io reads. I sat
in my tent and worked with a pen; I saw in the printed sheets what the
world was doing every day. This I did because of what was to come."

"And have you read of me in the printed sheets? Did they tell you where
I was to be found?" Gabriel Druse's eyes were angry, his manner was
authoritative.

The young man stretched out his hands eloquently. "Hail and blessing, my
Ry, was there need of printed pages to tell me that? Is not everything
known of the Ry to the Romany people without the written or printed
thing? How does the wind go? How does the star sweep across the sky?
Does not the whisper pass as the lightning flashes? Have you forgotten
all, my Ry? Is there a Romany camp at Scutari? Shall it not know what is
the news of the Bailies of Scotland and the Caravans by the Tagus? It is
known always where my lord is. All the Romanys everywhere know it, and
many hundreds have come hither from overseas. They are east, they are
south, they are west."

He made gesture towards these three points of the compass. A dark frown
came upon the old man's forehead. "I ordered that none should seek to
follow, that I be left in peace till my pilgrimage was done. Even as
the first pilgrims of our people in the days of Timur Beg in India, so I
have come forth from among you all till the time be fulfilled."

There was a crafty look in the old man's eyes as he spoke, and ages of
dubious reasoning and purpose showed in their velvet depths.

"No one has sought me but you in all these years," he continued. "Who
are you that you should come? I did not call, and there was my command
that none should call to me."

A bolder look grew in the other's face. His carriage gained in ease.
"There is trouble everywhere--in Italy, in Spain, in France, in England,
in Russia, in mother India"--he made a gesture of salutation and bowed
low--"and our rites and mysteries are like water spilt upon the ground.
If the hand be cut off, how shall the body move? That is how it is. You
are vanished, my lord, and the body dies."

The old man plucked his beard again fiercely and his words came with
guttural force. "That is fool's talk. In the past I was never everywhere
at once. When I was in Russia, I was not in Greece; when I was in
England, I was not in Portugal. I was always 'vanished' from one place
to another, yet the body lived."

"But your word was passed along the roads everywhere, my Ry. Your tongue
was not still from sunrise to the end