than twenty-five years of age. He was so
sparely made, and his face being clean-shaven, he looked even younger.
His clothes were the clothes of the Western man; and yet there was a
manner of wearing them, there were touches which were evidence to the
watchful observer that he was of other spheres. His wide, felt, Western
hat had a droop on one side and a broken treatment of the crown, which
of itself was enough to show him a stranger to the prairie, while his
brown velveteen jacket, held by its two lowest buttons, was reminiscent
of an un-English life. His eyes alone would have announced him as of
some foreign race, though he was like none of the foreigners who had
been the pioneers of Manitou. Unlike as he and Gabriel Druse were in
height, build, and movement, still there was something akin in them
both.

After a short silence evidently disconcerting to him, "Blessing and
hail, my Ry," he said in a low tone. He spoke in a strange language and
with a voice rougher than his looks would have suggested.

The old man made a haughty gesture of impatience. "What do you want with
me, my Romany 'chal'?" he asked sharply.--[A glossary of Romany words
will be found at the end of the book.]

The young man replied hastily. He seemed to speak by rote. His manner
was too eager to suit the impressiveness of his words. "The sheep are
without a shepherd," he said. "The young men marry among the Gorgios,
or they are lost in the cities and return no more to the tents and
the fields and the road. There is disorder in all the world among the
Romanys. The ancient ways are forgotten. Our people gather and settle
upon the land and live as the Gorgios live. They forget the way beneath
the trees, they lose their skill in horses. If the fountain is choked,
how shall the water run?"

A cold sneer came to the face of Gabriel Druse. "The way beneath the
trees!" he growled. "The way of the open road is enough. The way beneath
the trees is the way of the thief, and the skill of the horse is the
skill to cheat."

"There is no other way. It has been the way of the Romany since the time
of Timur Beg and centuries beyond Timur, so it is told. One man and all
men must do as the tribe has done since the beginning."

The old man pulled at his beard angrily. "You do not talk like a Romany,
but like a Gorgio of the schools."

The young man's manner became more confident as he replied. "Thinking on
what was to come to me, I read in the books as the Gorg