ook which did not belong to the music alone, and he took a
swift estimate of the situation. Why the man should have any intentions
against him, he could not guess, except that he might be one of the
madmen who have a vendetta against the capitalist. Or was he a tool
of Felix Marchand? It did not seem possible, and yet if the man was
penniless and an anarchist maybe, there was the possibility. Or--the
blood rushed to his face--or it might be that the Gipsy's presence here,
this display of devilish antipathy, as though it were all part of the
music, was due, somehow, to Fleda Druse.

The music swelled to a swirling storm, crashed and flooded the feelings
with a sense of shipwreck and chaos, through which a voice seemed to
cry-the quiver and delicate shrillness of one isolated string--and then
fell a sudden silence, as though the end of all things had come; and on
the silence the trembling and attenuated note which had quivered on
the lonely string, rising, rising, piercing the infinite distance and
sinking into silence again.

In the pause which followed the Romany stood panting, his eyes fixed on
Ingolby with an evil exaltation which made him seem taller and bigger
than he was, but gave him, too, a look of debauchery like that on the
face of a satyr. Generations of unbridled emotion, of license of the
fields and the covert showed in his unguarded features.

"What did the single cry--the motif--express?" Ingolby asked coolly. "I
know there was catastrophe, the tumblings of avalanches, but the voice
that cried-the soul of a lover, was it?"

The Romany's lips showed an ugly grimace. "It was the soul of one that
betrayed a lover, going to eternal tortures."

Ingolby laughed carelessly. "It was a fine bit of work. Sarasate would
have been proud of his fiddle if he could have heard. Anyhow he couldn't
have played that. Is it Gipsy music?"

"It is the music of a 'Gipsy,' as you call it."

"Well, it's worth a year's work to hear," Ingolby replied admiringly,
yet acutely conscious of danger. "Are you a musician by trade?" he
asked.

"I have no trade." The glowing eyes kept scanning the wall where the
weapons hung, and as though without purpose other than to get a pipe
from the rack on the wall, Ingolby moved to where he could be prepared
for any rush. It seemed absurd that there should be such a possibility;
but the world was full of strange things.

"What brought you to the West?" he asked as he filled a pipe, his back