rted up, but strong hands instantly jerked him down.

"He is a gorgio?"

"Yes."

"Do nothing. We do not soil our hands with gorgios. Let the woman bear
the blame. She is a Romany. She should have known better. She is a
woman, the wiser sex. It is her fault. Let her be punished."

"Do you all say so?" George Lane demanded.

"We say so." Again the rippling murmur.

Jan Jacobus made a desperate attempt to get on his feet, but, for all
his strength, he might as well have tried to uncoil the folds of a great
snake as to unbind the many hands that held him, for the Romanys have
as many secret ways of restraining a person as the Japanese.

George Lane drew his wife tenderly close to him.

"She shall be punished," he said, "but first she shall hear, before you
all, that I love her and that I know she has not lost the spirit of our
love. Her fault was born of lightness of heart and vanity, not of evil."

"What is her fault? Name it," commanded Aunty Lee.

George Lane looked over at Jan.

"Her fault is that she trusted a gorgio to understand the ways of a
Romany. For our girls have the spirit of love in their eyes, but no man
among us would kiss a girl unless he received the sign from her. But the
gorgio men are without honour. To-day, as this woman who is mine stopped
to talk with a gorgio, among some trees where I waited, thinking to
enter her wagon there, he kissed her, and she kissed him, in return."

"Not with the _lubbeny_ kiss--not with that kiss!" Dora Parse cried.
"May I be lost as Pharaoh was in the sea if I speak not the truth!"

The solemn oath, never taken by any Romany lightly and never falsely
sworn to, rang out on the still night air. A cold, but firm little hand
was slipped into Dora Parse's. Marda was near, as she had promised, and
the hot palm of the princess closed gratefully upon it.

George Lane drew his wife upon his breast, and over her glossy head he
looked for encouragement to Aunty Lee, who knew what he must do. He was
very pale, but he must not hesitate.

"Kiss me, my love," he said, loudly and clearly, "here before my people,
that I may punish you. Give me the kiss of love, when tongues and lips
meet, that you may know your fault."

Now Dora Parse grew very pale, too, and she leaned far back against her
man's arms, her eyes wide with terror. And no one spoke, for in all the
history of the tribe this thing had never happened before, though every
one had heard of it. Dora Parse knew th