the singing birds had fled, though here and there a black squirrel,
not yet gone to Winter quarters, was busy and increasing his stores. A
hedgehog scuttled across his path. He smiled as he remembered telling
Fleda that once, when he was a little boy, he had eaten hedgehog,
and she had asked him if he remembered the Gipsy name for
hedgehog--hotchewitchi was the word. Now, as the shapeless creature made
for its hole, it was significant of the history of his life during the
past Summer. How long it seemed since that day when love first peeped
forth from their hearts like a young face at the lattice of a sunlit
window. Fleda had warned him of trouble, and that trouble had come!

In his mind she was a woman like none he had ever known; she could
think greatly, act largely, give tremendously. As he stood waiting, the
wonderful, ample life of her seemed to come like a wave towards him. In
his philosophy, intellect alone had never been the governing influence.
Intellect must find its play through the senses, be vitalized by the
elements of physical life, or it could not prevail. There was not one
sensual strain in him, but with a sensuous mind he loved the vital
thing. He was sure that presently Gabriel Druse would disappear, leaving
her behind with him. That was what he meant to ask her to-day--to be
and stay with him always. He knew that the Romanys were gathering in
the prairie. They had been heard of here and there, and some of them
had been seen along the Sagalac, though he knew nothing of that dramatic
incident in the woods when Fleda was kidnapped and Jethro Fawe vanished
from the scene.

As Fleda came towards him, under the same trees which had shielded her
from the sun months ago--now nearly naked and bare--something in her
look and bearing sharply caught his interest. He asked himself what it
was. So often a face familiar over half a lifetime perhaps, suddenly at
some new angle, or because, by chance, one has looked at it searchingly,
shows a new expression, a new contour never before observed, giving
fresh significance to the character. There was that in Ingolby's mind,
a depth of desire, a resolve to stake two lives against the chances of
Fate, which made him look at Fleda now with a revealing intensity. What
was the new thing in her carriage which captured his eye? Presently it
flashed upon him--memories of Mexico and the Southern United
States; native women with jars of water upon their heads; the erect,
well-ba