept.  Once the nurse came and looked at him and returned to the
+other room; and twice Jim stole in silently for a moment and retired
+again to his own chamber.  The stars shone in at the doors that opened
+out from the quiet room into the night, the watch beside the bed ticked
+on, the fox-terrier which always slept on a mat at the foot of the bed
+sighed in content, while his master breathed heavily in a sleep full of
+dreams that hurried past like phantasmagoria--of a hundred things that
+had been in his life, and that had never been; of people he had known,
+distorted, ridiculous and tremendous.  There were dreams of fiddlers and
+barbers, of crowds writhing in passion in a room where there was a
+billiard-table and a lucky horseshoe on the wall.  There were dreams that
+tossed and mingled in one whirlpool vision; and then at last came a dream
+which was so cruel and clear that it froze his senses.
+
+It was the dream of a great bridge over a swiftflowing river; of his own
+bridge over the Sagalacof that bridge being destroyed by men who crept
+through the night with dynamite in their hands.
+
+With a hoarse, smothered cry he awoke.  His eyes opened wide.  His heart
+was beating like a hammer against his side.  Only the terrier at his feet
+heard the muttered agony.  With an instinct all its own, it slipped to
+the floor.
+
+It watched its master get out of bed, cross the room and feel for a coat
+along the wall--an overcoat which he used as a dressing-gown at times.
+Putting it on hastily, with outstretched hands Ingolby felt his way to
+the glass doors opening on the veranda.  The dog, as though to let him
+know he was there, rubbed against his legs.  Ingolby murmured a soft,
+unintelligible word, and, in his bare feet, passed out on to the veranda,
+and from there to the garden and towards the gate at the front of the
+house.
+
+The nurse heard the gate click lightly, but she was only half-awake, and
+as all was quiet in the next room, she composed herself in her chair
+again with the vain idea that she was not sleeping.  And Jim the faithful
+one, as though under a narcotic of fate, was snoring softly beside the
+vacant room.  The streets were still.  No lights burned anywhere so far
+as eye could see.  But now and then, in the stillness through which the
+river flowed on, murmuring and rhythmic, there rose the distant sounds of
+disorderly voices.  Ingolby was in a state which was neither sleep nor
+waking, which was in part delirium, in part oblivion to all things in the
+world save one--an obsession so complete, that he moved automatically
+through the street in which he lived towards that which led to the
+bridge.
+
+His terrier, as though realizing exactly what he wished, seemed to guide
+him by rubbing against his legs, and even pressing hard against them when
+he was in any danger of losing the middle of the road, or swerving
+towards a ditch or some obstruction.  Only once did they pass any human
+being, and that was when they came upon a camp of road-builders, where a
+red light burned, and two men slept in the open by a dying fire.  One of
+them raised his head when Ingolby passed, but being more than half-
+asleep, and seeing only a man and a dog, thought nothing of it, and
+dropped back again upon his rough pillow.  He was a stranger to Lebanon,
+and there was little chance of his recognizing Ingolby in the semi-
+darkness.
+
+As they neared the river, Ingolby became deeply agitated.  He moved with
+his hands outstretched.  Had it not been for his dog he would probably
+have walked into the Sagalac; for though he seemed to have an instinct
+that was extra-natural, he swayed and staggered in the delirium driving
+him on.  There was one dreadful moment when, having swerved from the road
+leading on to the bridge, he was within a foot of the river-bank.  One
+step farther, and he would have plunged down thirty feet into the stream,
+to be swept to the Rapids below.
+
+But for the first time the terrier made a sound.  He gave a whining bark
+almost human in its meaning, and threw himself at the legs of his master,
+pushing him backwards and over towards the road leading upon the bridge,
+as a collie guides sheep.  Presently Ingolby felt the floor of the bridge
+under his feet; and now he hastened on, with outstretched arms and head
+bent forward, listening intently, the dog trotting beside, with what
+knowledge working in him Heaven alone knew.
+
+The roar of the Rapids below was a sonorous accompaniment to Ingolby's
+wild thoughts.  One thing only he felt, one thing only heard--the men in
+Barbazon's Tavern saying that the bridge should be blown up on the
+Saturday night; and this was Saturday night--the night of the day
+following that of the Orange funeral.  He had heard the criminal hireling
+of Felix Marchand say that it should be done at midnight, and that the
+explosive should be laid under that part of the bridge which joined the
+Manitou bank of the Sagalac.  As though in very truth he saw with his
+eyes, he stopped short not far from the point where the bridge joined the
+land, and stood still, listening.
+
+For several minutes he was motionless, intent, as an animal waiting for
+its foe.  At last his newly-sensitive ears heard footsteps approaching
+and low voices. The footsteps came nearer, the voices, though so low,
+became more distinct.  They were now not fifty feet away, but to the
+delirious Ingolby they were as near as death had been when his fingers
+closed on the pistol in his room.
+
+He took a step forward, and with passionate voice and arms outstretched,
+he cried:
+
+    "You shall not do it-by God, you shall not touch my bridge!
+     I built it.  You shall not touch it.  Back, you devils-back!"
+
+
+The terrier barked loudly.
+
+The two men in the semi-darkness in front of him cowered at the sight of
+this weird figure holding the bridge they had come to destroy.  His
+words, uttered in so strange and unnatural a voice, shook their nerves.
+They shrank away from the ghostly form with the outstretched arms.
+
+In the minute's pause following on his words, a giant figure suddenly
+appeared behind the dynamiters.  It was the temporary Chief Constable of
+Lebanon, returning from his visit to Tekewani.  He had heard Ingolby's
+wild words, and he realized the situation.
+
+"Ingolby--steady  there,  Ingolby !" he  called.  "Steady!  Steady!
+Gabriel Druse is here.  It's all right."
+
+At the first sound of Druse's voice the two wreckers turned and ran.
+
+As they did so, Ingolby's hands fell to his side, and he staggered
+forward.
+
+"Druse--Fleda," he murmured, then swayed, trembled and fell.
+
+With words that stuck in his throat Gabriel Druse stooped and lifted him
+up in his arms.  At first he turned towards the bridge, as though to
+cross over to Lebanon, but the last word Ingolby had uttered rang
+in his ears, and he carried him away into the trees towards his own
+house, the faithful terrier following.  "Druse--Fleda !"  They were the
+words of one who had suddenly emerged from the obsession of delirium into
+sanity, and then had fallen into as sudden unconsciousness.
+
+"Fleda!  Fleda!" called Gabriel Druse outside the door of his house a
+quarter of an hour later, and her voice in reply was that of one who knew
+that the feet of Fate were at her threshold.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+They think that if a vote's worth having it's worth paying for
+You never can really overtake a newspaper lie
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WORLD FOR SALE
+
+By Gilbert Parker
+
+
+
+BOOK III
+
+XX.       TWO LIFE PIECES
+XXI.      THE SNARE OF THE FOWLER
+XXII.     THE SECRET MAN
+XXIII.    THE RETURN OF BELISARIUS
+XXIV.     AT LONG LAST
+XXV.      MAN PROPOSES
+XXVI.     THE SLEEPER
+XXVII.    THE WORLD FOR SALE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+TWO LIFE PIECES
+
+"It's a fine day."
+
+"Yes, it's beautiful."
+
+Fleda wanted to ask how he knew, but hesitated from feelings of delicacy.
+Ingolby seemed to understand.  A faint reflection of the old whimsical
+smile touched his lips, and his hands swept over the coverlet as though
+smoothing out a wrinkled map.
+
+"The blind man gets new senses," he said dreamily.  "I feel things where
+I used to see them.  How did I know it was a fine day?  Simple enough.
+When the door opened there was only the lightest breath of wind, and the
+air was fresh and crisp, and I could smell the sun.  One sense less, more
+degree of power to the other senses.  The sun warms the air, gives it a
+flavour, and between it and the light frost, which showed that it was dry
+outside, I got the smell of a fine Fall day.  Also, I heard the cry of
+the wild fowl going South, and they wouldn't have made a sound if it
+hadn't been a fine day.  And also, and likewise, and besides, and
+howsomever, I heard Jim singing, and that nigger never sings in bad
+weather.  Jim's a fair-weather raven, and this morning he was singing
+like a 'lav'rock in the glen.'"
+
+Being blind, he could not see that, suddenly, a storm of emotion swept
+over her face.
+
+His cheerfulness, his boylike simplicity, his indomitable spirit, which
+had survived so much, and must still face so much, his almost childlike
+ways, and the naive description of a blind man's perception, waked in her
+an almost intolerable yearning.  It was not the yearning of a maid for a
+man.  It was the uncontrollable woman in her, the mother-thing, belonging
+to the first woman that ever was-protection of the weak, hovering love
+for the suffering, the ministering spirit.
+
+Since Ingolby had been brought to the house in the pines, Madame Bulteel
+and herself, with Jim, had nursed him through the Valley of the Shadow.
+They had nursed him through brain-fever, through agonies which could not
+have been borne with consciousness.  The tempest of the mind and the
+pains of misfortune went on from hour to hour, from day to day, almost
+without ceasing, until at last, a shadow of his former self, but with a
+wonderful light on his face which came from something within, he waited
+patiently for returning strength, propped up with pillows in the bed
+which had been Fleda's own, in the room outside which Jethro Fawe had
+sung his heathen serenade.
+
+It was the room of the house which, catching the morning sun, was best
+suited for an invalid.  So she had given it to him with an eagerness
+behind which was the feeling that somehow it made him more of the inner
+circle of her own life; for apart from every other feeling she had, there
+was in her a deep spirit of comradeship belonging to far-off times when
+her life was that of the open road, the hillside and the vale.  In those
+days no man was a stranger; all belonged.
+
+To meet, and greet, and pass was the hourly event, but the meeting and
+the greeting had in it the familiarity of a common wandering, the
+sympathy of the homeless.  Had Ingolby been less to her than he was,
+there would still have been the comradeship which made her the great
+creature she was fast becoming.  It was odd that, as Ingolby became
+thinner and thinner, and ever more wan, she, in spite of her ceaseless
+nursing, appeared to thrive physically.  She had even slightly increased
+the fulness of her figure.  The velvet of her cheeks had grown richer,
+and her eyes deeper with warm fire.  It was as though she flourished on
+giving: as though a hundred nerves of being and feeling had opened up
+within her and had expanded her life like some fine flower.
+
+Gazing at Ingolby now there was a great hungering desire in her heart.
+She looked at the sightless eyes, and a passionate protest sprang to her
+lips which, in spite of herself, broke forth in a sort of moan.
+
+"What is it?" Ingolby asked, with startled face.
+
+"Nothing," she answered, "nothing.  I pricked my finger badly, that's
+all."
+
+And, indeed, she had done so, but that would not have brought the moan to
+her lips.
+
+"Well, it didn't sound like a pricked finger complaint," he remarked.
+"It was the kind of groan I'd give if I had a bad pain inside."
+
+"Ah, but you're a man!" she remarked lightly, though two tears fell down
+her cheeks.
+
+With an effort she recovered herself.  "It's time for your tonic," she
+added, and she busied herself with giving it to him.  "As soon as you
+have taken it, I'm going for a walk, so you must make up your mind to
+have some sleep."
+
+"Am I to be left alone?" he asked, with an assumed grievance in his
+voice.
+
+"Madame Bulteel will stay with you," she replied.
+
+"Do you need a walk so very badly?" he asked presently.
+
+"I don't suppose I need it, but I want it," she answered.  "My feet and
+the earth are very friendly."
+
+"Where do you walk?" he asked.
+
+"Just anywhere," was her reply.  "Sometimes up the river, sometimes down,
+sometimes miles away in the woods."
+
+"Do you never take a gun with you?"
+
+"Of course," she answered, nodding, as though he could see.  "I get wild
+pigeons and sometimes a wild duck or a prairie-hen."
+
+"That's right," he remarked; "that's right."
+
+"I don't believe in walking just for the sake of walking," she continued.
+"It doesn't do you any good, but if you go for something and get it,
+that's what puts the mind and the body right."
+
+Suddenly his face grew grave.  "Yes, that's it," he remarked.
+
+"To go for something you want, a long way off.  You don't feel the fag
+when you're thinking of the thing at the end; but you've got to have the
+thing at the end, to keep making for it, or there's no good going--none
+at all.  That's life; that's how it is.  It's no good only walking--
+you've got to walk somewhere.  It's no good simply going--you've got to
+go somewhere.  You've got to fight for something.  That's why, when they
+take the something you fight for away--when they break you and cripple
+you, and you can't go anywhere for what you want badly, life isn't worth
+living."
+
+An anxious look came into her face.  This was the first time, since
+recovering consciousness, that he had referred, even indirectly, to all
+that had happened.  She understood him well--ah, terribly well!  It was
+the tragedy of the man stopped in his course because of one mistake,
+though he had done ten thousand wise things.  The power taken from his
+hands, the interrupted life, the dark future, the beginning again, if
+ever his sight came back: it was sickening, heartbreaking.
+
+She saw it all in his face, but as if some inward voice had spoken to
+him, his face cleared, the swift-moving hands clasped in front of him,
+and he said quietly: "But because it's life, there it is.  You have to
+take it as it comes."
+
+He stopped a moment, and in the pause she reached out her hand with a
+sudden passionate gesture, to touch his shoulder, but she restrained
+herself in time.
+
+He seemed to feel what she was doing, and turned his face towards her,
+a slight flush coming to his cheeks.  He smiled, and then he said: "How
+wonderful you are!  You look--"
+
+He checked himself, then added with a quizzical smile:
+
+"You are looking very well to-day, Miss Fleda Druse, very well indeed.
+I like that dark-red dress you're wearing."
+
+An almost frightened look came into her eyes.  It was as though he could
+see, for she was wearing a dark-red dress--"wine-coloured," her father
+called it, "maroon," Madame Bulteel called it.  Could he then see, after
+all?
+
+"How did you know it was dark-red?" she asked, her voice shaking.
+
+"Guessed it!  Guessed it!" he answered almost gleefully.  "Was I right?
+Is it dark-red?"
+
+"Yes, dark-red," she answered.  "Was it really a guess?"
+
+"Ah, but the guessiest kind of a guess," he replied.  "But who can tell?
+I couldn't see it, but is there any reason why the mind shouldn't see
+when the eyes are no longer working?  Come now," he added, "I've a
+feeling that I can tell things with my mind just as if I saw them.  I do
+see.  I'll guess the time now--with my mind's eye."
+
+Concentration came into his face.  "It's three minutes to twelve
+o'clock," he said decisively.
+
+She took up the watch which lay on the table beside the bed.
+
+"Yes, it's just three minutes to twelve," she declared in an awe-struck
+voice.  "That's marvellous--how wonderful you are!"
+
+"That's what I said of you a minute ago," he returned.  Then, with a
+swift change of voice and manner, he added, "How long is it?"
+
+"You mean, since you came here?" she asked, divining what was in his
+mind.
+
+"Exactly.  How long?"
+
+"Six weeks," she answered.  "Six weeks and three days."
+
+"Why don't you add the hour, too," he urged half-plaintively, though he
+smiled.
+
+"Well, it was three o'clock in the morning to the minute," she answered.
+
+"Old Father Time ought to make you his chief of staff," he remarked
+gaily.  "Now, I want to know," he added, with a visible effort of
+determination, "what has happened since three o'clock in the morning,
+six weeks and three days ago.  I want you to tell me what has happened
+to my concerns--to the railways, and also to the towns.  I don't want you
+to hide anything, because, if you do, I'll have Jim in, and Jim, under
+proper control, will tell me the whole truth, and perhaps more than the
+truth.  That's the way with Jim.  When he gets started he can't stop.
+Tell me exactly everything."
+
+Anxiety drove the colour from her cheeks.  She shrank back.
+
+"You must tell me," he urged.  "I'd rather hear it from you than from
+Dr. Rockwell, or Jim, or your father.  Your telling wouldn't hurt as much
+as anybody else's, if there has to be any hurt.  Don't you understand--
+but don't you understand?" he urged.
+
+She nodded to herself in the mirror on the wall opposite.  "I'll try to
+understand," she replied presently; "Tell me, then: have they put someone
+in my place?"
+
+"I understand so," she replied.
+
+He remained silent for a moment, his face very pale.  "Who is running the
+show?" he asked.
+
+She told him.
+
+"Oh, him!" he exclaimed.  "He's dead against my policy.  He'll make a
+mess."
+
+"They say he's doing that," she remarked.
+
+He asked her a series of questions which she tried to answer frankly, and
+he came to know that the trouble between the two towns, which, after the
+Orange funeral and his own disaster had subsided, was up again; that the
+railways were in difficulties; that there had been several failures in
+the town; that one of the banks--the Regent-had closed its doors; that
+Felix Marchand, having recovered from the injury he had received from
+Gabriel Druse on the day of the Orange funeral, had gone East for a month
+and had returned; that the old trouble was reviving in the mills, and
+that Marchand had linked himself with the enemies of the group
+controlling the railways hitherto directed by himself.
+
+For a moment after she had answered his questions, there was strong
+emotion in his face, and then it cleared.
+
+He reached out a hand towards her.  How eagerly she clasped it!  It was
+cold, and hers was so warm and firm and kind.
+
+"True friend o' mine!" he said with feeling.  "How wonderful it is that
+somehow it all doesn't seem to matter so much.  I wonder why?  I wonder--
+Tell me about yourself, about your life," he added abruptly, as though it
+had been a question he had long wished to ask.  In the tone was a quiet
+certainty suggesting that she would not hesitate to answer.
+
+"We have both had big breaks in our lives," he went on.  "I know that.
+I've lost everything, in a way, by the break in my life, and I've an idea
+that you gained everything when the break in yours came.  I didn't
+believe the story Jethro Fawe told me, but still I knew there was some
+truth in it; something that he twisted to suit himself.  I started life
+feeling I could conquer the world like another Alexander or Napoleon.
+I don't know that it was all conceit.  It was the wish to do, to see how
+far this thing on my shoulders"--he touched his head--"and this great
+physical machine"--he touched his breast with a thin hand--"would carry
+me.  I don't believe the main idea was vicious.  It was wanting to work
+a human brain to its last volt of capacity, and to see what it could do.
+I suppose I became selfish as I forged on.  I didn't mean to be, but
+concentration upon the things I had to do prevented me from being the
+thing I ought to be.  I wanted, as they say, to get there.  I had a lot
+of irons in the fire--too many--but they weren't put there deliberately.
+One thing led to another, and one thing, as it were, hung upon another,
+until they all got to be part of the scheme.  Once they got there, I had
+to carry them all on, I couldn't drop any of them; they got to be my
+life.  It didn't matter that it all grew bigger and bigger, and the risks
+got greater and greater.  I thought I could weather it through, and so I
+could have done, if it hadn't been for a mistake and an accident; but the
+mistake was mine.  That's where the thing nips--the mistake was mine.
+I took too big a risk.  You see, I'd got so used to being lucky, it
+seemed as if I couldn't go wrong.  Everything had come my way.  Ever
+since I began in that Montreal railway office, after leaving college,
+I hadn't a single setback.  I pulled things off.  I made money, and I
+plumped it all into my railways and the Regent Bank; and as you said
+a minute ago, the Regent Bank has closed down.  That cuts me clean out
+of the game.  What was the matter with the bank?  The manager?"
+
+His voice was almost monotonous in its quietness.  It was as though he
+told the story of something which had passed beyond chance or change.
+As it unfolded to her understanding, she had seated herself near to his
+bed.  The door of the room was open, and in view outside on the landing
+sat Madame Bulteel reading.  She was not, however, near enough to hear
+the conversation.
+
+Ingolby's voice was low, but it sounded as loud as a waterfall in the
+ears of the girl, who, in a few weeks, had travelled great distances on
+the road called Experience, that other name for life.
+
+"It was the manager?" he repeated.
+
+"Yes, they say so," she answered.  "He speculated with bank money."
+
+"In what?"
+
+"In your railways," she answered hesitatingly.  "Curious--I dreamed
+that," Ingolby remarked quietly, and leaned down and stroked the dog
+lying at his feet.  It had been with him through all his sickness.
+"It must have been part of my delirium, because, now that I've got my
+senses back, it's as though someone had told me about it.  Speculated in
+my railways, eh?  Chickens come home to roost, don't they?  I suppose I
+ought to be excited over it all," he continued.  "I suppose I ought.  But
+the fact is, you only have just the one long, big moment of excitement
+when great trouble and tragedy come, or else it's all excitement, all the
+time, and then you go mad.  That's the test, I think.  When you're struck
+by Fate, as a hideous war-machine might strike you, and the whole terror
+of loss and ruin bears down on you, you're either swept away in an
+excitement that hasn't any end, or you brace yourself, and become
+master of the shattering thing."
+
+"You are a master," she interposed.  "You are the Master Man," she
+repeated admiringly.
+
+He waved a hand deprecatingly.  "Do you know, when we talked together in
+the woods soon after you ran the Rapids--you remember the day--if you had
+said that to me then, I'd have cocked my head and thought I was a jim-
+dandy, as they say.  A Master Man was what I wanted to be.  But it's a
+pretty barren thing to think, or to feel, that you're a Master Man;
+because, if you are--if you've had a 'scoop' all the way, as Jowett calls
+it, you can be as sure as anything that no one cares a rap farthing what
+happens to you.  There are plenty who pretend they care, but it's only
+because they're sailing with the wind, and with your even keel.  It's
+only the Master Man himself that doesn't know in the least he's that who
+gets anything out of it all."
+
+"Aren't you getting anything out of it?" she asked softly.  "Aren't you
+--Chief?"
+
+At the familiar word--Jowett always called him Chief--a smile slowly
+stole across his face.  "I really believe I am, thanks to you," he said
+nodding.
+
+He was going to say, "Thanks to you, Fleda," but he restrained himself.
+He had no right to be familiar, to give an intimate turn to things.  His
+game was over; his journey of ambition was done.  He saw this girl with
+his mind's eye--how much he longed to see her with the eyes of the body
+--in all her strange beauty; and he knew that even if she cared for him,
+such a sacrifice as linking her life with his was impossible.  Yet her
+very presence there was like a garden of bloom to him: a garden full of
+the odour of life, of vital things, of sweet energy and happy being.
+Somehow, he and she were strangely alike.  He knew it.  From the time
+he held her in his arms at Carillon, he knew it.  The great adventurous
+spirit which was in him belonged also to her.  That was as sure as light
+and darkness.
+
+"No, there's no master man in me, but I think I know what one could be
+like," he remarked at last.  He straightened himself against the pillows.
+The old look of power came to a face hardly strong enough to bear it.
+It was so fine and thin now, and the spirit in him was so prodigious.
+
+"No one cares what happens to the man who always succeeds; no one loves
+him," he continued.  "Do you know, in my trouble I've had more out of
+nigger Jim's affection than I've ever had in my life.  Then there's
+Rockwell, Osterhaut and Jowett, and there's your father.  It was worth
+while living to feel the real thing."  His hands went out as though
+grasping something good and comforting.  "I don't suppose every man needs
+to be struck as hard as I've been to learn what's what, but I've learned
+it.  I give you my word of honour, I've learned it."
+
+Her face flushed and her eyes kindled greatly.  "Jim, Rockwell,
+Osterhaut, Jowett, and my father!" she exclaimed.  "Of course trouble
+wouldn't do anything but make them come closer round you.  Poor people
+live so near to misfortune all the time--I mean poor people like Jim,
+Osterhaut, and Jowett--that changes of fortune are just natural things to
+them.  As for my father, he has had to stretch out his hands so often to
+those in trouble--"
+
+"That he carried me home on his shoulders from the bridge six weeks and
+three days ago, at three o'clock in the morning," interjected Ingolby
+with a quizzical smile.
+
+"Why did you omit Madame Bulteel and myself when you mentioned those who
+showed their--friendship?" she asked, hesitating at the last word.
+"Haven't we done our part?"
+
+"I was talking of men," he answered.  "One knows what women do.  They may
+leave you in the bright days, not in the dark days.  On the majority of
+them you couldn't rely in prosperity, but in misfortune you couldn't do
+anything else.  They are there with you.  They're made that way.  The
+best life can give you in misfortune is a woman.  It's the great
+beginning-of-the-world thing in them.  Men can't stand prosperity, but
+women can stand misfortune.  Why, if Jim and Osterhaut and Jowett and all
+the men of Lebanon and Manitou had deserted me, I shouldn't have been
+surprised; but I'd have had to recast my philosophy if Fleda Druse had
+turned her bonny brown head away."
+
+It was evident he was making an effort to conquer emotions which were
+rising in him; that he was playing on the surface to prevent his deep
+feelings from breaking forth.  "Instead of which," he added jubilantly,
+"here I am, in the nicest room in the world, in a fine bed with springs
+like an antelope's heels."
+
+He laughed, and hunched his back into the mattress.  It was the laugh of
+the mocker, but he was mocking himself.  She did not misunderstand.  It
+was a nice room, as he said.  He had never seen it with his eyes, but if
+he had seen it he would have realized how like herself it was--adorably
+fresh, happily coloured, sumptuous and fine.  It had simple curtains,
+white sheets, and a warm carpet on the floor; and yet with something,
+too, that struck the note of a life outside.  A pennant of many colours
+hung where two soft pink curtains joined, and at the window and over the
+door was an ancient cross in bronze and gold.  It was not the simple
+Christian cross of the modern world, but an ancient one which had become
+a symbol of the Romanys, a sign to mark the highways, the guide of the
+wayfarers.  The pennant had been on the pole of the Ry's tent in far-off
+days in the Roumelian country.  In the girl herself there was that which
+corresponded to the gorgeous pennant and the bronze cross.  It was not in
+dress or in manner, for there was no sign of garishness, of the unusual
+anywhere--in manner she was as well controlled as any woman of fashion,
+in dress singularly reserved--but in the depths of the eyes there was
+some restless, unsettled thing, some flicker of strange banners akin to
+the pennant at the joining of the pink curtains.  There had been
+something of the same look in Ingolby's eyes in the past, only with him
+it was the sense of great adventure, intrepid enterprise, a touch of
+vision and the beckoning thing.  That look was not in his eyes now.
+Nothing was there; no life, no soul; only darkness.  But did that look
+still inhabit the eyes of the soul?
+
+He answered the question himself.  "I'd start again in a different way if
+I could," he said musingly, his face towards the girl.  "It's easy to say
+that, but I would.  It isn't only the things you get, it's how you use
+them.  It isn't only the things you do, it's why you do them.  But I'll
+never have a chance now; I'll never have a chance to try the new way.
+I'm done."
+
+Something almost savage leaped into her eyes--a wild, bitter protest, for
+it was her tragedy, too, if he was not to regain his sight.  The great
+impulse of a nature which had been disciplined into reserve broke forth.
+
+"It isn't so," she said with a tremor in her voice.  All that he--and
+she--was in danger of losing came home to her.  "It isn't so.  You shall
+get well again.  Your sight will come back.  To-morrow; perhaps to-day,
+Hindlip, the great oculist comes from New York.  Mr. Warbeck, the
+Montreal man, holds out hopes.  If the New York man says the same,
+why despair?  Perhaps in another month you will be on your feet again,
+out in the world, fighting, working, mastering, just as you used to do."
+
+A sudden stillness seemed to take possession of him.  His lips parted;
+his head was thrust forwards slightly as though he saw something in the
+distance.  He spoke scarcely above a whisper.
+
+"I didn't know the New York man was coming.  I didn't know there was any
+hope at all," he said with awe in his tones.
+
+"We told you there was," she answered.
+
+"Yes, I know.  But I thought you were all only trying to make it easier
+for me, and I heard Warbeck say to Rockwell, when they thought I was
+asleep, 'It's ten to one against him.'"
+
+"Did you hear that?" she said sorrowfully.  "I'm so sorry; but Mr.
+Warbeck said afterwards--only a week ago--that the chances were even.
+That's the truth.  On my soul and honour it's the truth.  He said the
+chances were even.  It was he suggested Mr. Hindlip, and Hindlip is
+coming now.  He's on the way.  He may be here to-day.  Oh, be sure, be
+sure, be sure, it isn't all over.  You said your life was broken.  It
+isn't.  You said my life had been broken.  It wasn't.  It was only the
+wrench of a great change.  Well, it's only the wrench of a great change
+in your life.  You said I gained everything in the great change of my
+life.  I did; and the great change in your life won't be lost, it will be
+gain, too.  I know it; in my heart I know it."
+
+With sudden impulse she caught his hand in both of hers, and then with
+another impulse, which she could not control, she caught his head to her
+bosom.  For one instant her arms wrapped him round, and she murmured
+something in a language he did not understand--the language of the
+Roumelian country.  It was only one swift instant, and then with shocked
+exclamation she broke away from him, dropped into a chair, and buried her
+face in her hands.
+
+He blindly reached out his hand towards her as if to touch her.  "Mother-
+girl, dear mother-girl--that's what you are," he said huskily.  "What a
+great, kind heart you've got!"
+
+She did not reply, but sat with face hidden in her hands, rocking
+backwards and forwards.  He understood; he tried to help her.  There was
+a great joy in his heart, but he dared not give it utterance.
+
+"Please tell me about your life--about that great change in it," he said
+at last in a low voice.  "Perhaps it would help me.  Anyhow, I'd like to
+know, if you feel you can tell me."
+
+For a moment she was silent.  Then she said to him with an anxious note
+in her voice: "What do you know about my life-about the 'great change,'
+as you call it?"
+
+He reached out over the coverlet, felt for a sock which he had been
+learning to knit and, slowly plying the needles, replied: "I only know
+what Jethro Fawe told me, and he was a promiscuous liar."
+
+"I don't think he lied about me," she answered quietly.  "He told you I
+was a Gipsy; he told you that I was married to him.  That was true.  I
+was a Gipsy.  I was married to him in the Romany way, when I was a child
+of three, and I never saw him again until here, the other day, on the
+Sagalac."
+
+"You were married to him as much as I am," he interjected scornfully.
+"That was a farce.  It was only a promise to pay on the part of your
+father.  There was nothing in that.  Jethro Fawe could not claim on
+that."
+
+"He has tried to do so," she answered, "and if I were still a Gipsy he
+would have the right to do so from his standpoint."
+
+"That sounds silly to me," Ingolby remarked, his fingers moving now more
+quickly with the needles.  "No, it isn't silly," she said, her voice
+almost as softly monotonous as his had been when he told her of his life
+a little while before.  It was as though she was looking into her own
+mind and heart and speaking to herself.  "It isn't silly," she repeated.
+"I don't think you understand.  Just because a race like the Gipsies have
+no country and no home, so they must have things that bind them which
+other people don't need in the same way.  Being the vagrants of the
+earth, so they must have things that hold them tighter than any written
+laws made by King or Parliament.  Unless the Gipsies kept their laws
+sacred they couldn't hold together at all.  They're iron and steel, the
+Gipsy laws.  They can't be stretched, and they can't be twisted.  They
+can only be broken, and then there's no argument about it.  When they are
+broken, there's the penalty, and it has to be met."
+
+Ingolby stopped knitting for a moment.  "You don't mean that a penalty
+could touch you?" he asked incredulously.
+
+"Not for breaking a law," she answered.  "I'm not a Gipsy any more.
+I gave my word about that, and so did my father; and I'll keep it."
+
+"Please tell me about it," he urged.  "Tell me, so that I can understand
+everything."
+
+There was a long pause in which Ingolby inspected carefully with his
+fingers the work which he was doing, but at last Fleda's voice came to
+him, as it seemed out of a great distance, while she began to tell of her
+first memories: of her life by the Danube and the Black Sea, and drew
+for him a picture, so far as she could recall it, of her marriage with
+Jethro, and of the years that followed.  Now and again as she told of
+some sordid things, of the challenge of the law in different countries,
+of the coarse vagabondage of the Gipsy people in this place or in that,
+and some indignity put upon her father, or some humiliating incident, her
+voice became low and pained.  It seemed as if she meant that he should
+see all she had been in that past, which still must be part of the
+present and have its place in the future, however far away all that
+belonged to it would be.  She appeared to search her mind to find that
+which would prejudice him against her.  While speaking with slow scorn
+of the life which she had lived as a Gipsy, yet she tried to make him
+understand, too, that, in the days when she belonged to it, it all seemed
+natural to her, and that its sordidness, its vagabondage did not produce
+repugnance in her mind when she was part of it.  Unwittingly she over-
+coloured the picture, and he knew she did.
+
+In spite of herself, however, some aspects of the old life called forth
+pictures of happy Nature, of busy animal life of wood and glen and stream
+and footpath which was exquisite in its way.  She was in spirit at one
+with the multitudinous world of nature among which so many men and women
+lived, without seeing or knowing.  It was all undesignedly a part of
+herself, and she was one of a population in a universal nation whose
+devout citizen she was.  Sometimes, in response to an interjection from
+Ingolby, deftly made, she told of some incident which revealed as great a
+poetic as dramatic instinct.  As she talked, Ingolby in his imagination
+pictured her as a girl of ten or twelve, in a dark-red dress, brown curls
+falling in profusion on her shoulders, with a clear, honest, beautiful
+eye, and a face that only spoke of a joy of living, in which the small
+things were the small things and the great things were the great: the
+perfect proportion of sane life in a sane world.
+
+Now and again, carried away by the history of things remembered, she
+visualized scenes for him with the ardour of an artist and a lover of
+created things.  He realized how powerful a hold the old life still had
+upon her.  She understood it, too, for when at last she told of the great
+event in England which changed her life, and made her a deserter from
+Gipsy life; when she came to the giving of the pledge to a dying woman,
+and how she had kept that pledge, and how her father had kept it,
+sternly, faithfully, in spite of all it involved, she said to him:
+
+"It may seem strange to you, living as I live now in one spot, with
+everything to make life easy, that I should long sometimes for that old
+life.  I hate it in my heart of hearts, yet there's something about it
+that belongs to me, that's behind me, if that tells you anything.  It's
+as though there was some other self in me which reached far, far back
+into centuries, that wills me to do this and wills me to do that.  It
+sounds mad to you of course, but there have been times when I have had a
+wild longing to go back to it all, to what some Gorgio writers call the
+pariah world--the Ishmaelites."
+
+More than once Ingolby's heart throbbed heavily against his breast as he
+felt the passion of her nature, its extraordinary truthfulness, making it
+clear to him by indirect phrases that even Jethro Fawe, whom she
+despised, still had a hateful fascination for her.  It was all at
+variance to her present self, but it summoned her through the long
+avenues of ancestry, predisposition; through the secret communion of
+those who, being dead, yet speak.
+
+"It's a great story told in a great way," he said, when she had finished.
+"It's the most honest thing I ever heard, but it's not the most truthful
+thing I ever heard.  I don't think we can tell the exact truth about
+ourselves.  We try to be honest; we are savagely in earnest about it,
+and so we exaggerate the bad things we do, and we often show distrust of
+the good things we do.  That's not a fair picture.  I believe you've told
+me the truth as you see it and feel it, but I don't think it's the real
+truth.  In my mind I sometimes see an oriel window in the college where I
+spent three years.  I used to work and think for hours in that oriel
+window, and in the fights I've been having lately I've looked back and
+thought I wanted it again; wanted to be there in the peace of it all,
+with the books, and the lectures, and the drone of history, and the
+drudgery of examinations; but if I did go back to it, three days'd sicken
+me, and if you went back to the Gipsy life three days'd sicken you."
+
+"Yes, I know.  Three hours would sicken me.  But what might not happen in
+those three hours!  Can't you understand?"
+
+Suddenly she got to her feet with a passionate exclamation, her
+clenched hands went to her temples in an agony of emotion.  "Can't you
+understand?" she repeated.  "It's the going back at all for three days,
+for three hours, for three minutes that counts.  It might spoil
+everything; it might kill my life."
+
+His face flushed, crimsoned, then became pale; his hands ceased moving;
+the knitting lay still on his knee.  "Maybe, but you aren't going back
+for three minutes, any more than I'm going back to the oriel window for
+three seconds," he said.  "We dreamers have a lot of agony in thinking
+about the things we're never going to do--just as much agony as in
+thinking about the things we've done.  Every one of us dreamers ought to
+be insulated.  We ought to wear emotional lightning-rods to carry off the
+brain-waves into the ground.
+
+"I've never heard such a wonderful story," he added, after an instant,
+with an intense longing to hold out his arms to her, and a still more
+intense will to do no such wrong.  A blind man had no right or title to
+be a slave-owner, for that was what marriage to him would be.  A wife
+would be a victim.  He saw himself, felt himself being gradually
+devitalized, with only the placid brain left, considering only the
+problem of hourly comfort, and trying to neutralize the penalties of
+blindness.  She must not be sacrificed to that, for apart from all else
+she had greatness of a kind in her.  He knew far better than he had said
+of the storm of emotion in her, and he knew that she had not exaggerated
+the temptation which sang in her ears.  Jethro Fawe--the thought of the
+man revolted him; and yet there was something about the fellow,
+a temperamental power, the glamour and garishness of Nature's gifts,
+prostituted though they were, finding expression in a striking
+personality, in a body of athletic grace--a man-beauty.
+
+"Have you seen Jethro Fawe lately?" he asked.  "Not since"--she was
+going to say not since the morning her father had passed the sentence of
+the patrin upon him; but she paused in time.  "Not since everything
+happened to you," she added presently.
+
+"He knows the game is up," Ingolby remarked with forced cheerfulness.
+"He won't be asking for any more."
+
+"It's time for your milk and brandy," she said suddenly, emotion
+subsiding and a look of purpose coming into her face.  She poured out the
+liquid, and gave the glass into his hand.  His fingers touched hers.
+
+"Your hands are cold," she said to him.  "Cold hands, warm heart," he
+chattered.
+
+A curious, wilful, rebellious look came into her eyes.  "I shouldn't
+have thought it in your case," she said, and with sudden resolve turned
+towards the door.  "I'll send Madame Bulteel," she added.  "I'm going for
+a walk."
+
+She had betrayed herself so much, had shown so recklessly what she felt,
+and yet, yet why did he not--she did not know what she wanted him to do.
+It was all a great confusion.  Vaguely she realized what had been working
+in him, but yet the knowledge was dim indeed.  She was a woman.  In her
+heart of hearts she knew that he did care for her, and yet in her heart
+of hearts she denied that he cared.
+
+She was suddenly angry with herself, angry with him, the poor blind man,
+back from the Valley of the Shadow.  She had not reached the door,
+however, when Madame Bulteel entered the room.
+
+"The doctor from New York has come," she said, holding out a note from
+Dr. Rockwell.  "He will be here in a couple of hours."
+
+Fleda turned back towards the bed.
+
+"Good luck!" she said.  "You'll see, it will be all right."
+
+"Certainly I'll see if it's all right," he said cheerfully.  "Am I tidy?
+Have I used Pears' soap?"  He would have his joke at his own funeral if
+possible.
+
+"There are two hours to get you fit to be seen," she rejoined with
+raillery, infected by his cheerfulness in spite of herself.  "Madame
+Bulteel is very brave.  Nothing is too hard for her!"
+
+An instant later she was gone, with her heart telling her to go back to
+him, not to leave him, but yet with a longing stronger still driving her
+to the open world, to which she could breathe her trouble in great gasps,
+as she sped onward through the woods and by the river.  To love a blind
+man was sheer madness, but in her was a superstitious belief that he
+would see again.  It prevailed against the doubts and terrors.  It made
+her resent his own sense of fatality, his own belief that he would be in
+darkness all his days.
+
+In the room where he awaited the verdict of the expert, he kept saying to
+himself:
+
+"She would have made everything else look cheap--if it could have been."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE SNARE OF THE FOWLER
+
+The last rays of the setting sun touched the gorgeous Autumn woods with
+a loving, bright glow, and the day stole pensively away into a purple bed
+beyond the sight of the eyes.  From a lonely spot by the river, Fleda
+watched the westering gleam until it vanished, her soul alive to the
+melancholy beauty of it all.  Not a human being seemed to be within the
+restricted circle of her vision.  There were only to be seen the deep
+woods, in myriad tints of bronze and red and saffron, and the swift-
+flowing river.  Overhead was the Northern sky, so clear, so thrilling,
+and the stars were beginning to sparkle in the incredibly swift twilight
+which links daytime and nighttime in that Upper Land.  Lonely and
+delicately sad it all looked, but there was no feeling of loneliness
+among those who lived the life of the Sagalac.  Many a man has stood on a
+wide plain of snow, white to the uttermost horizon, or in the yellow-
+brown grass of the Summer prairie, empty of all human life so far as eye
+could see, and yet has felt no solitude.  It is as though the air itself
+is inhabited by a throng of happy comrades whispering in the communion of
+the invisible world.
+
+As a child Fleda had often gazed upon just such scenes, lonely and
+luminous, but she was only conscious then of a vague and pleasant awe,
+a kindly confusion, which, like the din of innumerable bees, lulled
+wonder to sleep.  Even as a child, however, something of what it meant
+had pierced her awe and wonder.  Once as she crossed a broken, bare
+mountain of Roumania she had seen a wild ass perched upon a high summit
+gazing, as it were, over the wide valley, where beneath, among the rocks,
+other wild asses wandered.  There was something so statue-like in this
+immovable wild creature that Fleda had watched it till it was hid from
+her view by a jutting rock.  But the thing which made a lasting
+impression, drawing her nearer to nature-life than all that had chanced
+since she was born, was the fact that on returning, hours after, the wild
+ass was still standing upon the summit of the hill, still gazing across
+the valley.  Or was it gazing across the valley?  Was there some other
+vision commanding its sight?
+
+So a young wife not yet a mother loses herself for hours together in a
+vista of unexplored experience.  Fleda had passed on, out of sight of the
+wild ass on the hills, but for ever after the memory of it remained with
+her and the picture of it sprang to her eye innumerable times.  The
+hypnotized wild thing--hypnotized by its own vague instincts, or by
+something outside itself-became to her as the Sphinx to the Egyptian, the
+everlasting question of existence.
+
+Now, as she watched the day fleeing, and night with swift stealthiness
+coming on, that unforgettable picture of the Roumanian hills came to her
+again.  The instinct of those far-off days which had been little removed
+from the finest animal intelligence had now developed into thought.
+Brain and soul strove to grasp what it all meant, and what the revelation
+was between Nature and herself.  Nature was so vast; she was so
+insignificant; changes in its motionless inorganic life were
+imperceptible save through the telescopes of years; but she, like the
+wind, the water, and the clouds, was variable, inconstant.  Was there any
+real relation between the vast, imperturbable earth, its seas, its
+forests, its mountains and its plains, its life of tree and plant and
+flower and the men and women dotted on its surface?  Did they belong to
+each other, or were mankind only, as it were, vermin infesting the
+desirable world?  Did they belong to each other?  It meant so much if
+they did belong, and she loved to think they did.  Many a time she kissed
+the smooth bole of a maple or whispered to it; or laid her cheek against
+a mossy rock and murmured a greeting in the spirit of a companionship as
+old as the making of the world.
+
+On the evening of this day of her destiny--carrying the story of her own
+fate within its twenty-four hours--she was in a mood of detachment from
+life's routine.  As at a great opera, a sensitive spirit loses itself in
+visions alien to the music and yet born of it, so she, lost in this
+primeval scene before her, saw visions of things to be.
+
+If Ingolby's sight came back!  In her abstraction she saw him with sight
+restored and by her side, and even in that joy her mind felt a hovering
+sense of invasion, no definite, visible thing, but a presence which made
+shadow.  Suddenly oppressed by it, she turned back into the woods from
+the river-bank to make for home.  She had explored nearly every portion
+of this river-country for miles up and down, but on this evening, lost in
+her dreams, she had wandered into less familiar regions.  There was no
+chance of her being lost, so long as she kept near to the river, and
+indeed by instinct and not by thought or calculation she made her way
+about at all times.  Turned homeward, she walked for about a quarter of a
+mile, retreading the path by which she had come.  It was growing darker,
+and, being in unfamiliar surroundings, she hurried on, though she knew
+well what course to take.  Following the bank of the river she would have
+increased her walk greatly, as the stream made a curve at a point above
+Manitou, and then came back again to its original course; so she cut
+across the promontory, taking the most direct line homeward.
+
+Presently, however, she became conscious of other people in the wood
+besides herself.  She saw no one, but she heard breaking twigs, the stir
+of leaves, the flutter of a partridge which told of human presence.  The
+underbrush was considerable, darkness was coming on, and she had a sense
+of being surrounded.  It agitated her, but she pulled herself together,
+stood still and admonished herself.  She called herself a fool; she asked
+herself if she was going to be a coward.  She laughed out loud at her own
+apprehension; but a chill stole into her blood when she heard near by--
+there was no doubt about it now--mockery of her own laughter.  Then
+suddenly, before she could organize her senses, a score of men seemed to
+rise up from the ground around her, to burst out from the bushes, to drop
+from the trees, and to storm upon her.  She had only time to realize that
+they were Romanys, before scarfs were thrown around her head, bound
+around her body, and, unconscious, she was carried away into the deep
+woods.
+
+When she regained consciousness Fleda found herself in a tent, set in a
+kind of prairie amphitheatre valanced by shrubs and trees.  Bright fires
+burned here and there, and dark-featured men squatted upon the ground,
+cared for their horses, or busied themselves near two large caravans, at
+the doors or on the steps of which now and again appeared a woman.
+
+She had waked without moving, had observed the scene without drawing the
+attention of a man--a sentry--who sat beside the tent-door.  The tent was
+empty save for herself.  There was little in it besides the camp-bed
+against the tent wall, upon which she lay, and the cushions supporting
+her head.  She had waked carefully, as it were: as though some inward
+monitor had warned her of impending danger.  She realized that she had
+been kidnapped by Romanys, and that the hand behind the business was that
+of Jethro Fawe.  The adventurous and reckless Fawe family had its many
+adherents in the Romany world, and Jethro was its head, the hereditary
+claimant for its leadership.
+
+Notwithstanding the Ry of Rys' prohibition, there had drawn nearer and
+ever nearer to him, from the Romany world he had abandoned, many of his
+people, never, however, actually coming within his vision till the
+appearance of Jethro Fawe.  Here and there on the prairie, to a point
+just beyond Gabriel Druse's horizon, they had come from all parts of the
+world; and Jethro, reckless and defiant under the Sentence, and knowing
+that the chances against his life were a million to one, had determined
+on one bold stroke which, if it failed, would make his fate no worse,
+and, if it succeeded, would give him his wife and, maybe, headship over
+all the Romany world.  For weeks he had planned, watched and waited,
+filling the woods with his adherents, secretly following Fleda day by
+day, until, at last, the place, the opportunity, seemed perfect; and here
+she lay in a Romany tan once more, with the flickering fires outside in
+the night, and the sentry at her doorway.  This watchman was not Jethro
+Fawe, but she knew well that Jethro was not far off.
+
+Through the open door of the tent, for some minutes, her eyes studied the
+segment of the circle within her vision, and she realized that here was
+an organized attempt to force her back into the Romany world.  If she
+repudiated the Gorgio life and acknowledged herself a Romany once again,
+she knew her safety would be secured; but in truth she had no fear for
+her life, for no one would dare to defy the Ry of Rys so far as to kill
+his daughter.  But she was in danger of another kind--in deep and
+terrible danger; and she knew it well.  As the thought of it took
+possession of her, her heart seemed almost to burst.  Not fear, but anger
+and emotion possessed her.  All the Romany in her stormed back again from
+the past.  It sent her to her feet with a scarcely smothered cry.  She
+was not quicker, however, than was the figure at the tent door, which,
+with a half-dozen others, sprang up as she appeared.  A hand was raised,
+and, as if by magic, groups of Gipsies, some sitting, some standing, some
+with the Gipsy fiddle, one or two with flutes, began a Romany chant in a
+high, victorious key, and women threw upon the fire powders from which
+flamed up many coloured lights.
+
+In a moment the camp was transformed.  From the woods around came
+swarthy-faced men, with great gold rings in their ears and bright scarfs
+around their necks or waists, some of them handsome, dirty and insolent;
+others ugly, watchful, and quiet in manner and face; others still most
+friendly and kind in face and manner.  All showed instant respect for
+Fleda.  They raised their hands in a gesture of salutation as a Zulu
+chief thrusts up a long arm and shouts "Inkoos!" to one whom he honours.
+Some, however, made the sweeping Oriental gesture of the right hand, palm
+upward, and almost touching the ground--a sign of obedience and infinite
+respect.  It had all been well arranged.  Skilfully managed as it was,
+however, there was something in it deeper than theatrical display or
+dramatic purpose.
+
+It was clear that many of them were deeply moved at being in the presence
+of the daughter of the Ry of Rys, who had for so long exiled himself.
+Racial, family, clan feeling spoke in voice and gesture, in look and
+attitude; but yet there were small groups of younger men whose
+salutations were perfunctory, not to say mocking.  These were they who
+resented deeply Fleda's defection, and truthfully felt that she had
+passed out of their circle for ever; that she despised them, and looked
+down on them from another sphere.  They were all about the age of Jethro
+Fawe, but were of a less civilized type, and had semi-barbarism written
+all over them.  Unlike Jethro they had never known the world of cities.
+They repudiated Fleda, because their ambition could not reach to her.
+They recognized the touch of fashion and of form, of a worldly education,
+of a convention which lifted her away from the tan and the caravan, from
+the everlasting itinerary.  They had not had Jethro's experiences in
+fashionable hotels of Europe, at midnight parties, at gay suppers, at
+garish dances, where Gorgio ladies answered the amorous looks of the
+ambitious Romany with the fiddle at his chin.  Because these young
+Romanys knew they dare not aspire, they were resentful; but Jethro,
+the head of the rival family and the son of the dead claimant to the
+headship, had not such compulsory modesty.  He had ranged far and wide,
+and his expectations were extensive.  He was nowhere to be seen in the
+groups which sang and gestured in the light of the many coloured fires,
+though once or twice Fleda's quickened ear detected his voice, exulting,
+in the chorus of song.
+
+Presently, as she stood watching, listening, and strangely moved in spite
+of herself by the sudden dramatic turn which things had taken, a seat was
+brought to her.  It was a handsome stool, looted perhaps from some
+chateau in the Old World, and over it was thrown a dark-red cloth which
+gave a semblance of dignity to the seat of authority, which it was meant
+to be.
+
+Fleda did not refuse the honour.  She had choked back the indignant words
+which had rushed to her lips as she left the tent where she had been
+lying.  Prudence had bade her await developments.  She could not yet make
+up her mind what to do.  It was clear that a bold and deep purpose lay
+behind it all, and she could not tell how far-reaching it was, nor what
+it represented of rebellion against her father's authority.  That it did
+represent rebellion she had no doubt.  She was well enough aware of the
+claims of Jethro's dead father to the leadership, abandoned for three
+thousand pounds and marriage with herself; and she was also aware that
+while her father's mysterious isolation might possibly have developed a
+reverence for him, yet active pressure and calumny might well have done
+its work.  Also, if the marriage was repudiated, Jethro would be
+justified in resuming the family claim to the leadership.
+
+She seated herself upon the scarlet seat with a gesture of thanks, while
+the salutations and greetings increased; then she awaited events,
+thrilled by the weird and pleasant music, with its touches of Eastern
+fantasy.  In spite of herself she was moved, as Romanys, men and women,
+ran forward in excitement with arms raised towards her as though they
+meant to strike her, then suddenly stopped short, made obeisance, called
+a greeting, and ran backwards to their places.
+
+Presently a group of men began a ceremony or ritual, before which the
+spectators now and again covered their eyes, or bent their heads low,
+or turned their backs, and raised their hands in a sort of ascription.
+As the ceremony neared its end, with its strange genuflections, a woman
+dressed in white was brought forward, her hands bound behind her, her
+hair falling over her shoulders, and after a moment of apparent
+denunciation on the part of the head of the ceremony, she was suddenly
+thrown to the ground, and the pretence of drawing a knife across her
+throat was made.  As Fleda watched it she shuddered, but presently braced
+herself, because she knew that this ritual was meant to show what the end
+must be of those who, like herself, proved traitor to the traditions of
+race.
+
+It was at this point, when fifty knives flashed in the air, with vengeful
+exclamations, that Jethro Fawe appeared in the midst of the crowd.  He
+was dressed in the well-known clothes which he had worn since the day he
+first declared himself at Gabriel Druse's home, and, compared with his
+friends around him, he showed to advantage.  There was command in his
+bearing, and experience of life had given him primitive distinction.
+
+For a moment he stood looking at Fleda in undisguised admiration, for
+she made a remarkable picture.  Animal beauty was hers, too.  There was a
+delicate, athletic charm in her body and bearing; but it added to, rather
+than took away from, the authority of her presence, so differing from
+Jethro.  She had never compared herself with others, and her passionate
+intelligence would have rebelled against the supremacy of the body.  She
+had no physical vanity, but she had some mental vanity, and it placed
+mind so far above matter that her beauty played no part in her
+calculations.  At sight of him, Fleda's blood quickened, but in
+indignation and in no other sense.  As he came towards her, however,
+despising his vanity as she did, she felt how much he was above all those
+by whom he was surrounded.  She realized his talent, and it almost made
+her forget his cunning and his loathsomeness.  As he came near to her he
+made a slight gesture to someone in the crowd, and a chorus of
+salutations rose.
+
+Composed and still she waited for him to come quite close to her, and the
+look in her face was like that of one who was scarcely conscious of what
+was passing around her, whose eyes saw distant things of infinite moment.
+
+A few feet away from her he spoke.
+
+"Daughter of the Ry of Rys, you are among your own people once again,"
+he said.  "From everywhere in the world they have come to show their love
+for you.  You would not have come to them of your own free will, because
+a madness 'got hold of you, and so they came to you.  You cut yourself
+off from them and told yourself you had become a Gorgio.  But that was
+only your madness; and madness can be cured.  We are the Fawes, the
+ancient Fawes, who ruled the Romany people before the Druses came to
+power.  We are of the ancient blood, yet we are faithful to the Druse
+that rules over us.  His word prevails, although his daughter is mad.
+Daughter of the Ry of Rys, you have seen us once again.  We have sung to
+you; we have spoken to you; we have told you what is in our hearts; we
+have shown you how good is the end of those who are faithful, and how
+terrible is the end of the traitor.  Do not forget it.  Speak to us."
+
+Fleda had a fierce desire to spring to her feet and declare to them all
+that the sentence of the patrin had been passed upon Jethro Fawe, but she
+laid a hand upon herself.  She knew they were unaware that the Sentence
+had been passed, else they would not have been with Jethro.  In that case
+none would give him food or shelter or the hand of friendship; none dare
+show him any kindness; and it was the law that any one against whom he
+committed an offence, however small, might take his life.  The Sentence
+had been like a cloud upon her mind ever since her father had passed it;
+she could not endure the thought of it.  She could not bring herself to
+speak of it--to denounce him.  Sooner or later the Sentence would reach
+every Romany everywhere, and Jethro would pass into the darkness of
+oblivion, not in his own time nor in the time of Fate.  The man was
+abhorrent to her, yet his claim was there.  Mad and bad as it was, he
+made his claim of her upon ancient rights, and she was still enough a
+Romany to see his point of view.
+
+Getting to her feet slowly, she ignored Jethro, looked into the face of
+the crowd, and said:
+
+"I am the daughter of the Ry of Rys still, though I am a Romany no
+longer.  I made a pledge to be no more a Romany and I will keep it; yet
+you and all Romany people are dear to me because through long generations
+the Druses have been of you.  You have brought me here against my will.
+Do you think the Ry of Rys will forgive that?  In your words you have
+been kind to me, but yet you have threatened me.  Do you think that a
+Druse has any fear?  Did a Druse ever turn his cheek to be smitten?  You
+know what the Druses are.  I am a Druse still.  I will not talk longer,
+I have nothing to say to you all except that you must take me back to my
+father, and I will see that he forgives you.  Some of you have done this
+out of love; some of you have done it out of hate; yet set me free again
+upon the path to my home, and I shall forget it, and the Ry of Rys will
+forget it."
+
+At that instant there suddenly came forward from the doorway of a tent
+on the outskirts of the crowd a stalwart woman, with a strong face and
+a self-reliant manner.  She was still young, but her slightly pockmarked
+countenance showed the wear and tear of sorrow of some kind.  She had,
+indeed, lost her husband and her father in the Montenegrin wars.
+Hastening forward to Fleda she reached out a hand.
+
+"Come with me," she said; "come and sleep in my tent to-night.  To-morrow
+you shall go back to the Ry of Rys, perhaps.  Come with me."
+
+There was a sudden murmuring in the crowd, which was stilled by a motion
+of Jethro Fawe's hand, and a moment afterwards Fleda gave her hand to the
+woman.
+
+"I will go with you," Fleda said.  Then she turned to Jethro: "I wish to
+speak to you alone, Jethro Fawe," she added.
+
+He laughed triumphantly.  "The wife of Jethro Fawe wishes to speak with
+him," he bombastically cried aloud to the assembled people, and he
+prepared to follow Fleda.
+
+As Fleda entered the woman's tent a black-eyed girl, with tousled hair
+and a bold, sensual face, ran up to Jethro, and in an undertone of evil
+suggestion said to him:
+
+"To-night is yours, Jethro.  You can make tomorrow sure."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE SECRET MAN
+
+"You are wasting your time."
+
+Fleda said the words with a quiet determination, and yet in the tone was
+a slight over-emphasis which was like a call upon reserve forces within
+herself.
+
+"Time is nothing to me," was the complete reply, clothed in a tone of
+soft irony.  "I'm young enough to waste it.  I've plenty of it in my
+knapsack."
+
+"Have you forgotten the Sentence of the Patrin?"  Fleda asked the
+question in a voice which showed a sudden access of determination.
+
+"He will have to wipe it out after to-morrow," replied the other with a
+gleam of sulky meaning and furtive purpose in his eyes.
+
+"If you mean that I will change my mind to-morrow, and be your wife, and
+return to the Gipsy life, it is the thought of a fool.  I asked you to
+come here to speak with me because I was sure I could make you see things
+as they truly are.  I wanted to explain why I did not tell the Romanys
+outside there that the Sentence had been passed on you.  I did not tell
+them because I can't forget that your people and my people have been sib
+for hundreds of years; that you and I were children together; that we
+were sealed to one another when neither of us could have any say about
+it.  If I had remained a Gipsy, who can tell--my mind might have
+become like yours!  I think there must be something rash and bad in me
+somewhere, because I tell you frankly now that a chord in my heart rang
+when you made your wild speeches to me there in the hut in the Wood
+months ago, even when I hated you, knowing you for what you are."
+
+"That was because there was another man," interjected Jethro.
+
+She inclined her head.  "Yes, it was partly because of another man,"
+she replied.  "It is a man who suffers because of you.  When he was alone
+among his foes, a hundred to one, you betrayed him.  That itself would
+have made me despise you to the end of my life, even if the man had been
+nothing at all to me.
+
+"It was a low, cowardly thing to do.  You did it; and if you were my
+brother, I would hate you for it; if you were my father, I should leave
+your house; if you were my husband, I should kill you.  I asked you to
+speak with me now because I thought that if you would go away--far away--
+promising never to cross my father's path, or my path, again, I could get
+him to withdraw the Sentence.  You have kidnapped me.  Where do you think
+you are?  In Mesopotamia?  You can't break the law of this country and
+escape as you would there.  They don't take count of Romany custom here.
+Not only you, but every one of the Fawes here will be punished if the law
+reaches for your throat.  I want you to escape, and I tell you to go now.
+Go back to Europe.  I advise you this for your own sake--because you are
+a Fawe and of the clan."
+
+The blood mounted to Jethro's forehead, and he made an angry gesture.
+"And leave you here for him!  'Mi Duvel!'  I can only die once, and I
+would rather die near you than far away," he exclaimed.
+
+His eyes had a sardonic look, there was a savage edge to his tongue, yet
+his face was flushed with devouring emotion and he was quivering with
+hope.  That which he called love was flooding the field of his feelings,
+and the mad thing--the toxic impulse which is deep in the brain of
+Eastern races bled into his brain now.  He was reckless, rebellious
+against fate, insanely wilful, and what she had said concerning Ingolby
+had roused in him the soul of Cain.
+
+She realized it, and she was apprehensive of some desperate act; yet she
+had no physical fear of him.  Something seemed to tell her that, no
+matter what happened, Ingolby would not wait for her in vain, and that
+he would yet see her enter to him again with the love-light in her eyes.
+
+"But listen to me," Jethro said, with an unnatural shining in his eyes,
+his voice broken in its passion.  "You think you can come it over me with
+your Gorgio talk and the clever things you've learned in the Gorgio
+world.  You try to look down on me.  I'm as well born or as ill born as
+you.  The only difference between us is the way you dress, the way you
+live and use your tongue.  All that belongs to the life of the cities.
+Anyone can learn it.  Anyone well born like you and me, with a little
+practice, can talk like Gorgio dukes and earls.  I've been among them and
+I know.  I've had my friends among them, too.  I've got the hang of it
+all.  It's no good to me, and I don't want it.  It's all part of a set
+piece.  There's no independence in that life; you live by rule.  Diable!
+I know.  I've been in palaces; I've played my fiddle to the women in high
+places who can't blush.  It's no good; it brings nothing in the end.
+It's all hollow.  Look at our people there."  He swept a hand to the tent
+door.
+
+"They're tanned and rough, as all out-door things are rough, but they've
+got their share of happiness, and every day has its pleasures.  Listen to
+them!" he cried with a gesture of exultation.  "Listen to that!"
+
+The colour slowly left Fleda's face.  Outside in the light of the dying
+fires, under the glittering stars, in the shade of the trees, groups of
+Romanys were singing the Romany wedding melody, called "The Song of the
+Sealing."  It was not like the ringing of wedding bells alone, it sealed
+blessing upon the man and the woman.  It was a poem in praise of marriage
+passion; it was a paean proclaiming the accomplishment of life.  Crude,
+primitive, it thrilled with Eastern feeling; a weird charm was showered
+from its notes.
+
+"Listen!" exclaimed Jethro again, a fire burning in his face.  "That's
+for you and me.  To them you are my wife, and I am your man.  'Mi Duvel'
+--it shall be so!  I know women.  For an hour you will hate me; for a day
+you will resent me, and then you will begin to love me.  You will fight
+me, but I will conquer.  I know you--I know you--all you women.  But no,
+it will not be I that will conquer.  It's my love that will do it.  It's
+a den of tigers.  When it breaks loose it will have its way.  Here it is.
+Can't you see it in my face?  Can't you hear it in my voice?  Don't you
+hear my heart beating?  Every throb says, 'Fleda--Fleda--Fleda, come to
+me.'  I have loved you since you were three.  I want you now.  We can be
+happy.  Every night we will make a new home.  The world will be ours; the
+best that is in it will come to us.  We will tap the trees of happiness
+--they're hid from the Gorgio world.  You and I will know where to find
+them.  Every land shall be ours; every gift of paradise within our reach
+--riches, power, children.  Come back to your own people; be a true
+daughter of the Ry of Rys; live with your Romany chal.  You will never be
+at home anywhere else.  It's in your bones; it's in your blood; it's
+deeper than all.  Here, now, come to me--my wife."
+
+He flung the flap of the tent door across the opening, shutting out the
+camp-fires and the people.  "Here--now--come.  Be mine while they sing."
+
+For one swift moment the great passion and eloquence of the man lifted
+her off her feet; for one instant the Romany in her triumphed, and a
+thrill of passion passed through her, storming her senses, like a mist
+shutting out all the rest of the world.  This Romany was right; there was
+in her the wild thing--the everlasting strain of race and years breaking
+down all the defences which civilized life had built up within her.  Just
+for one instant so--and then there flashed before her a face with two
+blind eyes.
+
+Like a stream of ether playing upon warm flesh, making it icy cold, so
+something of the ineradicable good in her swept like a frozen spray upon
+the elements of emotion, and with both hands she made a gesture of
+repulsion.
+
+His eyes with their reddish glow burned nearer and nearer to her.  He
+bulked over her, driving her back against the couch by the tent wall.
+For an instant like that--and then, with clenched hand, she struck him in
+the face.
+
+Swift as had been the change in her, so a change like a cyclone swept
+over him.  The hysterical passion which had possessed him suddenly
+passed, and a dark, sullen determination swept into his eyes and over his
+face.  His lips parted in a savage smile.
+
+"Hell, so that's what you've learned in the Gorgio world, is it?" he
+asked malevolently.  "Then I'll teach you what they do in the Romany
+world; and to-morrow you can put the two together and see what they look
+like."
+
+With a Romany expletive, he flung back the curtain of the tent and passed
+out into the night.
+
+For a long time Fleda sat stunned and overcome by the side of the
+couch, her brain tortured by a thousand thoughts.  She knew there was no
+immediate escape from the encampment.  She could only rely upon the hue
+and cry which would be raised and the certain hunt which would be made
+for her.  But what might not happen before any rescue came?  The ancient
+grudge of the Fawes against the Druses had gained power and activity by
+the self-imposed exile of Gabriel Druse; and Jethro had worked upon it.
+The veiled threats which Jethro had made she did not despise.  He was a
+barbarian.  He would kill what he loved; he would have his way with what
+he loved, whether or not it was the way of law or custom or right.
+Outside, the wedding song still made musical the night.  Women's voices,
+shrill, and with falsetto notes, made the trees ring with it; low, bass
+voices gave it a kind of solemnity.  The view which the encampment took
+of her captivity was clear.  Where was the woman that brought her to the
+tent--whose tent it was?  She seemed kind.  Though her face had a hard
+look, surely she meant to be friendly.  Or did she only mean to betray
+her; to give her a fancied security, and leave her to Jethro--and the
+night?  She looked round for some weapon.  There was nothing available
+save two brass candlesticks.  Though the door of the tent was closed, she
+knew that there were watchers outside; that any break for liberty would
+only mean defeat, and yet she was determined to save herself.
+
+As she tried to take the measure of the situation and plan what she would
+do, the noise of the music suddenly ceased, and she heard a voice, though
+low in tone, give some sort of command.  Then there was a cry, and what
+seemed the chaotic noise of a struggle followed; then a voice a little
+louder speaking, a voice of someone she remembered, though she could not
+place it.  Something vital was happening outside, something punctuated by
+sharp, angry exclamations; afterwards a voice speaking soothingly,
+firmly, prevailed; and then there was silence.  As she listened there was
+a footstep at the door of the tent, a voice called to her softly, and a
+hand drew aside the tent curtain.  The woman who had brought her to this
+place entered.
+
+"You are all safe now," she said, reaching out both hands to Fleda.  "By
+long and by last, but it was a close shave!  He meant to make you his
+wife to-night, whether you would or no.  I'm a Fawe, but I'd have none of
+that.  I was on my way to your father's house when I met someone--someone
+that you know.  He carries your father's voice in his mouth."
+
+She stepped to the tent door and beckoned; and out of the darkness, only
+faintly lightened by the dying fires, there entered one whom Fleda had
+seen not more than fifty times in her life, and never but twice since she
+had ceased to be a Romany.  It was her father's secret agent, Rhodo, the
+Roumelian, now grizzled and gaunt, but with the same vitality which had
+been his in the days when she was a little child.
+
+Here and there in the world went Rhodo, the voice of the Ry of Rys to do
+his bidding, to say his say.  No minister of a Czar was ever more dreaded
+or loved.  His words were ever few, but his deeds had been many.  Now, as
+he looked at Fleda, his old eyes gleamed, and he showed a double row of
+teeth, not one of which was imperfect, though he was seventy years of
+age.
+
+"Would you like to come?" he asked.  "Would you like to come home to the
+Ry?"
+
+With a cry she flung herself upon him.  "Rhodo!  Rhodo!" she exclaimed,
+and now the tears broke forth, and her body shook with sobs.
+
+A few moments later he said to her: "It's fifteen years since you kissed
+me last.  I thought you were ashamed of old Rhodo."
+
+She did not answer, but looked at him with eyes streaming, drawing back
+from him.  Her embrace was astonishing even to herself, for as a child
+Rhodo had been a figure of awe to her, and the feeling had deepened as
+the years had gone on, knowing as she did his work throughout the world
+for the Ry of Rys.  In his face was secrecy, knowledge, and some tragic
+underthing which gave him, apart from his office, a singular loneliness
+of figure and manner.  He was so closely knit in form; there was such
+concentration in face, bearing and gesture, that the isolation of his
+position was greatly deepened.
+
+"No, you never kissed me after you were old enough to like or dislike,"
+he said with mournful and ironical reflection.
+
+There crept into his face a kind of yearning such as one might feel who
+beheld afar off a promised land, and yet was denied its joys.  Rhodo was
+wifeless, childless, and had been so for forty years.  He had had no
+intimates among the Romany people.  His life he lived alone.  That the
+daughter of the Ry of Rys should kiss him was a thing of which he would
+dream when deeds were done and over and the shadows threatened.
+
+"I will kiss you again in another fifteen years," she said half-smiling
+through her tears.  "But tell me--tell me what has happened."
+
+"Jethro Fawe has gone," he answered with a sweeping outward gesture.
+
+"Where has he gone?" she asked, apprehension seizing her.
+
+"A journey into the night," responded the old man with scorn and wrath in
+his tone, and his lips were set.
+
+"Is he going far?" she asked.
+
+"The road you might think long would be short to him," he answered.
+
+Her hands became cold; her heart seemed to stop beating.
+
+"What road is that?" she asked.  She knew, but she must ask.
+
+"Everybody knows it; everybody goes it some time or another," he answered
+darkly.
+
+"What was it you said to all of them outside?"--she made a gesture towards
+the doorway.  "There were angry cries, and I heard Jethro Fawe's voice."
+
+"Yes, he was blaspheming," remarked the old man grimly.
+
+"Tell me what it was you said, and tell me what has happened," she
+persisted.
+
+The old man hesitated a moment, then said grimly: "I told them they must
+go one way and Jethro Fawe another.  I told them the Ry of Rys had said
+no patrins should mark the road Jethro Fawe's feet walked.  I had heard
+of this gathering here, and I was on my way to bid them begone, for in
+following the Ry they have broken his command.  As I came, I met the
+woman of this tent who has been your friend.  She is a good woman; she
+has suffered.  Her people are gone, but she has a heart for others.  I
+met her.  She told me of what that rogue and devil had done and would do.
+He is the head of the Fawes, but the Ry of Rys is the head of all the
+Romanys of the world.  He has spoken the Word against Jethro, and the
+Word shall prevail.  The Word of the Ry when it is given cannot be
+withdrawn.  It is like the rock on which the hill rests."
+
+"They did not go with him?" she asked.
+
+"It is not the custom," he answered sardonically.  "That is a path a
+Romany walks alone."
+
+Her face was white.  "But he has not come to the end of the path--has
+he?" she asked tremulously.  "Who can tell?  This day, or twenty years
+from now, or to-morrow, or next moon, he will come to the end of the
+path.  No one knows, he least of all.  He will not see the end, because
+the road is dark.  I don't think it will be soon," he added, because he
+saw how haggard her face had grown.  "No, I don't think it will be soon.
+He is a Fawe, at the head of all the Fawes; so perhaps there will be time
+for him to think, and no doubt it will not be soon."
+
+"Perhaps it will not be at all.  My father spoke, but he can withdraw his
+word," she urged.
+
+Suddenly the old Gipsy's face hardened.  A look of dark resolve and iron
+force came into it.
+
+"The Ry will not withdraw.  He has spoken, and it must be.  If he spoke
+lightly he is not fit to rule.  Unless the word of the Ry of Rys is good
+against breaking, then the Romanys are no more than scattered leaves at
+the will of the wind.  It is the word of the Ry that holds our folk
+together.  It shall not bless, and it shall not curse in vain."
+
+Pitying the girl's face, however, and realizing that the Gorgio life had
+given her a new view of things; angry with her because it was so, but
+loving her for herself, he added:
+
+"But the night road may be long, though it is lonely, and if it should be
+that the Ry should pass before the end of the road comes to Jethro, then
+is Jethro freed, since the Word is gone which binds his feet for the
+pitfall."
+
+"He must not die," she insisted.
+
+"Then the Ry of Rys must not live," he rejoined sternly.  With a kindly
+gesture, however, he stretched out his hand.  "Come, we shall reach the
+house of the Ry before the morning," he added.  "He is not returned from
+his journey, and so will not be troubled by having missed you.  There
+will be an hour for beauty-sleep before the sun rises," he continued with
+the same wide smile with which he greeted her first.  Then he lifted up
+the curtain and passed out into the night.
+
+Following him, Fleda saw that the Romanys had broken camp, and only a
+small handful remained, among them the woman who had befriended her.
+Fleda went up to her:
+
+"I will never forget you," she said.  "Will you wear this for me?" she
+added, and she took from her throat a brooch which she had worn ever
+since her first days in England, after her great illness there.  The
+woman accepted the brooch.  "Lady love," she said, "you've lost your
+sleep to-night, but that's a loss you can make good.  If there's a
+night's sleep owing you, you can collect the debt some time.  No, a
+night's sleep lost in a tent is nothing, if you're the only one in the
+tent.  But if you're not alone, and you lose a night's sleep, someone
+else may pick it up, and you might never get it again!"
+
+A flush slowly stole over Fleda's face, and a look of horror came into
+her eyes.  She read the parable aright.
+
+"Will  you  let me kiss you?" she said to the woman, and now it was the
+woman's turn to flush.
+
+"You are the daughter of the Ry of Rys," she said almost shyly, yet
+proudly.
+
+"I'm a girl with a debt to pay and can never pay it," Fleda answered,
+putting her arms impulsively around the woman's neck and kissing her.
+Then she took the brooch from the woman's hand, and pinned it at her
+throat.
+
+"Think of Fleda of the Druses sometimes," she said, and she laid a hand
+upon the woman's breast.  "Lady love--lady love," said the blunt woman
+with the pockmarked face, "you've had the worst fright to-night that
+you'll ever have."  She caught Fleda's hand and peered into it.  "Yes,
+it's happiness for you now, and on and on," she added exultingly, and
+with the fortune-teller's air.  "You've passed the danger place, and
+there'll be wealth and a man who's been in danger, too; and there's
+children, beautiful children--I see them."
+
+In confusion, Fleda snatched her hand away.  "Good-bye, you fool-woman,"
+she said impatiently, yet gently, too.  "You talk such sense and such
+nonsense.  Good-bye," she added brusquely, but yet she smiled at the
+woman as she turned away.
+
+A moment later she was on her way back to Manitou, but she did not get to
+her father's house before the break of day; and in the doorway she met
+Madame Bulteel, whose pale, drawn face proclaimed a sleepless night.
+
+"Tell me what has happened?  Tell me what has happened?" she asked in
+distress.
+
+Fleda took both her hands.  "Before I answer, tell me what has happened
+here," she said breathlessly.  "What news?"
+
+Madame Bulteel's face lighted.  "Good news," she exclaimed eagerly.
+
+"He will see--he will see again?" Fleda asked in great agitation.
+
+"The Montreal doctor said that the chances were even," answered Madame
+Bulteel.  "This man from the States says it is a sure thing."
+
+With a murmur Fleda sank into a chair, and a faintness came over her.
+
+"That's not like a Romany," remarked old Rhodo.  "No, it's certainly not
+like a Romany," remarked Madame Bulteel meaningly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE RETURN OF BELISARIUS
+
+Grey days in the prairie country do not come very often, but they are
+very depressing when they arrive.  The landscape is not of the luscious
+kind; it has no close correspondence with a picture by Corot or
+Constable; sunlight is needed to give it the touch of the habitable and
+the homelike.  It was, therefore, unfortunate for the spirits of the
+Lebanon people that the meeting summoned by local agitators to discuss
+with asperity affairs on both sides of the Sagalac should, while starting
+with fitful sunlight in the early morning, have developed to a bleak
+greyness by three o'clock in the afternoon, the time set for the meeting.
+
+Another strike was imminent in the factories at Manitou and in the
+railway-shops at Lebanon, due to the stupidity of the policy of Ingolby's
+successor as to the railways and other financial and manufacturing
+interests.  If he had planned a campaign of maladroitness he could not
+have more happily fulfilled his object.  It was not a good time for
+reducing wages, or for quarrelling with the Town Councils of Manitou and
+Lebanon concerning assessments and other matters.  November and May
+always found Manitou, as though to say, "upset."  In the former month,
+men were pouring through the place on their way to the shanties for their
+Winter's work, and generally celebrating their coming internment by
+"irrigation"; in the latter month, they were returning from their
+Winter's imprisonment, thirsty for excitement, and with memories of
+Winter quarrels inciting them to "have it out of someone."
+
+And it was in October, when the shantyman was passing through on his way
+to the woods--a natural revolutionary, loving trouble as a coyote loves
+his hole--that labour discontent was practically whipped into action, and
+the Councils of the two towns were stung into bitterness against the new
+provocative railway policy.  Things looked dark enough.  The trouble
+between the two towns and the change of control and policy of the
+railways, due to Ingolby's downfall, had greatly shaken land and building
+values in Lebanon, and a black eye, as it were, had been given to the
+whole district for the moment.
+
+So serious had the situation been regarded that the Mayor of Lebanon,
+with Halliday the lawyer and another notable citizen, all friends of
+Ingolby, had "gone East"--as a journey to Montreal, Toronto, or Quebec
+was generally called--to confer with and make appeal to the directorate
+of the great railways.  They went with some elation and hope, for they
+had arguments of an unexpected kind in their possession, carefully hidden
+from the rest of the population.  They had returned only the day before
+the meeting which was to be held in the square in front of the Town Hall,
+to find that a platform had been built at the very steps of the Town Hall
+with the assent of the Chief Constable, now recovered from illness and
+returned to duty.  To the Deputy Mayor and the Council, the Chief
+Constable, on the advice of Gabriel Druse, had said that it was far
+better to have the meeting in front of the Town Hall where he could,
+on the instant, summon special constables from within if necessary, while
+the influence of a well-built platform and the orderly arrangement of a
+regular meeting were better than a mob oration from the tops of ash-
+barrels.
+
+The signs were ominous.  In a day of sunshine the rebellious and
+discontented spirit does not thrive; on a wet day it is apt to take
+shelter; on a bleak, grey day men are prone to huddle together in their
+anger with consequent stimulation of their passions.
+
+It was a grey enough day at Lebanon, and dark-faced visitors from Manitou
+felt the need of Winter clothing as they shiveringly crossed the Sagalac
+by Ingolby's bridge.  The air was raw and searching; Nature was sulky.
+In the sharp wind the trees shook themselves angrily free of leaves.  The
+taverns were greatly frequented, which was not good for Manitou and
+Lebanon.  Up to the time of the meeting, however, the expected strike had
+not occurred.  This was mainly due to the fact that Felix Marchand, the
+evil genius of Manitou, had not been seen in the town or in the district
+for over a week.  It was not generally known that he was absent because a
+man by the name of Dennis, whose wife he had wronged, was dogging him
+with no good intent.  Marchand had treated the woman's warning with
+contempt, but at sight of her injured husband he had himself withdrawn
+from the scene of his dark enterprises.  His malign influence was
+therefore not at work at the moment.
+
+The tactics of the Lebanon Town Council had been careful and wise.  So
+that the meeting should not be composed only of the roughest elements,
+they privately urged all responsible citizens to attend, and if possible
+capture the meeting for law and order and legitimate agitation.  That was
+why Osterhaut, the town-crier, went about with a large dinner-bell
+announcing the hour of the meeting and admonishing all "good folks" to
+attend.  No one had ever seen Osterhaut quite so cheerful--and he had a
+bonny cheerfulness on occasion--as on this grisly October day when Nature
+was very sour and the spirit of the winds was in a "scratchy" mood.  But
+Osterhaut was not more cheerful than Jowett who, in a very undignified
+way, described the state of his feelings, on receiving a certain
+confidence from Halliday, the lawyer, and Gabriel Druse, by turning a
+cart-wheel in the Mayor's office; which certainly was an unusual thing
+in a man of fifty years of age.
+
+It was a people's meeting.  No local official was on the platform.
+Under the influence of alien elements who, though their co-operation was
+directed against the common enemy, were intensely irritating, the meeting
+became disorderly.  One or two wise men, however, were able to secure
+order long enough to have the resolution passed for forming a Local
+Interests Committee whose duty it would be to see that the people were
+not sacrificed to a "soulless plutocracy."  While the names of those who
+were to form the Committee were being selected, in a storm of disorder
+arising from the Manitou section of the crowd, the sky overhead grew
+suddenly brighter and the sun came out, bringing an instant change.  It
+was as though a hand, which had hypnotized them into anger, restored them
+to good-humour once again.
+
+At this moment, to the astonishment of all, there appeared at the back
+of the platform between Jowett and Halliday the lawyer, the man with a
+tragic history who had been as one buried for weeks past, who had
+vanished from their calculations.  It was their old champion, Ingolby.
+Slowly a hush came over the vast assembly as, apparently guided by his
+friends on the platform, he was given a seat on the right of the
+Chairman's table.
+
+A strange sensation, partly pleasure, partly resentment, passed through
+the crowd.  Why did Ingolby come to remind them of better days gone--of
+his own rashness, of what they had lost through that rashness?  Why had
+he come?  They could not say and do all that they wanted with him
+present.  It was like having a row in the presence of a corpse.  He had
+been a hero to all in Lebanon, but he was not in the picture now.  His
+day was done.  It was no place for him.  Yet it was a pleasant omen that
+the sun broke clear and shining over the platform as Ingolby took his
+seat.  Presently in the silence he half-turned his head, murmured
+something to the Chairman, and then got to his feet, stretching out a
+hand towards the crowd.
+
+For one moment there was silence, a little awestricken, a little painful,
+and then as from one man a great cheer went up.  For a moment they had
+thought him inconsiderate to come among them in this crisis, for he was
+no longer of their scheme of things, and must be counted out, a beaten,
+battered, blind bankrupt.  Yet the sight of him on his feet was too much
+for them.  Blind he might be, but there was the personality which had
+conquered them in the past brave, adroit, reckless, renowned.  None of
+them, or very few of them, had seen him since that night at Barbazon's
+Tavern, yet in spite of his tragedy there seemed little change in him.
+There was the same quirk at the corner of the mouth, the same humour in
+the strong face, not so ruddy now; and strangely enough the eyes were
+neither guarded by spectacles, nor were they shrunken, glazed, or
+diseased, so far as could be seen.
+
+Stretching out a hand, Ingolby gave a crisp laugh and said: "So there's
+been trouble since I've been gone, has there?" The corner of his mouth
+quirked, his eyelids drooped in the old quizzical way, and the crowd
+laughed in spite of themselves.  What a spirit he had to take it all that
+way!
+
+"Got a little deeper in the mire, have you, boys?" he added.  "They tell
+me the town's a frost just now, but it seems nice and warm here in the
+sun.  Yes, boys, it's nice and warm here among you all--the same good old
+crowd that's made the two towns what they are.  The same good old crowd,"
+he repeated, "--and up to the same old games!"
+
+At this point he could scarcely proceed for laughter.  "Like true
+pioneers," he went on, "not satisfied with what you've got, but wanting
+such a lot more--if I might say so in the language of the dictionary, a
+deuce of a lot more."
+
+Almost every sentence had been punctuated by cheers.  His personality
+dominated them as aforetime with some new accent to it; his voice was
+like that of one given up from the dead, yet come back from the wars
+alive and loving.  They never knew what a figure he was until now when
+they saw and heard him again, and realized that he was one of the few
+whom the world calls leaders, because they have in them that immeasurable
+sympathy which is understanding of men and matters.  Yet in the old days
+there never had been the something that was in his voice now, and in his
+face there was a great friendliness, a sense of companionship, a Jonathan
+and David something.  He was like a comrade talking to a thousand other
+comrades.  There was a new thing in him and they felt it stir them.  They
+thought he had been made softer by his blindness; and they were not
+wrong.  Even the Manitou section were stilled into sympathy with him.
+Many of them had heard his speech in Barbazon's Tavern just before the
+horseshoe struck him down, and they heard him now, much simpler in manner
+and with that something in his voice and face.  Yet it made them shrink
+a little, too, to see his blind eyes looking out straight before him.
+It was uncanny.  Their idea was that the eyes were as before, but seeing
+nothing-blank to the world.
+
+Presently his hand shot out again.  "The same old crowd!" he said.
+"Just the same--after the same old thing, wanting what we all want: these
+two places, Manitou and Lebanon, to be boosted till they rule the West
+and dominate the North.  It's good to see you all here again"--he spoke
+very slowly--"to see you all here together looking for trouble--looking
+for trouble.  There you are, Jim Barager; there you are, Bill Riley;
+there you are, Mr. William John Thomas McLeary."  The last named was the
+butt of every tavern and every street corner.  "There you are, Berry--old
+brown Berry, my barber."
+
+At first the crowd did not quite understand, did not realize that he was
+actually pointing to the people whom he named, but presently, as Berry
+the barber threw up his hands with a falsetto cry of understanding, there
+was a simultaneous, wild rush forward to the platform.
+
+"He sees, boys--he sees!" they shouted.
+
+Ingolby's hand shot up above them with a gesture of command.
+
+"Yes, boys, I see--I see you all.  I'm cured.  My sight's come back, and
+what's more"--he snatched from his pocket a folded sheet of paper and
+held it aloft "what's more, I've got my commission to do the old job
+again; to boss the railways, to help the two towns.  The Mayor brought it
+back from Montreal yesterday; and together, boys, together, we'll make
+Manitou and Lebanon the fulcrum of the West, the swivel by which to swing
+prosperity round our centre."
+
+The platform swayed with the wild enthusiasm of the crowd storming it to
+shake hands with him, when suddenly a bell rang out across the river,
+wildly, clamorously.  A bell only rang like that for a fire.  Those on
+the platform could see a horseman galloping across the bridge.
+
+A moment later someone shouted, "It's the Catholic church at Manitou on
+fire!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+AT LONG LAST
+
+Originally the Catholic church at Manitou had stood quite by itself,
+well back from the river, but as the town grew its dignified isolation
+was invaded and houses kept creeping nearer and nearer to it.  So that
+when it caught fire there was general danger, because the town possessed
+only a hand fire-engine.  Since the first settlement of the place there
+had been but few fires, and these had had pretty much their own way.
+When one broke out the plan was to form a long line of men, who passed
+buckets of water between the nearest pump, well, or river, and the
+burning building.  It had been useful in incipient fires, but it was
+child's play in a serious outburst.  The mournful fact that Manitou had
+never equipped itself with a first-class fire-engine or a fire-brigade
+was now to play a great part in the future career of the two towns.
+Osterhaut put the thing in a nutshell as he slithered up the main street
+of Lebanon on his way to the manning of the two fire-engines at the
+Lebanon fire-brigade station.
+
+"This thing is going to link up Lebanon and Manitou like a trace-chain,"
+he declared with a chuckle.  "Everything's come at the right minute.
+Here's Ingolby back on the locomotive, running the good old train of
+Progress, and here's Ingolby's fire-brigade, which cost Lebanon twenty
+thousand dollars and himself five thousand, going to put out the fires
+of hate consuming two loving hamulets.  Out with Ingolby's fire-brigade!
+This is the day the doctor ordered!  Hooray!"
+
+Osterhaut had a gift of being able to do two things at one time.  Nothing
+prevented him from talking, and though it had probably never been tested,
+it is quite certain he could have talked under water.  His words had been
+addressed to Jowett, who drew to him on all great occasions like the
+drafts of a regiment to the main body.  Jowett was often very critical of
+Osterhaut's acts, words and views, but on this occasion they were of one
+mind.
+
+"I guess it's Ingolby's day all right," answered Jowett.  "When you say
+'Hooray!' Osterhaut, I agree, but you've got better breath'n I have.  I
+can't talk like I used to, but I'm going to ride that fire-engine to save
+the old Monseenoor's church--or bust."
+
+Both Jowett and Osterhaut belonged to the Lebanon fire-brigade, which
+was composed of only a few permanent professionals, helped by capable
+amateurs.  The two cronies had their way, and a few moments later,
+wearing brass helmets, they were away with the engine and the hose,
+leaving the less rapid members of the brigade to follow with the ladders.
+
+"What did the Chief do?" asked Osterhaut.  "Did you see what happened to
+him?"
+
+Jowett snorted.  "What do you think Mr. Max Ingolby, Esquire, would do?
+He commandeered my sulky and that rawbone I bought from the Reverend
+Tripple, and away he went like greased lightning over the bridge.  I
+don't know why I drove that trotter to-day, nor why I went on that sulky,
+for I couldn't hear good where I was, on the outskirts of the meeting;
+but I done it like as if the Lord had told me.  The Chief spotted me soon
+as the fire-bell rung.  In a second he bundled me off, straddled the
+sulky, and was away 'fore you could say snakes."
+
+"I don't believe he's strong enough for all this.  He ain't got back to
+where he was before the war," remarked Osterhaut sagely.
+
+"War--that business at Barbazon's!  You call that war!  It wasn't war,"
+declared Jowett spasmodically, grasping the rail of the fire-engine as
+the wheel struck a stone and nearly shot them from their seats.  "It
+wasn't war.  It was terrible low-down treachery.  That Gipsy gent, Fawe,
+pulled the lever, but Marchand built the scaffold."
+
+"Heard anything more about Marchand--where he is?" asked Osterhaut, as
+the hoofs of the horses clattered on the bridge.
+
+"Yes, I've heard--there's news," responded Jowett.  "He's been lying
+drunk at Gautry's caboose ever since yesterday morning at five o'clock,
+when he got off the West-bound train.  Nice sort of guy he is.  What's
+the good of being rich, if you can't be decent Some men are born low.
+They always find their level, no matter what's done for them, and
+Marchand's level is the ditch."
+
+"Gautry's tavern--that joint!" exclaimed Osterhaut with repulsion.
+
+"Well, that ranchman, Dennis What's-his-name, is looking for him, and
+Felix can't go home or to the usual places.  I dunno why he comes back at
+all till this Dennis feller gits out."
+
+"Doesn't make any bones about it, does he?  Dennis Doane's the name,
+ain't it?  Marchand spoiled his wife-run away with her up along the Wind
+River, eh?" asked Osterhaut.
+
+Jowett nodded: "Yes, that's it, and Mr. Dennis Doane ain't careful;
+that's the trouble.  He's looking for Marchand, and blabbing what he
+means to do when he finds him.  That ain't good for Dennis.  If he kills
+Marchand, it's murder, and even if the lawyers plead unwritten law, and
+he ain't hung, and his wife ain't a widow, you can't have much married
+life in gaol.  It don't do you any good to be punished for punishing
+someone else.  Jonas George Almighty--look!  Look, Osterhaut!"
+
+Jowett's hand was pointing towards the Catholic church, from a window
+of which smoke was rolling.  "There's going to be something to do there.
+It ain't a false alarm, Snorty."
+
+"Well, this engine'll do anything you ask it," rejoined Osterhaut.  "When
+did you have a fire last, Billy?" he shouted to the driver of the
+engine, as the horses' feet caught the dusty road of Manitou.
+
+"Six months," was the reply, "but she's working smooth as music.  She's
+as good as anything 'twixt here and the Atlantic."
+
+"It ain't time for Winter fires.  I wonder what set it going," said
+Jowett, shaking his head ominously.  "Something wrong with the furnace,
+I s'pose," returned Osterhaut.  "Probably trying the first heatup of the
+Fall."
+
+Osterhaut was right.  No one had set the church on fire.  The sexton had
+lighted the furnace for the first time to test it for the Winter's
+working, but had not stayed to see the result.  There was a defect in the
+furnace, the place had caught fire, and some of the wooden flooring had
+been burnt before the aged Monseigneur Lourde discovered it.  It was he
+who had given the alarm and had rescued the silver altar-vessels from the
+sacristy.
+
+Manitou offered brute force, physical energy, native athletics, muscle
+and brawn; but it was of no avail.  Five hundred men, with five hundred
+buckets of water would have had no effect upon the fire at St. Michael's
+Church at Manitou; willing hands and loving Christian hearts would have
+been helpless to save the building without the scientific aid of the
+Lebanon fire-brigade.  Ingolby, on founding the brigade, had equipped it
+to the point where it could deal with any ordinary fire.  The work it had
+to do at St. Michael's was critical.  If the church could not be saved,
+then the wooden houses by which it was surrounded would be swept away,
+and the whole town would be ablaze; for though it was Autumn, everything
+was dry, and the wind was sufficient to fan and spread the flames.
+
+Lebanon took command of the whole situation, and for the first time in
+the history of the two towns men worked together under one control like
+brothers.  The red-shirted river-driver from Manitou and the lawyer's
+clerk from Lebanon; the Presbyterian minister and a Christian brother of
+the Catholic school; a Salvation Army captain and a black-headed Catholic
+shantyman; the President of the Order of Good Templars and a switchman
+member of the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament slaved together on
+the hand-engine, to supplement the work of the two splendid engines of
+the Lebanon fire-brigade; or else they climbed the roofs of houses, side
+by side, to throw on the burning shingles the buckets of water handed up
+to them.
+
+For some time it seemed as though the church could not be saved.  The
+fire had made good headway with the flooring, and had also made progress
+in the chancel and the altar.  Skill and organization, combined with good
+luck, conquered, however.  Though a portion of the roof was destroyed and
+the chancel gutted, the church was not beyond repair, and a few thousand
+dollars would put it right.  There was danger, however, among the smaller
+houses surrounding the church, and there men from both towns worked with
+great gallantry.  By one of those accidents which make fatality, a small
+wooden house some distance away, with a roof as dry as wool, caught fire
+from a flying cinder.  As everybody had fled from their own homes and
+shops to the church, this fire was not noticed until it had made headway.
+Then it was that the cries of Madame Thibadeau, who was confined to her
+bed in the house opposite, were heard, and the crowd poured down towards
+the burning building.  It was Gautry's "caboose."  Gautry himself had
+been among the crowd at the church.
+
+As Gautry came reeling and plunging down the street, someone shouted,
+"Is there anyone in the house, Gautry?"
+
+Gautry was speechless with drink.  He threw his hands up in the air with
+a gesture of maudlin despair, and shouted something which no one
+understood.  The crowd gathered like magic in the wide street before the
+house--the one wide street in Manitou--from the roof and upper windows of
+which flames were bursting.  Far up the street was heard the noisy
+approach of the fire-engine, which now would be able to do little more
+than save adjoining buildings.  Gautry, reeling, mumbling and whining,
+gestured and wept.
+
+A man shook him roughly by the shoulder.  "Brace up, get steady, you
+damned old geezer!  Is there any body in the house?  Do you hear?  Is
+there anybody in the house?" he roared.
+
+Madame Thibadeau, who had dragged herself from her bed, was now at the
+window of the house opposite.  Seeing Fleda Druse passing beneath, she
+called to her.
+
+"Ma'mselle, Felix Marchand is in Gautry's house--drunk!" she cried.
+"He'll burn to death--but yes, burn to death."
+
+In agitation Fleda hastened to where the stranger stood shaking old
+Gautry.
+
+"There's a man asleep inside the house," she said to the stranger, and
+then all at once she realized who he was.  It was Dennis Doane, whose
+wife was staying in Gabriel Druse's home: it was the husband of
+Marchand's victim.
+
+"A man in there, is there?" exclaimed Dennis.  "Well, he's got to be
+saved."  He made a rush for the door.  Men called to him to come back,
+that the roof would fall in.  In the smoking doorway he looked back.
+"What floor?" he shouted.
+
+From the window opposite, her fat old face lighted by the blazing roof,
+Madame Thibadeau called out, "Second floor!  It's the second floor!"
+
+In an instant Dennis was lost in the smoke and flame.
+
+One, two, three minutes passed.  A fire-engine arrived; in a moment the
+hose was paid out to the river near by, and as a fireman seized the
+nozzle to train the water upon the building the roof fell in with a
+crash.  At that instant Dennis stumbled out of the house, blind with
+smoke, his clothes aflame, carrying a man in his arms.  A score of hands
+caught them, coats smothered Dennis's burning clothes, and the man he had
+rescued was carried across the street and laid upon the pavement.
+
+"Great glory, it's Marchand!  It's Felix Marchand!" someone shouted.
+
+"Is he dead?" asked another.
+
+"Dead drunk," was the comment of Osterhaut, who had helped to carry him
+across the street.
+
+At that moment Ingolby appeared on the scene.  "What's all this?" he
+asked.  Then he recognized Marchand.  "He's been playing with fire
+again," he added sarcastically, and there was a look of contempt on his
+face.
+
+As he said it, Dennis broke through the crowd and made for Marchand.
+Stooping over, he looked into Marchand's face.
+
+"Hell and damnation--you!" he growled.  "I risked my life to save you!"
+
+With a sudden access of rage his hand suddenly went to his hip-pocket,
+but another hand was quicker.  It was that of Fleda Druse.
+
+"No--no," she said, her fingers on his wrist.  "You have had your
+revenge.  For the rest of his life he will have to bear his punishment
+--that you have saved him.  Leave him alone.  It was to be.  It is fate."
+
+Dennis Doane was not a man of great thinking capacity.  If he got a
+matter into his head it stayed there till it was dislodged, and
+dislodging was a real business with him.
+
+"If you want her to live with you again, you had better let this be as it
+is," whispered Fleda, for the crowd were surging round and cheering the
+new hero.  "Just escaped the roof falling in," said one.
+
+"Got the strength of two, for a drunk man weighs twice as heavy as a
+sober one!" exclaimed another admiringly.
+
+"Marchand's game is up on the Sagalac," declared a third decisively.
+
+The excitement was so great, however, that only a very few of them knew
+what they were saying, and fewer still knew that Dennis Doane had risked
+his life to save the man he had been stalking for weeks past.  Marchand
+had been lying on his face in the smoke-filled room when Dennis broke
+into it, and he had been carried down the stairs without his face being
+seen at all.
+
+To Dennis it was as though he had been made a fool of by Fate or
+Providence, or whatever controlled the destinies of men; as though the
+dangerous episode had been arranged to trap him into this situation.
+
+Ingolby drew near and laid a hand upon Dennis's arm.  Fleda's hand was on
+the other arm.
+
+"You can't kill a man and save him too," said Ingolby quietly, and
+holding the abashed blue eyes of Dennis.  "There were two ways to punish
+him; taking away his life at great cost, or giving it him at great cost.
+If you'd taken away his life, the cost would probably have been your own
+life; in giving him his life you only risked your own; you had a chance
+to save it.  You're a bit scorched-hair, eyebrows, moustache, clothes
+too, but he'll have brimstone inside him.  Come along.  Your wife would
+rather have it this way; and so will you, to-morrow.  Come along."
+
+Dennis suddenly swung round with a gesture of fury.  "He spoiled her-
+treated her like dirt!" he cried huskily.
+
+With savage purpose he made a movement towards where Marchand had lain;
+but Marchand was gone.  With foresight Ingolby had quickly and quietly
+accomplished that while Dennis's back was turned.
+
+"You'd be treating her like a brute if you went to prison for killing
+Marchand," urged Ingolby.  "Give her a chance.  She's fretting her heart
+out."
+
+"She wants to go back to Elk Mountain with you," pleaded Fleda gently.
+"She couldn't do that if the law took hold of you."
+
+"Ain't there to be any punishment for men like him?" demanded Dennis,
+stubbornly yet helplessly.  "Why didn't I let him burn!  I'd have been
+willing to burn myself to have seen him sizzling.  Ain't men like that to
+be punished at all?"
+
+"When he knows who has saved him, he'll sizzle inside for the rest of his
+life," remarked Ingolby.  "Don't think he hasn't got a heart.  He's done
+wrong and gone wrong; he has belonged to the sewer, but he isn't all bad,
+and maybe this is the turning-point.  Drink'll make a man do anything."
+
+"His kind are never sorry for what they do," commented Dennis bitterly.
+"They're sorry for what comes from what they do, but not for the doing of
+it.  I can't think the thing out.  It makes me sick.  I was hunting for
+him to kill him; I was watching this town like a lynx, and I've been and
+gone and saved his body from Hell on earth."
+
+"Well, perhaps you've saved his soul from Hell below," said Fleda.  "Ah,
+come!  Your face and hands are burned, your hair is scorched--your
+clothes need mending.  Arabella is waiting for you.  Come home with
+me to Arabella."
+
+With sudden resolve Dennis squared his shoulders.  "All right," he said.
+"This thing's too much for me.  I can't get the hang of it.  I've lost my
+head."
+
+"No, I won't come, I can't come now," said Ingolby, in response to an
+inquiring look from Fleda.
+
+"Not now, but before sundown, please."
+
+As Fleda and Dennis disappeared, Ingolby looked back towards the fire.
+"How good it is to see again even a sight like that," he said.  "Nothing
+that the eyes see is so horrible as the pictures that come to the mind
+when the eyes don't see.  As Dennis said, I can't get the hang of it, but
+I'll try--I'll try."
+
+The burning of Gautry's tavern had been conquered, though not before it
+was a shell; and the houses on either side had been saved.  Lebanon had
+shown itself masterful in organization, but it had also shown that that
+which makes enemies is not so deep or great a thing as that which makes
+friends.  Jealous, envious, narrow and bitter Manitou had been, but she
+now saw Lebanon in a new light.  It was a strange truth that if Lebanon
+had saved the whole town of Manitou, it would not have been the same to
+the people as the saving of the church.  Beneath everything in Manitou--
+beneath its dirt and its drunkenness, its irresponsibility and the signs
+of primeval savagery which were part of its life, there was the tradition
+of religion, the almost fanatical worship of that which was their master,
+first and last, in spite of all--the Church.  Not one of its citizens but
+would have turned with horror from the man who cursed his baptism; not
+one but would want the last sacrament when his time came.  Lebanon had
+saved the Catholic church, the temple of their faith, and in an hour was
+accomplished what years had not wrought.
+
+The fire at the church was out.  A few houses had been destroyed, and
+hundreds of others had been saved.  The fire-brigade of Lebanon, with its
+two engines, had performed prodigies of valour.  The work done, the men
+marched back, but with Osterhaut sitting on one fire-engine and Jowett on
+the other, through crowds of cheering, roaring workmen, rivermen,
+shantymen, and black-eyed habitants.  When Ingolby walked past Barbazon's
+Tavern arm in arm with Monseigneur Lourde, to the tiny house where the
+good priest lived, the old man's face beaming with gratitude, and with a
+piety which was his very life, the jubilant crowd followed them to the
+very door.  There the sainted pioneer expressed the feeling of the moment
+when he raised his hands in benediction over them and said:
+
+"Peace be unto you and the blessings of peace; and the Lord make his face
+to shine upon you and give you peace now and for ever more."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+MAN PROPOSES
+
+Before sunset, as Ingolby had promised, he made his way towards Gabriel
+Druse's house.  A month had gone since he had left its hospitality
+behind.  What had happened between that time and this day of fate for
+Lebanon and Manitou?
+
+It is not a long story, and needs but a brief backward look.  This had
+happened:
+
+The New York expert performed the operation upon Ingolby's eyes,
+announced it successful, declared that his sight would be restored, and
+then vanished with a thousand dollars in his pocket.  For days thereafter
+the suspense was almost more than Fleda could bear.  She grew suddenly
+thin and a little worn, and her big eyes had that look of yearning which
+only comes to those whose sorrow is for another.  Old Gabriel Druse was
+emphatic in his encouragement, but his face reflected the trouble in that
+of his daughter.  He knew well that if Ingolby remained blind he would
+never marry Fleda, though he also knew well that, with her nature, almost
+fanatical in its convictions, she would sacrifice herself, if sacrifice
+was the name for it.  The New York expert had prophesied and promised,
+but who could tell!  There was the chance of failure, and the vanished
+eye-surgeon had the thousand dollars in his pocket.
+
+Two people, however, were cheerful; they were Ingolby and Jim.  Jim went
+about the place humming a nigger melody to himself, and twice he brought
+Berry the barber to play to his Chief on the cottonfield fiddle.  Nigger
+Jim, though it was two generations gone which linked him with the wilds
+of the Gold Coast, was the slave of fanatical imagination, and in
+Ingolby's own mind there was the persistent superstition that all would
+be well, because of a dream he had had.  He dreamed he heard his dead
+mother's voice in the room, where he lay.  She had called him by name,
+and had said: "Look at me, Max," and he had replied, "I cannot see," and
+she had said again,
+
+"Look at me, my son!"  Then he thought that he had looked at her, had
+seen her face clearly, and it was as the last time they parted, shining
+and sweet and good.  She had said to him in days long gone, that if she
+could ever speak to him across the Void, she would; and he had the
+fullest belief now that she had done so.
+
+So it was that this dreadnought of industry and organization, in dock for
+repairs, cheerfully awaited the hour when he would be launched again upon
+the tide of work-healthy, healed and whole.  At last there came the day
+when, for an instant, the bandages could be removed.  There were present,
+Rockwell, Fleda, and Jim--Jim, pale but grinning, at the foot of the bed;
+Fleda, with her back against the door and her hands clenched behind her
+as though to shut out the invading world.  Never had her heart beat as it
+beat now, but her eyes were steady and bright.  There was in them,
+however, a kind of pleading look.  She could not see Ingolby's face; did
+not want to see it when the bandages were taken off; but at the critical
+moment she shut her eyes and her back held the door, as though a thousand
+were trying to force an entrance.
+
+The first words after the bandages were removed came from Ingolby.
+
+"Well, Jim, you look all right!" he said.
+
+Swaying as she went, Fleda half-blindly moved towards a chair near by and
+sank into it.  She scarcely heard Jim's reply.
+
+"Looking all right yourself, Chief.  You won't see much change in this
+here old town."
+
+Ingolby's hand was in Rockwell's.  "It's all right, isn't it?" he asked.
+
+"You can see it is," answered Rockwell with a chuckle in his voice, and
+then suddenly he put the bandages round Ingolby's eyes again.  "That's
+enough for today," he said.
+
+A moment later the bandages were secured and Rockwell stood back from the
+bed.
+
+"In another week you'll see as well as ever you did," Rockwell said.
+"I'm proud of you."
+
+"Well, I hope I'll see a little better than ever I did," remarked Ingolby
+meaningly.  "I was pretty short-sighted before."
+
+At that instant he heard Fleda's footstep approaching the bed.  His
+senses had grown very acute since the advent of his blindness.  He held
+out his hand into space.
+
+"What a nice room this is!" he said as her fingers slid into his.  "It's
+the nicest room I was ever in.  It's too nice for me.  In a few days I'll
+hand the lease over again to its owner, and go back to the pigsty Jim
+keeps in Stormont Street."
+
+"Well, there ain't any pigs in that sty now, Chief; but it's all ready,"
+said Jim, indignant and sarcastic.
+
+It was a lucky speech.  It broke the spell of emotion which was greatly
+straining everybody's endurance.
+
+"That's one in the eye for somebody," remarked Rockwell drily.
+
+"What would you like for lunch?" asked Fleda, letting go Ingolby's hand,
+but laying her fingers on his arm for a moment.
+
+What would he like for lunch!  Here was a man back from the Shadows, from
+broken hopes and shattered career, from the helplessness and eternal
+patience of the blind; here he was on the hard, bright highroad again,
+with a procession of restored things coming towards him, with life and
+love within his grasp; and the woman to whom it mattered most of all, who
+was worth it all, and more than all where he was concerned, said to him
+in this moment of revelation, "What would you like for lunch?"
+
+With an air as casually friendly as her own, he put another hand on the
+fingers lying on his arm, patted them, and said gaily, "Anything I can
+see.  As a drover once said to me, 'I can clean as fur as I can reach.'"
+
+In just such a temper also they had parted when he went back to his
+"pigsty" with Jim.  To Gabriel Druse he had said all that one man might
+say to another without excess of feeling; to Madame Bulteel he had given
+a gold pencil which he had always worn; to Fleda he gave nothing, said
+little, but the few words he did say told the story, if not the whole
+story.
+
+"It's a nice room," he said, and she had flushed at his words, "and I've
+had the best time of my life in it.  I'd like to buy it, but I know it's
+not for sale.  Love and money couldn't buy it--isn't that so?"
+
+Then had--come days in his own home, still with bandaged eyes, but with
+the bandages removed for increasing hours every day; yet no one at all in
+the town knowing the truth except the Mayor, Halliday the lawyer, and one
+or two others who kept the faith until Ingolby gave them the word to
+speak.  Then had come the Mayor's visit to Montreal, the great meeting,
+the fire at Manitou, and now Ingolby on the way to his tryst with Fleda.
+They had met twice only since he had left Gabriel Druse's house, and on
+the last occasion they had looked each other full in the eyes, and
+Ingolby had said to her in the moment they had had alone:
+
+"I'm going to get back, but I can't do it without you."
+
+To this her reply had been, "I hope it's not so bad as that," and she had
+looked provokingly in his eyes.  Now she knew beyond peradventure that he
+cared for her, and she was almost provoked at herself that when he was in
+such danger of losing his sight for ever she had caught his head to her
+breast in the passion of the moment.  Many a time when he had been
+asleep, with gentle fingers she had caressed his hands, his head, his
+face; but that did not count, because he did not know.  He did, however,
+know of that moment when her passionate heart broke over him in
+tenderness; and she tried to make him think, by things said since,
+that it was only pity for his sufferings which made her do it.
+
+Ingolby thought of all these things, but in a spirit of understanding,
+as he went to his tryst with her at sunset on the day when Lebanon and
+Manitou were reconciled.
+
+                    .........................
+
+He met her walking among the trees, very near the place where they had
+had their first long talk, months before, when Jethro Fawe was a prisoner
+in the Hut in the Woods.  Then it was warm, singing Summer; now, beneath
+the feet the red and brown leaves rustled, the trees were stretching up
+gaunt arms to the Winter, the woods were no longer vocal, and the singing
+birds had fled, though here and there a black squirrel, not yet gone to
+Winter quarters, was busy and increasing his stores.  A hedgehog scuttled
+across his path.  He smiled as he remembered telling Fleda that once,
+when he was a little boy, he had eaten hedgehog, and she had asked him if
+he remembered the Gipsy name for hedgehog--hotchewitchi was the word.
+Now, as the shapeless creature made for its hole, it was significant of
+the history of his life during the past Summer.  How long it seemed since
+that day when love first peeped forth from their hearts like a young face
+at the lattice of a sunlit window.  Fleda had warned him of trouble, and
+that trouble had come!
+
+In his mind she was a woman like none he had ever known; she could
+think greatly, act largely, give tremendously.  As he stood waiting, the
+wonderful, ample life of her seemed to come like a wave towards him.  In
+his philosophy, intellect alone had never been the governing influence.
+Intellect must find its play through the senses, be vitalized by the
+elements of physical life, or it could not prevail.  There was not one
+sensual strain in him, but with a sensuous mind he loved the vital thing.
+He was sure that presently Gabriel Druse would disappear, leaving her
+behind with him.  That was what he meant to ask her to-day--to be and
+stay with him always.  He knew that the Romanys were gathering in the
+prairie.  They had been heard of here and there, and some of them
+had been seen along the Sagalac, though he knew nothing of that dramatic
+incident in the woods when Fleda was kidnapped and Jethro Fawe vanished
+from the scene.
+
+As Fleda came towards him, under the same trees which had shielded her
+from the sun months ago--now nearly naked and bare--something in her look
+and bearing sharply caught his interest.  He asked himself what it was.
+So often a face familiar over half a lifetime perhaps, suddenly at some
+new angle, or because, by chance, one has looked at it searchingly, shows
+a new expression, a new contour never before observed, giving fresh
+significance to the character.  There was that in Ingolby's mind, a depth
+of desire, a resolve to stake two lives against the chances of Fate,
+which made him look at Fleda now with a revealing intensity.  What was
+the new thing in her carriage which captured his eye?  Presently it
+flashed upon him--memories of Mexico and the Southern United States;
+native women with jars of water upon their heads; the erect, well-
+balanced form; the sure, sinuous movement; the step measured, yet free;
+the dignity come of carrying the head as though it were a pillar of an
+Athenian temple, one of the beautiful Caryatides yonder by the AEgean
+Sea.
+
+It smote him as a sudden breath of warm air strikes a face in the night
+coolness of the veldt.  His pulses quickened, he flushed with the soft
+shock of it.  There she was, refined, civilized, gowned like other women,
+with all the manners and details of civilization and social life about
+her; yet, in spite of it all, she did not belong; there was about her
+still something remote and alien.  It had not to do with appearance
+alone, though her eyes were so vivid, and her expression so swift and
+varying; it was to be found in the whole presence--something mountain-
+like and daring, something Eastern and reserved and secret, something
+remote--brooding like a Sphinx, and prophetic like a Sibyl.  But suppose
+that in days to come the thing that did not belong, which was of the
+East, of the tan, of the River Starzke; suppose that it should--
+
+With a great effort he drove apprehension and the instant's confused
+wonder far away, and when, come close to him, she smiled, showing the
+perfect white teeth, and her eyes softened to a dreamy regard of him, all
+he had ever felt for her in the past months seemed concentrated into this
+one moment.  Yet he did not look like a languishing lover; rather like
+one inflamed with a great idea or stirred to a great resolve.
+
+For quite a minute they stood gazing as though they would read the whole
+truth in each other's eyes.  She was all eager, yet timorous; he was
+resolved; yet now, when the great moment had come, as it were, like a
+stammerer fearing the sound of his own voice.  There was so much to say
+that he could not speak.
+
+She broke the spell.  "I am here.  Can't you see me?" she asked in a
+quizzical, playful tone, her lips trembling a little, but with a smile in
+her eyes which she vainly tried to veil.
+
+She had said the one thing which above all others could have lifted the
+situation to its real significance.  A few weeks ago the eyes now looking
+into hers and telling a great story were sealed with night, and the mind
+behind was fretted by the thought of a perpetual darkness.  All the
+tragedy of the past rushed into his mind now, and gave all that was
+between them, or was to be between them, its real meaning.  A beautiful
+woman is dear to man simply as woman, and not as the woman; virtue has
+slain its thousands, but physical charm has slain its tens of thousands!
+Whatever Ingolby's defects, however, infinitely more than the girl's
+beauty, more than the palpitating life in her, than red lips and bright
+eye, than warm breast and clasping hand, was something beneath all which
+would last, or should last, when the hand was palsied and the eye was
+dim.
+
+"I am here.  Can't you see me?"
+
+All that he had regained in life in her little upper room rushed upon
+him, and with outstretched arms and in a voice choked with feeling, he
+said:
+
+"See you!  Dear God--To see you and all the world once more!  It is being
+born again to me.  I haven't learned to talk in my new world yet; but I
+know three words of the language.  I love you.  Come--I'll be good to
+you."
+
+She drew back from him, and her look said that she would read him to the
+uttermost word in his life's book, would see the heart of this wonderful
+thing; and then with a hungry cry, she flung her arms around his neck and
+pressed her wet eyes against his flushed cheek.
+
+A half-hour later, as they wandered back to the house he suddenly
+stopped, put his hands on her shoulders, looked earnestly in her eyes,
+and said:
+
+"God's good to me.  I hope I'll remember that."
+
+"You won't be so blind as to forget," she answered, and she wound her
+fingers in his with a feeling which was more than the simple love of
+woman for man.  "I've got much more to remember than you have,"
+she added.  Suddenly she put both hands upon his breast.  "You don't
+understand; you can't understand, but I tell you that I shall have to
+fight hard if I am to be all you want me to be.  I have got a past to
+forget; you have a past you want to remember--that's the difference.
+I must tell you the truth: it's in my veins, that old life, in spite of
+all.  Listen.  I ought to have told you, and I meant to tell you before
+this happened, but when I saw you there, and you held out your arms to
+me, I forgot everything.  Yet still I must tell you now, though perhaps
+you will hate me when you know.  The old life--I hate it, but it calls
+me, and I have an impulse to go back to it even though I hate it.
+Listen.  I'll tell you what happened the other day.  It's terrible, but
+it's true.  I was walking in the woods--"
+
+Thereupon she told him of her being seized and carried to the Gipsy camp,
+and of all that happened there to the last detail.  She even had the
+courage to tell of all she felt there; but when she had finished, with a
+half-frightened look in her eyes, her face pale, and her hands clasped
+before her, he did not speak for a minute.  Suddenly, however, he seemed
+to tower over her, his two big hands were raised as though they would
+strike, and then the palms spread out and enclosed her cheeks lovingly,
+and his eyes fastened upon hers.
+
+"I know," he said gently.  "I always understood--everything; but you'll
+never have the same fight again, because I'll be with you.  You
+understand, Fleda--I'll be with you."
+
+With an exclamation of gratitude she nestled into his arms.
+
+Before the thrill of his embrace had passed from their pulses, they heard
+the breaking of twigs under a quick footstep, and Rhodo stood before
+them.  "Come," he said to Fleda.  His voice was as solemn and strange as
+his manner.  "Come!" he repeated peremptorily.
+
+Fleda sprang to his side.  "Is it my father?  What has happened?" she
+cried.
+
+The old man waved her aside, and pointed toward the house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+THE SLEEPER
+
+The Ry of Rys sat in his huge armchair, his broad-brimmed hat on his knee
+in front of him.  One hand rested on the chair-arm, the other clasped the
+hat as though he would put it on, but his head was fallen forward on his
+breast.
+
+It was a picture of profound repose, but it was the repose of death.
+It was evident that the Ry had prepared to leave the house, had felt a
+sudden weakness, and had taken to his chair to recover himself.  As was
+evident from the normal way in which his fingers held his hat, and his
+hand rested on the chair-arm, death had come as gently as a beam of
+light.  With his stick lying on the table beside him, and his hat on his
+knee, he was like one who rested a moment before renewing a journey.
+There could not have been a pang in his passing.  He had gone as most men
+wish to go--in the midst of the business of life, doing the usual things,
+and so passing into the sphere of Eternity as one would go from this room
+to that.  Only a few days before had he yielded up his temporary position
+as chief constable, and had spent almost every hour since in conference
+with Rhodo.  What he had planned would never be known to his daughter
+now.  It was Rhodo himself who had found his master with head bowed
+before the Master of all men.
+
+Before Fleda entered the room she knew what awaited her; a merciful
+intuition had blunted the shock to her senses.  Yet when she saw the Ry
+on his throne of death a moan broke from her lips like that of one who
+sees for the last time someone indelibly dear, and turns to face strange
+paths with uncertain feet.  She did not go to the giant figure seated in
+the chair.  In what she did there was no panic or hysteria of lacerated
+heart and shocked sense; she only sank to her knees in the room a few
+feet away from him, and looked at him.
+
+"Father!  Oh, Ry!  Oh, my Ry!" she whispered in agony and admiration,
+too, and kept on whispering.
+
+Fleda had whispered to him in such awe, not only because he was her
+father, but because he was so much a man among men, a giant, with a
+great, lumbering mind, slow to conceive, but moving in a large,
+impressive way when once conception came.  To her he had been more than
+father; he had been a patriarch, a leader, a viking, capable of the fury
+of a Scythian lord, but with the tenderness of a peasant father to his
+first child.
+
+"My Ry!  My father!  Oh, my Ry of Rys!" she kept murmuring to herself.
+
+On either side of her, but a few feet behind, stood Rhodo and Ingolby.
+
+Presently in a low, firm voice Rhodo spoke.
+
+"The Ry of Rys is dead, but his daughter must stand upon her feet, and in
+his place speak for him.  Is it not well with him?  He sleeps.  Sleep is
+better than pain.  Let his daughter speak."
+
+Slowly Fleda arose.  Not so much what Rhodo had said as the meaning in
+his voice, aroused her to a situation which she must face.  Rhodo had
+said that she must speak for her father.  What did it mean?
+
+"What is it you wish to say to me, Rhodo?" she asked.
+
+"What I have to say is for your ears only," was the low reply.
+
+"I will go," said Ingolby.  "But is it a time for talk?" He made a
+motion towards the dead man.  "There are things to be said which can only
+be said now, and things to be done which can only be done according to
+what is said now," grimly remarked Rhodo.
+
+"I wish you to remain," said Fleda to Ingolby with resolution in her
+bearing as she placed herself beside the chair where the dead man sat.
+"What is it you want to say to me?" she asked Rhodo again.
+
+"Must a Romany bare his soul before a stranger?" replied Rhodo.  "Must a
+man who has been the voice of the Ry of Rys for the long years have no
+words face to face with the Ry's daughter now that he is gone?  Must the
+secret of the dead be spoken before the robber of the dead--"
+
+It was plain that some great passion was working in the man, that it was
+wise and right to humour him, and Ingolby intervened.
+
+"I will not remain," he said to Fleda.  To Rhodo he added: "I am not a
+robber of the dead.  That's high-faluting talk.  What I have of his was
+given to me by him.  She was for me if I could win her.  He said so.
+This is a free country.  I will wait outside," he added to Fleda.
+
+She made a gesture as though she would detain him, but she realized that
+the hour of her fate was at hand, and that the old life and the new were
+face to face, Rhodo standing for one and she for the other.  When they
+were alone, Rhodo's eyes softened, and he came near to her.  "You asked
+me what I wished to tell you," he said.  "See then, I want to tell you
+that it is for you to take the place of the dead Ry.  Everywhere in the
+world where the Romanys wander they will rejoice to hear that a Druse
+rules us still.  The word of the Ry of Rys was law; what he wished to be
+done was done; what he wished to be undone was undone.  Because of you he
+hid himself from his people; because of you I was for ever wandering,
+keeping the peace by lies for love of the Ry and for love of you."
+
+His voice shook.  "Since your mother died--and she was kin of mine--you
+were to me the soul of the Romany people everywhere.  As a barren woman
+loves a child, so I loved you.  I loved you for the sake of your mother.
+I gave her to the Ry, who was the better man, that she might be great and
+well placed.  So it is I would have you be ruler over us, and I would
+serve you as I served your father until I, also, fall asleep."
+
+"It is too late," Fleda answered, and there was great emotion in her
+voice now.  "I am no longer a Romany.  I am my father's daughter, but
+I have not been a Romany since I was ill in England.  I will not go back;
+I shall go with the man I love, to be his wife, here, in the Gorgio
+world.  You believed my father when he spoke; well, believe me--I speak
+the truth.  It was my father's will that I should be what I am, and do
+what I am now doing.  Nothing can alter me."
+
+"If it be that Jethro Fawe is still alive he is free from the Sentence of
+the Patrin, and he will become the Ry of Rys," said the old man with
+sudden passion.
+
+"It may be so.  I hope it is so.  He is of the blood, and I pray that
+Jethro has escaped the sentence which my father passed," answered Fleda.
+"By the River Starzke it was ordained that he should succeed my father,
+marrying me.  Let him succeed."
+
+The old man raised both hands, and made a gesture as though he would
+drive her from his sight.
+
+"My life has been wasted," he said.  "I wish I were also in death beside
+him."  He gazed at the dead man with the affection of a clansman for his
+chief.
+
+Fleda came up close to him.  "Rhodo!  Rhodo!" she said gently and sadly.
+"Think of him and all he was, and not of me.  Suppose I had died in
+England--think of it in that way.  Let me be dead to you and to all
+Romanys, and then you will think no evil."
+
+The old man drew himself up.  "Let no more be said," he replied.  "Let it
+end here.  The Ry of Rys is dead.  His body and all things that are his
+belong now to his people.  Say farewell to him," he added, with
+authority.
+
+"You will take him away?" Fleda asked.
+
+Rhodo inclined his head.  "When the doctors have testified, we will take
+him with us.  Say your farewells," he added, with gesture of command.
+
+A cry of protest rose from Fleda's soul, and yet she knew it was what the
+Ry would have wished, that he should be buried by his own people where
+they would.
+
+Slowly she drew near to the dead man, and leaned over and kissed his
+shaggy head.  She did not seek to look into the sightless eyes; the
+illusion of sleep was so great that she wished to keep this picture of
+him while she lived; but she touched the cold hand which held the hat
+upon the knee and the other that lay upon the chair-arm.  Then, with a
+mist before her eyes, she passed from the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+THE WORLD FOR SALE
+
+As though by magic, like the pictures of a dream, out of the horizon,
+in caravans, by train, on horseback, the Romany people gathered to the
+obsequies of their chief and king.  For months, hundreds of them had not
+been very far away.  Unobtrusive, silent, they had waited, watched, till
+the Ry of Rys should come back home again.  Home to them was the open
+road where Romanys trailed or camped the world over.
+
+A clot of blood in the heart had been the verdict of the doctors; and
+Lebanon and Manitou had watched the Ry of Rys carried by his own people
+to the open prairie near to Tekewani's reservation.  There, in the hours
+between the midnight and the dawn, all Gabriel Druse's personal
+belongings--the clothes, the chair in which he sat, the table at which he
+ate, the bed in which he slept, were brought forth and made into a pyre,
+as was the Romany way.  Nothing personal of his chattels remained behind.
+The walking-stick which lay beside him in the moment of his death was the
+last thing placed upon the pyre.  Then came the match, and the flames
+made ashes of all those things which once he called his own.  Standing
+apart, Tekewani and his braves watched the ceremonial of fire with a
+sympathy born of primitive custom.  It was all in tune with the
+traditions of their race.
+
+As dawn broke, and its rosy light valanced the horizon, a great
+procession moved away from the River Sagalac towards the East, to which
+all wandering and Oriental peoples turn their eyes.  With it, all that
+was mortal of Gabriel Druse went to its hidden burial.  Only to the
+Romany people would his last resting-place be known; it would be as
+obscure as the grave of him who was laid:
+
+     "By Nebo's lonely mountain, On this side Jordan's wave."
+
+Many people from Manitou and Lebanon watched the long procession pass,
+and two remained until the last wagon had disappeared over the crest of
+the prairie.  Behind them were the tents of the Indian reservation;
+before them was the alert morn and the rising sun; and ever moving on to
+the rest his body had earned was the great chief lovingly attended by his
+own Romany folk; while his daughter, forbidden to share in the ceremonial
+of race, remained with the stranger.
+
+With a face as pale and cold as the western sky, the desolation of this
+last parting and a tragic renunciation giving her a deathly beauty, Fleda
+stood beside the man who must hereafter be, to her, father, people, and
+all else.  Shuddering with the pain of this hour, yet resolved to begin
+the new life here and now, as the old life faded before her eyes, she
+turned to him, and, with the passing of the last Romany over the crest of
+the hill, she said bravely:
+
+"I want to help you do the big things.  They will be yours.  The world is
+all for you yet."
+
+Ingolby shook his head.  He had had his Moscow.
+
+His was the true measure of things now; his lesson had been learned;
+values were got by new standards; he knew in a real sense the things that
+mattered.
+
+"I have you--the world for sale!" he said, with the air of one
+discarding a useless thing.
+
+
+
+
+GLOSSARY OF ROMANY WORDS
+
+Bosh----fiddle, noise, music.
+Bor----an exclamation (literally, a hedge).
+
+Chal----lad, fellow.
+Chi----child, daughter, girl.
+
+Dadia----an exclamation.
+Dordi----an exclamation.
+
+Hotchewitchi----hedgehog.
+
+Kek----no, none.
+Koppa----blanket.
+
+Mi Duvel----My God.
+
+Patrin----small heaps of grass, or leaves, or twigs, or string, laid at
+        cross-roads to indicate the route that must be followed.
+Pral----brother or friend.
+
+Rinkne rakli----pretty girl.
+Ry----King or ruler.
+
+Tan----tent, camp.
+
+Vellgouris----fair.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Agony in thinking about the things we're never going to do
+I don't believe in walking just for the sake of walking
+It's no good simply going--you've got to go somewhere
+Most honest thing I ever heard, but it's not the most truthful
+Women may leave you in the bright days
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FOR THE ENTIRE "WORLD FOR SALE":
+
+Agony in thinking about the things we're never going to do
+I don't believe in walking just for the sake of walking
+It's no good simply going--you've got to go somewhere
+Most honest thing I ever heard, but it's not the most truthful
+Saw how futile was much competition
+They think that if a vote's worth having it's worth paying for
+When you strike your camp, put out the fires
+Women may leave you in the bright days
+You never can really overtake a newspaper lie
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORLD FOR SALE, ENTIRE ***
+
+******* This file should be named gp11110.txt or gp11110.zip ********
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, gp11111.txt
+VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, gp11110a.txt
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we usually do not
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance
+of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
+Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections,
+even years after the official publication date.
+
+Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til
+midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
+The official release date of all Project Gutenberg eBooks is at
+Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A
+preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
+and editing by those who wish to do so.
+
+Most people start at our Web sites at:
+http://gutenberg.net or
+http://promo.net/pg
+
+These Web sites include award-winning information about Project
+Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new
+eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!).
+
+
+Those of you who want to download any eBook before announcement
+can get to them as follows, and just download by date.  This is
+also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the
+indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an
+announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter.
+
+http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext03 or
+ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext03
+
+Or /etext02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90
+
+Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want,
+as it appears in our Newsletters.
+
+
+Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
+
+We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.  The
+time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
+to get any eBook selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
+searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.   Our
+projected audience is one hundred million readers.  If the value
+per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
+million dollars per hour in 2002 as we release over 100 new text
+files per month:  1240 more eBooks in 2001 for a total of 4000+
+We are already on our way to trying for 2000 more eBooks in 2002
+If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total
+will reach over half a trillion eBooks given away by year's end.
+
+The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away 1 Trillion eBooks!
+This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
+which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users.
+
+Here is the briefest record of our progress (* means estimated):
+
+eBooks Year Month
+
+    1  1971 July
+   10  1991 January
+  100  1994 January
+ 1000  1997 August
+ 1500  1998 October
+ 2000  1999 December
+ 2500  2000 December
+ 3000  2001 November
+ 4000  2001 October/November
+ 6000  2002 December*
+ 9000  2003 November*
+10000  2004 January*
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created
+to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people
+and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut,
+Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois,
+Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts,
+Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New
+Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio,
+Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South
+Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West
+Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
+
+We have filed in all 50 states now, but these are the only ones
+that have responded.
+
+As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list
+will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states.
+Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state.
+
+In answer to various questions we have received on this:
+
+We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally
+request donations in all 50 states.  If your state is not listed and
+you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have,
+just ask.
+
+While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are
+not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting
+donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to
+donate.
+
+International donations are accepted, but we don't know ANYTHING about
+how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made
+deductible, and don't have the staff to handle it even if there are
+ways.
+
+Donations by check or money order may be sent to:
+
+Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+PMB 113
+1739 University Ave.
+Oxford, MS 38655-4109
+
+Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment
+method other than by check or money order.
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by
+the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN
+[Employee Identification Number] 64-622154.  Donations are
+tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law.  As fund-raising
+requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be
+made and fund-raising will begin in the additional states.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+You can get up to date donation information online at:
+
+http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html
+
+
+***
+
+If you can't reach Project Gutenberg,
+you can always email directly to:
+
+Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>
+
+Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message.
+
+We would prefer to send you information by email.
+
+
+**The Legal Small Print**
+
+
+(Three Pages)
+
+***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS**START***
+Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers.
+They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
+your copy of this eBook, even if you got it for free from
+someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
+fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
+disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how
+you may distribute copies of this eBook if you want to.
+
+*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS EBOOK
+By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+eBook, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
+this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive
+a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this eBook by
+sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
+you got it from. If you received this eBook on a physical
+medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
+
+ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM EBOOKS
+This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBooks,
+is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart
+through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project").
+Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
+on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
+distribute it in the United States without permission and
+without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth
+below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this eBook
+under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
+
+Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market
+any commercial products without permission.
+
+To create these eBooks, the Project expends considerable
+efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
+works. Despite these efforts, the Project's eBooks and any
+medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other
+things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
+disk or other eBook medium, a computer virus, or computer
+codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
+But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
+[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may
+receive this eBook from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook) disclaims
+all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
+legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
+UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
+INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
+OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
+POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
+
+If you discover a Defect in this eBook within 90 days of
+receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
+you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
+time to the person you received it from. If you received it
+on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
+such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
+copy. If you received it electronically, such person may
+choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
+receive it electronically.
+
+THIS EBOOK IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
+TO THE EBOOK OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
+PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+
+Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
+the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
+above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
+may have other legal rights.
+
+INDEMNITY
+You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation,
+and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated
+with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
+texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including
+legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the
+following that you do or cause:  [1] distribution of this eBook,
+[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the eBook,
+or [3] any Defect.
+
+DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
+You may distribute copies of this eBook electronically, or by
+disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
+"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
+or:
+
+[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
+     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
+     eBook or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
+     if you wish, distribute this eBook in machine readable
+     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
+     including any form resulting from conversion by word
+     processing or hypertext software, but only so long as
+     *EITHER*:
+
+     [*]  The eBook, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
+          does *not* contain characters other than those
+          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
+          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
+          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
+          author, and additional characters may be used to
+          indicate hypertext links; OR
+
+     [*]  The eBook may be readily converted by the reader at
+          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
+          form by the program that displays the eBook (as is
+          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
+          OR
+
+     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
+          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
+          eBook in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
+          or other equivalent proprietary form).
+
+[2]  Honor the eBook refund and replacement provisions of this
+     "Small Print!" statement.
+
+[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the
+     gross profits you derive calculated using the method you
+     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
+     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
+     payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation"
+     the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were
+     legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent
+     periodic) tax return.  Please contact us beforehand to
+     let us know your plans and to work out the details.
+
+WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
+Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of
+public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed
+in machine readable form.
+
+The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time,
+public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses.
+Money should be paid to the:
+"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or
+software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at:
+hart@pobox.com
+
+[Portions of this eBook's header and trailer may be reprinted only
+when distributed free of all fees.  Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 by
+Michael S. Hart.  Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be
+used in any sales of Project Gutenberg eBooks or other materials be
+they hardware or software or any other related product without
+express permission.]
+
+*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS*Ver.02/11/02*END*
+
diff --git a/old/gp11110.zip b/old/gp11110.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1ac4318
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/gp11110.zip