hand. Fear nothing, my rye. She cannot hurt,
though snake that she is, her bite stings."

The young man did not reply. He was uneasy in one way and relieved in
another. Chaldea certainly had not gone to see Inspector Darby, so she
could not have any intention of bringing the police into the matter. But
why had she gone to London? He asked himself this question and finally
put it to the old woman, who watched him with bright, twinkling eyes.

"She's gone for mischief," answered Gentilla, nodding positively. "For
mischief's as natural to her as cheating is to a Romany chal. But I'm a
dealer of cards myself, rye, and I deal myself the best hand."

"I wish you'd leave metaphor and come to plain speaking," cried Lambert
in an irritable tone, for the conversation was getting on his nerves by
reason of its prolixity and indirectness.

Mother Cockleshell laughed and nodded, then emptied the ashes out of her
pipe and spoke out, irrelevantly as it would seem: "The child has taken
the hearts of the young from me," said she, shaking her grizzled head;
"but the old cling to the old. With them as trusts my wisdom, my rye, I
goes across the black water to America and leaves the silly ones to the
child. She'll get them into choky and trouble, for sure. And that's a
true dukkerin."

"Have you the money to go to America?"

"Money?" The old woman chuckled and hugged herself. "And why not, sir,
when Ishmael Hearne was my child. Aye, the child of my child, for I am
the bebee of Hearne, bebee being grandmother in our Romany tongue, sir."

Lambert started from his seat, almost too astonished to speak. "Do you
mean to say that you are Pine's grandmother?"

"Pine? Who is Pine? A Gentile I know not. Hearne he was born and Hearne
he shall be to me, though the grass is now a quilt for him. Ohone! Hai
mai! Ah, me! Woe! and woe, my gentleman. He was the child of my child
and the love of my heart," she rocked herself to and fro sorrowfully,
"like a leaf has he fallen from the tree; like the dew has he vanished
into the blackness of the great shadow. Hai mai! Hai mai! the sadness of
it."

"Hearne your grandson?" murmured Lambert, staring at her and scarcely
able to believe her.

"True. Yes; it is true," said Gentilla, still rocking. "He left the
road, and the tent, and the merry fire under a hedge for your Gentile
life. But a born Romany he was and no Gorgio. Ahr-r-r!" she shook
herself with disgust. "Why did he labor for gold in the Gentil