ere scowling, flashing, showing teeth,
driving the wordy javelin upon one another, indiscriminately, or two to
one, without a pause; all to a sound like the slack silver string of the
fiddle.

I sang out truce to them; they racked me with laughter; and such
laughter!--the shaking of husks in a half-empty sack.

Ultimately, on a sudden cessation of the storm of tongues, they agreed
that I must have my broth.

Sheer weariness, seasoned with some hope that the broth would give me
strength to mount on my legs and walk, persuaded me to drink it. Still
the old mother declared that none of her men would ever have laid hands
on me. Why should they? she asked. What had I done to them? Was it their
way?

Kiomi's arms tightened over my breast. The involuntary pressure was like
an illumination to me.

No longer asking for the grounds of the attack on a mistaken person,
and bowing to the fiction that none of the tribe had been among my
assailants, I obtained information. The girl Eveleen had spied me
entering Durstan. Quite by chance, she was concealed near Bulsted Park
gates when the groom arrived and told the lodge-keeper that Mr. Harry
Richmond was coming up over the heath, and might have lost his way.
'Richmond!' the girl threw a world of meaning into the unexpected name.
Kiomi clutched me to her bosom, but no one breathed the name we had in
our thoughts.

Eveleen and the old mother had searched for me upon the heath, and
having haled me head and foot to their tent, despatched a message to
bring Kiomi down from London to aid them in their desperate shift. They
knew Squire Beltham's temper. He would have scattered the tribe to the
shores of the kingdom at a rumour of foul play to his grandson. Kiomi
came in time to smuggle me through an inspection of the tent and
cross-examination of its ostensible denizens by Captain Bulsted, who had
no suspicions, though he was in a state of wonderment. Hearing all
this, I was the first to say it would be better I should get out of the
neighbourhood as soon as my legs should support me. The grin that goes
for a laugh among gipsies followed my question of how Kiomi had managed
to smuggle me. Eveleen was my informant when the dreaded Kiomi happened
to be off duty for a minute. By a hasty transformation, due to a
nightcap on the bandages about the head, and an old petticoat over my
feet, Captain William's insensible friend was introduced to him as the
sore sick great-grandmother of the tri