ypsy
breed, who had come down to the city from their mountain home on the
heights of Montserrat.

The guitar twanged merrily, the reed-like notes of the flute were true
and clear as the song of a thrush. The melody turned and climbed and
twisted, rose to a climax, and re-commenced again the same phrase.
Arithelli listened, hypnotised and bewitched, as she always was by
music.

Something wild and primitive in her responded to the shrill, sweet,
insistent call. She had felt like that before, listening to the
Tziganes on the Rambla, and it was as if the heart were being dragged
out of her body. She thought of the childish story of the Piper of
Hamelin. She could understand now what had made the children follow
him with dancing footsteps, through street to street, on, on from dawn
till dusk.

The guitar-player glanced up in passing and mocked her with laughing
eyes. An orange-coloured scarf left his brown throat exposed, and
there were gold rings in his ears. She kissed her hand and called down
greetings in Spanish, and stood at the window, watching and listening
and longing to run out into the street and follow as the children
followed through the town of Hamelin.

All the joy of life was in those oft-repeated and alluring phrases, the
fall of water, the hum of bees, the shiver of aspen leaves, the slow
music of a breaking wave.

She strained to hear the last faint echoes till all sound was hidden by
a turn of the road, and the brief enchantment was at an end, leaving
her to the realities of life.

She dressed slowly, singing under her breath as she plaited her hair
before Agnes Sorel's mirror. Before she left the room she thrust the
loose sheets of Vardri's letter between the folds of her blouse,
leaving the envelope lying among the bed clothes.

Late in the afternoon one of the "comrades" brought her a cipher
message, warning her of a meeting arranged to take place in the "Black
Hole" up in the hills.

Half an hour after she left the Hippodrome she was in boy's clothes and
riding out to the _rendezvous_ to wait till the others appeared. She
had hoped for the chance of a talk with Emile, but to her surprise he
was not among those who mustered outside the town. She had never known
him to be absent from a meeting before, but it was not her business to
ask questions.

While the rest of the company occupied themselves with long and
bloodthirsty orations, and hatched fresh schemes for the destruction of