ian 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