es for the last time someone indelibly dear, and turns to face strange
paths with uncertain feet. She did not go to the giant figure seated in
the chair. In what she did there was no panic or hysteria of lacerated
heart and shocked sense; she only sank to her knees in the room a few
feet away from him, and looked at him.

"Father! Oh, Ry! Oh, my Ry!" she whispered in agony and admiration, too,
and kept on whispering.

Fleda had whispered to him in such awe, not only because he was her
father, but because he was so much a man among men, a giant, with
a great, lumbering mind, slow to conceive, but moving in a large,
impressive way when once conception came. To her he had been more than
father; he had been a patriarch, a leader, a viking, capable of the fury
of a Scythian lord, but with the tenderness of a peasant father to his
first child.

"My Ry! My father! Oh, my Ry of Rys!" she kept murmuring to herself.

On either side of her, but a few feet behind, stood Rhodo and Ingolby.

Presently in a low, firm voice Rhodo spoke.

"The Ry of Rys is dead, but his daughter must stand upon her feet, and
in his place speak for him. Is it not well with him? He sleeps. Sleep is
better than pain. Let his daughter speak."

Slowly Fleda arose. Not so much what Rhodo had said as the meaning in
his voice, aroused her to a situation which she must face. Rhodo had
said that she must speak for her father. What did it mean?

"What is it you wish to say to me, Rhodo?" she asked.

"What I have to say is for your ears only," was the low reply.

"I will go," said Ingolby. "But is it a time for talk?" He made a motion
towards the dead man. "There are things to be said which can only be
said now, and things to be done which can only be done according to what
is said now," grimly remarked Rhodo.

"I wish you to remain," said Fleda to Ingolby with resolution in her
bearing as she placed herself beside the chair where the dead man sat.
"What is it you want to say to me?" she asked Rhodo again.

"Must a Romany bare his soul before a stranger?" replied Rhodo. "Must a
man who has been the voice of the Ry of Rys for the long years have no
words face to face with the Ry's daughter now that he is gone? Must the
secret of the dead be spoken before the robber of the dead--"

It was plain that some great passion was working in the man, that it was
wise and right to humour him, and Ingolby intervened.

"I will not remain," he said to Fleda. To Rho