s
threateningly as before. Their dark long hair was encircled by red
handkerchiefs knotted about their brows, and in general they possessed
teeth extraordinarily white gleaming from the duskiest of skins. The
beady sloe-black eyes of the Sergeant were repeated in almost every
face, as well as that indefinable something which in all lands marks the
gipsy race.

The Sergeant spoke again in a language apparently more intelligible than
the deep Romany password with which he had first checked their deadly
intentions.

"You have need of better marksmen," he said; "even the Migueletes could
not do worse than that!"

"Who are you?" demanded a tall grey-headed gipsy, who like the Sergeant
had remained apparently unarmed; "what is your right to be here?"

The Sergeant had by this time seated himself on a detached boulder and
was rolling a cigarette. He did not trouble to look up as he answered
carelessly, "To the Gitano my name is Jose Maria of Ronda!"

The effect of his words was instantaneous. The men who had been ready to
kill him a moment before almost fell at his feet, though here and there
some remained apparently unconvinced.

Prominent among these was the elderly man who had put the question to
the Sergeant. Without taking his eyes from those of the Carlist soldier
he exclaimed, "Our great Jose Maria you cannot be. For with these eyes I
saw him garrotted in the Plaza Mayor of Salamanca!"

The Sergeant undid his stock and pointed to a blood-red band about his
neck, indented deeply into the skin, and more apparent at the back and
sides than in front.

"Garrotted in good faith I was in the Plaza of Salamanca, as this
gentleman says," he remarked with great coolness. "But not to death. The
executioner was as good a _Gitano_ as myself, and removed the spike
which strikes inward from the back. So you see I am still Jose Maria of
Ronda in the flesh, and able to strike a blow for myself!"

The gipsies set up a wild yell. The name of the most celebrated and most
lawless of their race stirred them to their souls.

"Come with us," they cried; "we are here for the greatest plunder ever
taken or dreamed of among the Romany----"

"Hush, I command you," cried the elder man. "Jose Maria of Ronda this
man may be, but we are _Gitanos_ of the North, and need not a man from
Andalucia to lead us, even if he carry a scarlet cravat about his neck
for a credential!"

The Sergeant nodded approval of this sentiment and addressed the