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-