sed neatly and simply in a grey linen blouse belted at the
waist with a leather belt. A gay plaid, striped of orange and crimson,
hung neatly folded over her shoulder, and she rested her small sunburnt
hand on the silver hilt of a pistol. Black elf-locks escaped from
beneath a red silk kerchief knotted saucily after the fashion of her
companions. But her eyes, instead of being beady and black with that
far-away contemplative look which characterises the children of Egypt,
were bright and sunny and blue as the Mediterranean itself in the front
of spring.

"Come hither, Chica--be not afraid," repeated old Pepe of the Eleven
Wounds, "this is a great man--the greatest of all our race. You have
heard of him--as who, indeed, has not!"

Chica nodded with a quick elfish grin of intense pleasure and
appreciation. "I was listening," she said, "I heard all. And I
saw--would that I could see it again. Oh, if only the like would happen
to me!"

"Tell the noble Don Jose who you are, my pretty Chica," said Pepe,
soothingly.

But the child stamped her sandalled foot. It was still white at the
instep, and the sergeant could see by the blue veins that she had not
gone long barefoot. The marks of a child either stolen for ransom or run
away from home owing to some wild strain in the blood were too obvious
to be mistaken. Her liberty of movement among the gipsies made the
latter supposition the more probable.

"I am _not_ pretty Chica, and I am not little," she cried angrily. "I
would have you remember, Pepe, that _I_ made this plan, which the folk
of Egypt are to execute to-night. But since this is the great brigand
Don Jose of Ronda, who was executed at Salamanca, I will tell him all
about it."

She looked round at the dark faces with which they were surrounded.

"There are new folk among these," she said, "men I do not know. Bid them
go away. Else I will not speak of myself, and I have much to say to Don
Jose!"

Pepe of the Eleven Wounds looked about him, and shook his head. Gipsydom
is a commonwealth when it comes to a venture like this, and save in the
presence of some undoubted leader, all Egypt has an equal right to hear
and to speak. Pepe's authority was not sufficient for this thing. But
that of the Sergeant was.

He lifted his Montera cap and said, "I would converse a while with this
maid on the affairs of Egypt. 'Tis doubtless no more than you know
already, and then, having heard her story my advice is at your servic