"Well, there ain't any pigs in that sty now, Chief; but it's all ready," said Jim, indignant and sarcastic.

It was a lucky speech. It broke the spell of emotion which was greatly straining everybody's endurance.

"That's one in the eye for somebody," remarked Rockwell drily.

"What would you like for lunch?" asked Fleda, letting go Ingolby's hand, but laying her fingers on his arm for a moment.

What would he like for lunch! Here was a man back from the Shadows, from broken hopes and shattered career, from the helplessness and eternal patience of the blind; here he was on the hard, bright highroad again, with a procession of restored things coming towards him, with life and love within his grasp; and the woman to whom it mattered most of all, who was worth it all, and more than all where he was concerned, said to him in this moment of revelation, "What would you like for lunch?"

With an air as casually friendly as her own, he put another hand on the fingers lying on his arm, patted them, and said gaily, "Anything I can see. As a drover once said to me, 'I can clean as fur as I can reach.'"

In just such a temper also they had parted when he went back to his "pigsty" with Jim. To Gabriel Druse he had said all that one man might say to another without excess of feeling; to Madame Bulteel he had given a gold pencil which he had always worn; to Fleda he gave nothing, said little, but the few words he did say told the story, if not the whole story.

"It's a nice room," he said, and she had flushed at his words, "and I've had the best time of my life in it. I'd like to buy it, but I know it's not for sale. Love and money couldn't buy it—isn't that so?"

Then had—come days in his own home, still with bandaged eyes, but with the bandages removed for increasing hours every day; yet no one at all in the town knowing the truth except the Mayor, Halliday the lawyer, and one or two others who kept the faith until Ingolby gave them the word to speak. Then had come the Mayor's visit to Montreal, the great meeting, the fire at Manitou, and now Ingolby on the way to his tryst with Fleda. They had met twice only since he had left Gabriel Druse's house, and on the last occasion they had looked each other full in the eyes, and Ingolby had said to her in the moment they had had alone:

"I'm going to get back, but I can't do it without you."

To this her reply had been, "I hope it's not so bad as that," and she had looked provokingly in his eyes. Now she knew beyond peradventure that he cared for her, and she was almost provoked at herself that when he was in such danger of losing his sight for ever she had caught his head to her breast in the passion of the moment. Many a time when he had been asleep, with gentle fingers she had caressed his hands, his head, his face; but that did not count, because he did not know. He did, however, know of that moment when her passionate heart broke over him in tenderness; and she tried to make him think, by things said since, that it was only pity for his sufferings which made her do it.

Ingolby thought of all these things, but in a spirit of understanding, as he went to his tryst with her at sunset on the day when Lebanon and Manitou were reconciled.

.........................

He met her walking among the trees, very near the place where they had had their first long talk, months before, when Jethro Fawe was a prisoner in the Hut in the Woods. Then it was warm, singing Summer; now, beneath the feet the red and brown leaves rustled, the trees were stretching up gaunt arms to the Winter, the woods were no longer vocal, and the singing birds had fled, though here and there a black squirrel, not yet gone to Winter quarters, was busy and increasing his stores. A hedgehog scuttled across his path. He smiled as he remembered telling Fleda that once, when he was a little boy, he had eaten hedgehog, and she had asked him if he remembered the Gipsy name for hedgehog—hotchewitchi was the word. Now, as the shapeless creature made for its hole, it was significant of the history of his life during the past Summer. How long it seemed since that day when love first peeped forth from their hearts like a young face at the lattice of a sunlit window. Fleda had warned him of trouble, and that trouble had come!

In his mind she was a woman like none he had ever known; she could think greatly, act largely, give tremendously. As he stood waiting, the wonderful, ample life of her seemed to come like a wave towards him. In his philosophy, intellect alone had never been the governing influence. Intellect must find its play through the senses, be vitalized by the elements of physical life, or it could not prevail. There was not one sensual strain in him, but with a sensuous mind he loved the vital thing. He was sure that presently Gabriel Druse would disappear, leaving her behind with him. That was what he meant to ask her to-day—to be and stay with him always. He knew that the Romanys were gathering in the prairie. They had been heard of here and there, and some of them had been seen along the Sagalac, though he knew nothing of that dramatic incident in the woods when Fleda was kidnapped and Jethro Fawe vanished from the scene.

As Fleda came towards him, under the same trees which had shielded her from the sun months ago—now nearly naked and bare—something in her look and bearing sharply caught his interest. He asked himself what it was. So often a face familiar over half a lifetime perhaps, suddenly at some new angle, or because, by chance, one has looked at it searchingly, shows a new expression, a new contour never before observed, giving fresh significance to the character. There was that in Ingolby's mind, a depth of desire, a resolve to stake two lives against the chances of Fate, which made him look at Fleda now with a revealing intensity. What was the new thing in her carriage which captured his eye? Presently it flashed upon him—memories of Mexico and the Southern United States; native women with jars of water upon their heads; the erect, well- balanced form; the sure, sinuous movement; the step measured, yet free; the dignity come of carrying the head as though it were a pillar of an Athenian temple, one of the beautiful Caryatides yonder by the AEgean Sea.

It smote him as a sudden breath of warm air strikes a face in the night coolness of the veldt. His pulses quickened, he flushed with the soft shock of it. There she was, refined, civilized, gowned like other women, with all the manners and details of civilization and social life about her; yet, in spite of it all, she did not belong; there was about her still something remote and alien. It had not to do with appearance alone, though her eyes were so vivid, and her expression so swift and varying; it was to be found in the whole presence—something mountain- like and daring, something Eastern and reserved and secret, something remote—brooding like a Sphinx, and prophetic like a Sibyl. But suppose that in days to come the thing that did not belong, which was of the East, of the tan, of the River Starzke; suppose that it should—

With a great effort he drove apprehension and the instant's confused wonder far away, and when, come close to him, she smiled, showing the perfect white teeth, and her eyes softened to a dreamy regard of him, all he had ever felt for her in the past months seemed concentrated into this one moment. Yet he did not look like a languishing lover; rather like one inflamed with a great idea or stirred to a great resolve.

For quite a minute they stood gazing as though they would read the whole truth in each other's eyes. She was all eager, yet timorous; he was resolved; yet now, when the great moment had come, as it were, like a stammerer fearing the sound of his own voice. There was so much to say that he could not speak.

She broke the spell. "I am here. Can't you see me?" she asked in a quizzical, playful tone, her lips trembling a little, but with a smile in her eyes which she vainly tried to veil.

She had said the one thing which above all others could have lifted the situation to its real significance. A few weeks ago the eyes now looking into hers and telling a great story were sealed with night, and the mind behind was fretted by the thought of a perpetual darkness. All the tragedy of the past rushed into his mind now, and gave all that was between them, or was to be between them, its real meaning. A beautiful woman is dear to man simply as woman, and not as the woman; virtue has slain its thousands, but physical charm has slain its tens of thousands! Whatever Ingolby's defects, however, infinitely more than the girl's beauty, more than the palpitating life in her, than red lips and bright eye, than warm breast and clasping hand, was something beneath all which would last, or should last, when the hand was palsied and the eye was dim.

"I am here. Can't you see me?"

All that he had regained in life in her little upper room rushed upon him, and with outstretched arms and in a voice choked with feeling, he said:

"See you! Dear God—To see you and all the world once more! It is being born again to me. I haven't learned to talk in my new world yet; but I know three words of the language. I love you. Come—I'll be good to you."

She drew back from him, and her look said that she would read him to the uttermost word in his life's book, would see the heart of this wonderful thing; and then with a hungry cry, she flung her arms around his neck and pressed her wet eyes against his flushed cheek.

A half-hour later, as they wandered back to the house he suddenly stopped, put his hands on her shoulders, looked earnestly in her eyes, and said:

"God's good to me. I hope I'll remember that."

"You won't be so blind as to forget," she answered, and she wound her fingers in his with a feeling which was more than the simple love of woman for man. "I've got much more to remember than you have," she added. Suddenly she put both hands upon his breast. "You don't understand; you can't understand, but I tell you that I shall have to fight hard if I am to be all you want me to be. I have got a past to forget; you have a past you want to remember—that's the difference. I must tell you the truth: it's in my veins, that old life, in spite of all. Listen. I ought to have told you, and I meant to tell you before this happened, but when I saw you there, and you held out your arms to me, I forgot everything. Yet still I must tell you now, though perhaps you will hate me when you know. The old life—I hate it, but it calls me, and I have an impulse to go back to it even though I hate it. Listen. I'll tell you what happened the other day. It's terrible, but it's true. I was walking in the woods—"

Thereupon she told him of her being seized and carried to the Gipsy camp, and of all that happened there to the last detail. She even had the courage to tell of all she felt there; but when she had finished, with a half-frightened look in her eyes, her face pale, and her hands clasped before her, he did not speak for a minute. Suddenly, however, he seemed to tower over her, his two big hands were raised as though they would strike, and then the palms spread out and enclosed her cheeks lovingly, and his eyes fastened upon hers.

"I know," he said gently. "I always understood—everything; but you'll never have the same fight again, because I'll be with you. You understand, Fleda—I'll be with you."

With an exclamation of gratitude she nestled into his arms.

Before the thrill of his embrace had passed from their pulses, they heard the breaking of twigs under a quick footstep, and Rhodo stood before them. "Come," he said to Fleda. His voice was as solemn and strange as his manner. "Come!" he repeated peremptorily.

Fleda sprang to his side. "Is it my father? What has happened?" she cried.

The old man waved her aside, and pointed toward the house.



CHAPTER XXVI

THE SLEEPER

The Ry of Rys sat in his huge armchair, his broad-brimmed hat on his knee in front of him. One hand rested on the chair-arm, the other clasped the hat as though he would put it on, but his head was fallen forward on his breast.

It was a picture of profound repose, but it was the repose of death. It was evident that the Ry had prepared to leave the house, had felt a sudden weakness, and had taken to his chair to recover himself. As was evident from the normal way in which his fingers held his hat, and his hand rested on the chair-arm, death had come as gently as a beam of light. With his stick lying on the table beside him, and his hat on his knee, he was like one who rested a moment before renewing a journey. There could not have been a pang in his passing. He had gone as most men wish to go—in the midst of the business of life, doing the usual things, and so passing into the sphere of Eternity as one would go from this room to that. Only a few days before had he yielded up his temporary position as chief constable, and had spent almost every hour since in conference with Rhodo. What he had planned would never be known to his daughter now. It was Rhodo himself who had found his master with head bowed before the Master of all men.

Before Fleda entered the room she knew what awaited her; a merciful intuition had blunted the shock to her senses. Yet when she saw the Ry on his throne of death a moan broke from her lips like that of one who sees for the last time someone indelibly dear, and turns to face strange paths with uncertain feet. She did not go to the giant figure seated in the chair. In what she did there was no panic or hysteria of lacerated heart and shocked sense; she only sank to her knees in the room a few feet away from him, and looked at him.

"Father! Oh, Ry! Oh, my Ry!" she whispered in agony and admiration, too, and kept on whispering.

Fleda had whispered to him in such awe, not only because he was her father, but because he was so much a man among men, a giant, with a great, lumbering mind, slow to conceive, but moving in a large, impressive way when once conception came. To her he had been more than father; he had been a patriarch, a leader, a viking, capable of the fury of a Scythian lord, but with the tenderness of a peasant father to his first child.

"My Ry! My father! Oh, my Ry of Rys!" she kept murmuring to herself.

On either side of her, but a few feet behind, stood Rhodo and Ingolby.

Presently in a low, firm voice Rhodo spoke.

"The Ry of Rys is dead, but his daughter must stand upon her feet, and in his place speak for him. Is it not well with him? He sleeps. Sleep is better than pain. Let his daughter speak."

Slowly Fleda arose. Not so much what Rhodo had said as the meaning in his voice, aroused her to a situation which she must face. Rhodo had said that she must speak for her father. What did it mean?

"What is it you wish to say to me, Rhodo?" she asked.

"What I have to say is for your ears only," was the low reply.

"I will go," said Ingolby. "But is it a time for talk?" He made a motion towards the dead man. "There are things to be said which can only be said now, and things to be done which can only be done according to what is said now," grimly remarked Rhodo.

"I wish you to remain," said Fleda to Ingolby with resolution in her bearing as she placed herself beside the chair where the dead man sat. "What is it you want to say to me?" she asked Rhodo again.

"Must a Romany bare his soul before a stranger?" replied Rhodo. "Must a man who has been the voice of the Ry of Rys for the long years have no words face to face with the Ry's daughter now that he is gone? Must the secret of the dead be spoken before the robber of the dead—"

It was plain that some great passion was working in the man, that it was wise and right to humour him, and Ingolby intervened.

"I will not remain," he said to Fleda. To Rhodo he added: "I am not a robber of the dead. That's high-faluting talk. What I have of his was given to me by him. She was for me if I could win her. He said so. This is a free country. I will wait outside," he added to Fleda.

She made a gesture as though she would detain him, but she realized that the hour of her fate was at hand, and that the old life and the new were face to face, Rhodo standing for one and she for the other. When they were alone, Rhodo's eyes softened, and he came near to her. "You asked me what I wished to tell you," he said. "See then, I want to tell you that it is for you to take the place of the dead Ry. Everywhere in the world where the Romanys wander they will rejoice to hear that a Druse rules us still. The word of the Ry of Rys was law; what he wished to be done was done; what he wished to be undone was undone. Because of you he hid himself from his people; because of you I was for ever wandering, keeping the peace by lies for love of the Ry and for love of you."

His voice shook. "Since your mother died—and she was kin of mine—you were to me the soul of the Romany people everywhere. As a barren woman loves a child, so I loved you. I loved you for the sake of your mother. I gave her to the Ry, who was the better man, that she might be great and well placed. So it is I would have you be ruler over us, and I would serve you as I served your father until I, also, fall asleep."

"It is too late," Fleda answered, and there was great emotion in her voice now. "I am no longer a Romany. I am my father's daughter, but I have not been a Romany since I was ill in England. I will not go back; I shall go with the man I love, to be his wife, here, in the Gorgio world. You believed my father when he spoke; well, believe me—I speak the truth. It was my father's will that I should be what I am, and do what I am now doing. Nothing can alter me."

"If it be that Jethro Fawe is still alive he is free from the Sentence of the Patrin, and he will become the Ry of Rys," said the old man with sudden passion.

"It may be so. I hope it is so. He is of the blood, and I pray that Jethro has escaped the sentence which my father passed," answered Fleda. "By the River Starzke it was ordained that he should succeed my father, marrying me. Let him succeed."

The old man raised both hands, and made a gesture as though he would drive her from his sight.

"My life has been wasted," he said. "I wish I were also in death beside him." He gazed at the dead man with the affection of a clansman for his chief.

Fleda came up close to him. "Rhodo! Rhodo!" she said gently and sadly. "Think of him and all he was, and not of me. Suppose I had died in England—think of it in that way. Let me be dead to you and to all Romanys, and then you will think no evil."

The old man drew himself up. "Let no more be said," he replied. "Let it end here. The Ry of Rys is dead. His body and all things that are his belong now to his people. Say farewell to him," he added, with authority.

"You will take him away?" Fleda asked.

Rhodo inclined his head. "When the doctors have testified, we will take him with us. Say your farewells," he added, with gesture of command.

A cry of protest rose from Fleda's soul, and yet she knew it was what the Ry would have wished, that he should be buried by his own people where they would.

Slowly she drew near to the dead man, and leaned over and kissed his shaggy head. She did not seek to look into the sightless eyes; the illusion of sleep was so great that she wished to keep this picture of him while she lived; but she touched the cold hand which held the hat upon the knee and the other that lay upon the chair-arm. Then, with a mist before her eyes, she passed from the room.



CHAPTER XXVII

THE WORLD FOR SALE

As though by magic, like the pictures of a dream, out of the horizon, in caravans, by train, on horseback, the Romany people gathered to the obsequies of their chief and king. For months, hundreds of them had not been very far away. Unobtrusive, silent, they had waited, watched, till the Ry of Rys should come back home again. Home to them was the open road where Romanys trailed or camped the world over.

A clot of blood in the heart had been the verdict of the doctors; and Lebanon and Manitou had watched the Ry of Rys carried by his own people to the open prairie near to Tekewani's reservation. There, in the hours between the midnight and the dawn, all Gabriel Druse's personal belongings—the clothes, the chair in which he sat, the table at which he ate, the bed in which he slept, were brought forth and made into a pyre, as was the Romany way. Nothing personal of his chattels remained behind. The walking-stick which lay beside him in the moment of his death was the last thing placed upon the pyre. Then came the match, and the flames made ashes of all those things which once he called his own. Standing apart, Tekewani and his braves watched the ceremonial of fire with a sympathy born of primitive custom. It was all in tune with the traditions of their race.

As dawn broke, and its rosy light valanced the horizon, a great procession moved away from the River Sagalac towards the East, to which all wandering and Oriental peoples turn their eyes. With it, all that was mortal of Gabriel Druse went to its hidden burial. Only to the Romany people would his last resting-place be known; it would be as obscure as the grave of him who was laid:

"By Nebo's lonely mountain, On this side Jordan's wave."

Many people from Manitou and Lebanon watched the long procession pass, and two remained until the last wagon had disappeared over the crest of the prairie. Behind them were the tents of the Indian reservation; before them was the alert morn and the rising sun; and ever moving on to the rest his body had earned was the great chief lovingly attended by his own Romany folk; while his daughter, forbidden to share in the ceremonial of race, remained with the stranger.

With a face as pale and cold as the western sky, the desolation of this last parting and a tragic renunciation giving her a deathly beauty, Fleda stood beside the man who must hereafter be, to her, father, people, and all else. Shuddering with the pain of this hour, yet resolved to begin the new life here and now, as the old life faded before her eyes, she turned to him, and, with the passing of the last Romany over the crest of the hill, she said bravely:

"I want to help you do the big things. They will be yours. The world is all for you yet."

Ingolby shook his head. He had had his Moscow.

His was the true measure of things now; his lesson had been learned; values were got by new standards; he knew in a real sense the things that mattered.

"I have you—the world for sale!" he said, with the air of one discarding a useless thing.



GLOSSARY OF ROMANY WORDS

Bosh——fiddle, noise, music. Bor——an exclamation (literally, a hedge).

Chal——lad, fellow. Chi——child, daughter, girl.

Dadia——an exclamation. Dordi——an exclamation.

Hotchewitchi——hedgehog.

Kek——no, none. Koppa——blanket.

Mi Duvel——My God.

Patrin——small heaps of grass, or leaves, or twigs, or string, laid at cross-roads to indicate the route that must be followed. Pral——brother or friend.

Rinkne rakli——pretty girl. Ry——King or ruler.

Tan——tent, camp.

Vellgouris——fair.



ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Agony in thinking about the things we're never going to do I don't believe in walking just for the sake of walking It's no good simply going—you've got to go somewhere Most honest thing I ever heard, but it's not the most truthful Women may leave you in the bright days



ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FOR THE ENTIRE "WORLD FOR SALE":

Agony in thinking about the things we're never going to do I don't believe in walking just for the sake of walking It's no good simply going—you've got to go somewhere Most honest thing I ever heard, but it's not the most truthful Saw how futile was much competition They think that if a vote's worth having it's worth paying for When you strike your camp, put out the fires Women may leave you in the bright days You never can really overtake a newspaper lie

THE END