od or bad; and it was his duty to
obey his Ry of Rys, the only rule which the Romany acknowledged. "Though
he slay me, yet will I trust him," he would have said, if he had ever
heard the phrase; but in his stubborn way he made the meaning of the
phrase the pivot of his own action. If he could but see Fleda face to
face, he made no doubt that something would accrue to his advantage. He
would not give up the hunt without a struggle.

Twice a day Gabriel Druse had placed food and water inside the door of
the hut and locked him fast again, but had not spoken to him save once,
and then but to say that his fate had not yet been determined. Jethro's
reply had been that he was in no haste, that he could wait for what he
came to get; that it was his own--'ay bor'! it was his own, and God or
devil could not prevent the thing meant to be from the beginning of the
world.

He did not hear Fleda approach the hut; he was singing to himself a song
he had learned in Montenegro. There the Romany was held in high regard,
because of the help his own father had given to the Montenegrin
people, fighting for their independence, by admirable weapons of Gipsy
workmanship, setting all the Gipsies in that part of the Balkans at work
to supply them.

This was the song he sang

"He gave his soul for a thousand days,
The sun was his in the sky,
His feet were on the neck of the world
He loved his Romany chi.

"He sold his soul for a thousand days,
By her side to walk, in her arms to lie;
His soul might burn, but her lips were his,
And the heart of his Romany chi."

He repeated the last two lines into a rising note of exultation:

"His soul might burn, but her lips were his,
And the heart of his Romany chi."

The key suddenly turned in the lock, the door opened on the last words
of the refrain, and, without hesitation, Fleda stepped inside, closing
the door behind her.

"'Mi Duvel', but who would think--ah, did you hear me call then?" he
asked, rising from the plank couch where he had been sitting. He showed
his teeth in a smile which was meant to be a welcome, but it had an
involuntary malice.

"I heard you singing," she answered composedly, "but I do not come here
because I'm called."

"But I do," he rejoined. "You called me from over the seas, and I came.
I was in the Balkans; there was trouble--Servia, Montenegro, and Austria
were rattling the fire-irons