t's clear, therefore you must smoke.
Every man has some vice or other, if it's only hanging on to virtue too
tight."

He laughed eagerly. Strange that he should have a feeling of greater
companionship for a vagabond like this than for most people he met.
Was it some temperamental thing in him? "Dago," as he called the Romany
inwardly, there was still a bond between them. They understood the glory
of a little instrument like this, and could forget the world in the
light on a great picture. There was something in the air they breathed
which gave them easier understanding of each other and of the world.

Suddenly with a toss Jethro drained the glass of spirit, though he had
not meant to do so. He puffed the cigarette an instant longer, then
threw it on the floor, and was about to put his foot on it, when Ingolby
stopped him.

"I'm a slave," he said. "I've got a master. It's Jim. Jim's a hard
master, too. He'd give me fits if we ground our cigarette ashes into the
carpet."

He threw the refuse into a flower-pot.

"That squares Jim. Now let's turn the world inside out," he proceeded.
He handed the fiddle over. "Here's the little thing that'll let you do
the trick. Isn't it a beauty, Jethro Fawe?"

The Romany took it, his eyes glistening with mingled feelings. Hatred
was in his soul, and it showed in the sidelong glance as Ingolby turned
to place a chair where he could hear and see comfortably; yet he had the
musician's love of the perfect instrument, and the woods and the streams
and the sounds of night and the whisperings of trees and the ghosts that
walked in lonely places and called across the glens--all were pouring
into his brain memories which made his pulses move far quicker than the
liquor he had drunk could do.

"What do you wish?" he asked as he tuned the fiddle.

Ingolby laughed good-humouredly. "Something Eastern; something you'd
play for yourself if you were out by the Caspian Sea. Something that has
life in it."

Jethro continued to tune the fiddle carefully and abstractedly. His eyes
were half-closed, giving them a sulky look, and his head was averted. He
made no reply to Ingolby, but his head swayed from side to side in
that sensuous state produced by self-hypnotism, so common among the
half-Eastern races. By an effort of the will they send through the
nerves a flood of feeling which is half-anaesthetic, half-intoxicant.
Carried into its fullest expression it drives a man amok or makes of
him a ho