The Romany tribes of all the nations did not know why their Ry had hidden himself in the New World; they did not know that the girl had for ever forsworn their race, and would never become head of all the Romanys, solving the problem of the rival dynasties by linking her life with that of Jethro Fawe. But Jethro Fawe had come to claim his own.
Now Gabriel Druse’s eyes followed his own menacing finger with 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.”