cotton-fields of Georgia," the aged barber said.

The son of a race which for centuries had never known country or flag
or any habitat, whose freedom was the soul of its existence, if it had
a soul; a freedom defying all the usual laws of social order--the son
of that race looked at the negro barber with something akin to awe. Here
was a man who had lived a life which was the staring antithesis of his
own, under the whip as a boy, confined to compounds; whose vision was
constricted to the limits of an estate; who was at the will of one man,
to be sold and trafficked with like a barrel of herrings, to be worked
at another's will--and at no price! This was beyond the understanding of
Jethro Fawe. But awe has the outward look of respect, and old Berry who
had his own form of vanity, saw that he had had a rare effect on the
fellow, who evidently knew all about fiddles. Certainly that was a
wonderful sound he had produced from his own cotton-field fiddle.

In the pause Ingolby said to Jethro Fawe, "Play something, won't you?
I've got business here with Mr. Berry, but five minutes of good music
won't matter. We'd like to hear him play--wouldn't we, Berry?"

The old man nodded assent. "There's plenty of music in the thing," he
said, "and a lot could come out in five minutes, if the right man played
it."

His words were almost like a challenge, and it reached to Jethro's
innermost nature. He would show this Gorgio robber what a Romany could
do, and do as easily as the birds sing. The Gorgio was a money-master,
they said, but he would find that a Romany was a master, too, in his own
way. He thought of one of the first pieces he had ever heard, a rhapsody
which had grown and grown, since it was first improvised by a Tzigany in
Hungary. He had once played it to an English lady at the Amphitryon Club
in London, and she had swooned in the arms of her husband's best friend.
He had seen men and women avert their heads when he had played it,
daring not to look into each other's eyes. He would play it now--a
little of it. He would play it to her--to the girl who had set him free
in the Sagalac woods, to the ravishing deserter from her people, to the
only woman who had told him the truth in all his life, and who insulated
his magnetism as a ground-wire insulates lightning. He would summon her
here by his imagination, and tell her to note how his soul had caught
the music of the spheres. He would surround himself with an atmosphere
of