sharp
insistence. In the past such a look had been in his eyes when he had
sentenced men to death. They had not died by the gallows or the sword or
the bullet, but they had died as commanded, and none had questioned his
decree. None asked where or how the thing was done when a fire sprang
up in a field, or a quarry, or on a lonely heath or hill-top, and on the
pyre were all the belongings of the condemned, being resolved into dust
as their owner had been made earth again.

"Son of Lemuel Fawe," the old man said, his voice rough with
authority, "but that you are of the Blood, you should die now for this
disobedience. When the time is fulfilled, I will return. Until then, my
daughter and I are as those who have no people. Begone! Nothing that is
here belongs to you. Begone, and come no more!"

"I have come for my own--for my Romany 'chi', and I will not go without
her. I am blood of the Blood, and she is mine."

"You have not seen her," said the old man craftily, and fighting hard
against the wrath consuming him, though he liked the young man's spirit.
"She has changed. She is no longer Romany."

"I have seen her, and her beauty is like the rose and the palm."

"When have you seen her since the day before the tent of Lemuel Fawe now
seventeen years ago?" There was an uneasy note in the commanding tone.

"I have seen her three times of late, and the last time I saw her was an
hour or so since, when she rode the Rapids of Carillon."

The old man started, his lips parted, but for a moment he did not speak.
At last words came. "The Rapids--speak. What have you heard, Jethro, son
of Lemuel?"

"I did not hear, I saw her shoot the Rapids. I ran to follow.
At Carillon I saw her arrive. She was in the arms of a Gorgio of
Lebanon--Ingolby is his name."

A malediction burst from Gabriel Druse's lips, words sharp and terrible
in their intensity. For the first time since they had met the young man
blanched. The savage was alive in the giant.

"Speak. Tell all," Druse said, with hands clenching.

Swiftly the young man told all he had seen, and described how he had run
all the way--four miles--from Carillon, arriving before Fleda and her
Indian escort.

He had hardly finished his tale, shrinking, as he told it, from the
fierceness of his chief, when a voice called from the direction of the
house.

"Father--father," it cried.

A change passed over the old man's face. It cleared as the face of the
sun clears when a clou