had happened over there in the far lands
she knew so well. Who would have hinted at shame, if she had taken him
to her father's tan or gone to his tan and tended him as a man might
tend a man? Humanity would have been the only convention; there would
have been no sex, no false modesty, no babble, no reproach. If it had
been a man as old as the oldest or as young as Jethro Fawe it would have
made no difference.

As young as Jethro Fawe! Why was it that now she could never think of
the lost and abandoned Romany life without thinking also of Jethro Fawe?
Why should she hate him, despise him, revolt against him, and yet feel
that, as it were by invisible cords, he drew her back to that which she
had forsworn, to the Past which dragged at her feet? The Romany was
not dead in her; her real struggle was yet to come; and in a vague but
prophetic way she realized it. She was not yet one with the settled
western world.

As they came close to Ingolby's house she heard marching footsteps, and
in the near distance she saw fourscore or more men tramping in military
order. "Who are they?" she asked of Jowett.

"Men that are going to see law and order kept in Lebanon," he answered.

CHAPTER XIV. SUCH THINGS MAY NOT BE

A few hours later Fleda slowly made her way homeward through the woods
on the Manitou side of the Sagalac. Leaving Ingolby's house, she had
seen men from the ranches and farms and mines beyond Lebanon driving
or riding into the town, as though to a fair or fete-day. Word of
anticipated troubles had sped through the countryside, and the innate
curiosity of a race who greatly love a row brought in sensation-lovers.
Some were skimming along in one-horse gigs, a small bag of oats dangling
beneath like the pendulum of a great clock. Others were in double or
triple-seated light wagons--"democrats" they were called. Women had
a bit of colour in their hats or at their throats, and the men had on
clean white collars and suits of "store-clothes"--a sign of being on
pleasure bent. Young men and girls on rough but serviceable mounts
cantered past, laughing and joking, and their loud talking grated on the
ear of the girl who had seen a Napoleon in the streets of his Moscow.

Presently there crossed her path a gruesomely ugly hearse, with glass
sides and cheap imitation ostrich plumes drawn by gorged ravens of
horses with egregiously long tails, and driven by an undertaker's
assistant, who, with a natural gaiety of soul, d