"Yet you knew me to-day, Fin! knew me dressed up like a jack-pudding who tumbles to amuse a score of clowns in a fair?"
"I would know you, father, if you were buried and dug up again. I would know you in another life, if there is another life. Some things the gipsy never forgets. Father, I am your servant; all I have is yours. It is not much. Only a quick eye, a ready hand, and a sharp knife. Do you not wish to be known?"
There was no mistaking his meaning. Katerfelto, notwithstanding his perturbation, felt a thrill of triumph thus to have imposed on the credulity of this rude yet keen-sighted nature. There is professional vanity in every calling, even in that of the professional impostor.
"My life is in danger, Fin," answered the Charlatan gravely, "so far as it may be threatened by any casualty of this lower world. Worse than that, I might lose my liberty, if I could be identified here, for the sage and philosopher, who always made it his boast that he is the gipsy's friend. Therefore I came to the West in the disguise you saw me wear an hour ago. Therefore I speak to you now, dressed as one of those Jesuit priests whom your people have so often sheltered at their need; therefore will I appeal to them for a refuge till I can steal down to the coast and put the blue sea between the gipsy's friend and those who would do him harm. Shoon tu, dost thou listen, my son? Said I well?"
"Tatchipen si, Meero Dado! You speak truth, oh! my father," answered the other. "And you will lodge with us to-night on the moor. The fullest platter shall smoke, and the softest blanket be spread, for the gipsy's friend!"
Katerfelto shook his head. "If I came to your tent and claimed my own, Fin," he asked, "would your welcome be so hearty and free?"
The gipsy's face fell. "I love her," he said. "She was given to me long before you bought her from our people. You told me I should have her back at some future time, father, the morning you took her away. I reminded her of it only yesterday."
The other glanced sharply at him from under his bushy eyebrows. This was scarcely as he expected. Judging from all he knew, he calculated that Waif must have accompanied John Garnet into the West, and had vowed from the moment he discovered her flight, that he would be revenged on both, while he supposed they were in hiding together. He now saw that she must either have required the assistance of her tribe or found it impossible to elude their observation. He knew quite enough of the girl to be sure that even while with her own people she would find opportunities to meet her lover, and from that lover, lately his own emissary, he was still inclined to exact the penalty, that all paid, sooner or later, who ran counter to the designs of Katerfelto.
"Keep her in your tents, Fin," said he with a smile, "and fear no hindrance from me. But remember, though she is of a wandering nature, and comes of a wandering race, a Romany lass may wander too free and too far."
Fin's dark face turned black as night. "I understand you, father," he muttered. "You mean, you mean, that she has a Gorgio lover!"