THE 
 
 WORLD FOR SALE 
 
 A NOVEL 
 
 BY 
 
 GILBERT PARKER 
 
 AUTHOR OP 
 SEATS OF TH1 MIGHTY," " TH1 EIGHT OF WAT," " THB MONBT HASTBB," STO. 
 
 THE COPP, CLARK CO., LIMITED 
 
 TORONTO
 
 TO 
 
 MY BELOVED NIECES 
 KATHLEEN, JANE ELEANOR AND CAROLINE 
 
 Copyright, Canada, 1919, by GILBBRT PARKKB. 
 
 The Copp, dark Press.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PRELUDE * ri 
 
 BOOK I 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. "THE DRUSES ARE UP!" 3 
 
 II. THE WHISPER FROM BEYOND 16 
 
 III. CONCERNING INGOLBY AND THE Two TOWNS . . 26 
 
 IV. THE COMING OF JETHRO FAWE 33 
 
 V. "BY THE RIVER STARZKE ... IT WAS So DONE" 51 
 
 VI. THE UNGUARDED FIRES 63 
 
 VII. IN WHICH THE PRISONER GOES FREE .... 88 
 
 BOOK II 
 
 VIII. THE SULTAN 109 
 
 IX. MATTER AND MIND AND Two MEN 146 
 
 X. FOR LUCK 169 
 
 XI. THE SENTENCE OF THE PATRIN 186 
 
 XII. "LET THERE BE LIGHT" 1 . 208 
 
 XIII. THE CHAIN OF THE PAST 224 
 
 XIV. SUCH THINGS MAY NOT BE 238 
 
 XV. THE WOMAN FROM WIND RIVER 251 
 
 XVI. THE MAYOR FILLS AN OFFICE 265 
 
 XVII. THE MONSEIGNEUR AND THE NOMAD 2J7 
 
 XVIII. THE BEACONS 289 
 
 XIX. THE KEEPER OF THE BRIDGE 295 
 
 BOOK III 
 
 XX. Two LIFE PIECES 3" 
 
 XXL THE SNARE OF THE FOWLER 336 
 
 2O37957
 
 Contents 
 
 CHAT. PAGE 
 
 XXII. THE SECRET MAN 350 
 
 XXIII. THE RETURN OF BELISARIUS 364 
 
 XXIV. AT LONG LAST 373 
 
 XXV. MAN PROPOSES 386 
 
 XXVI. THE SLEEPER 398 
 
 XXVII. THE WORLD FOR SALE 404 
 
 GLOSSARY OF ROMANY WORDS 407
 
 PRELUDE 
 
 HARVEST-TIME was almost come, and the great 
 new land was resting under coverlets of gold. From 
 the rise above the town of Lebanon, there stretched 
 out ungarnered wheat in the ear as far as sight could 
 reach, and the place itself, and the neighbouring town 
 of Manitou on the other side of the Sagalac River 
 were like islands washed by a topaz sea. 
 
 Standing upon the Rise, lost in the prospect, was 
 an old, white-haired man in the cassock of a priest, 
 with grey beard reaching nearly to the waist. 
 
 For long he surveyed the scene, and his eyes had 
 a rapt look. 
 
 At last he spoke aloud: 
 
 "There shall be an heap of corn in the earth, high 
 upon the hills; his fruit shall shake like Libanus, 
 and shall be green in the city like grass upon the earth." 
 
 A smile came to his lips a rare, benevolent smile. 
 He had seen this expanse of teeming life when it 
 was thought to be an alkali desert, fit only to be 
 invaded by the Blackfeet and the Cree and the 
 Blood Indians on a foray for food and furs. Here 
 he had come fifty years before, and had gone West 
 and North into the mountains in the Summer sea- 
 son, when the land was tremulous with light and
 
 Prelude 
 
 vibrating to the hoofs of herds of buffalo as the? 
 stampeded from the hunters; and also in the Wintei 
 time, when Frost was master and blizzard and drift 
 its malignant servants. 
 
 Even yet his work was not done. In the town of 
 Manitou he still said mass now and then, and heard 
 the sorrows and sins of men and women, and gave 
 them "ghostly comfort," while priests younger than 
 himself took the burden of parish-work from his 
 shoulders. 
 
 For a lifetime he had laboured among the Indiani 
 and the few whites and squaw-men and half-breeds, 
 with neither settlement nor progress. Then, all at 
 once, the railway; and people coming from all the 
 world, and cities springing up! Now once more ha 
 was living the life of civilization, exchanging raw 
 flesh of fish and animals and a meal of tallow or 
 pemmican for the wheaten loaf; the Indian tepea 
 for the warm house with the mansard roof; the cruda 
 mass beneath the trees for the refinements of & 
 chancel and an altar covered with lace and white 
 linen. 
 
 A flock of geese went honking over his head. 
 His eyes smiled in memory of the countless times 
 he had watched such flights, had seen thousands of 
 wild ducks hurrying down a valley, had watched a 
 family of herons stretching away to some lonely 
 water-home. And then another sound greeted his 
 ear. It was shrill, sharp and insistent. A great 
 serpent was stealing out of the East and moving 
 down upon Lebanon. It gave out puffs of smoke 
 from its ungainly head. It shrieked in triumph aa
 
 Prelude 
 
 it came. It was the daily train from the East, 
 arriving at the Sagalac River. 
 
 "These things must be," he said aloud as he 
 looked. 
 
 While he lost himself again in reminiscence, a 
 young man came driving across the plains, passing 
 beneath where he stood. The young man's face 
 and figure suggested power. In his buggy was a 
 fishing-rod. 
 
 His hat was pulled down over his eyes, but he 
 was humming cheerfully to himself. When he saw 
 the priest, he raised his hat respectfully, yet with an 
 air of equality. 
 
 "Good day, Monseigneur," (this honour of th 
 Church had come at last to the aged missionary) 
 he said warmly. "Good day good day!" 
 
 The priest raised his hat and murmured the name, 
 "Ingolby." As the distance grew between them, 
 he said sadly: "These are the men who change the 
 West, who seize it, and divide it, and make it their 
 own 
 
 "'I will rejoice, and divide Sichem: and mete out 
 the valley of Succoth.' 
 
 "Hush! Hush!" he said to himself in reproach. 
 " These things must be. The country must be 
 opened up. That is why I came to bring the Truth 
 before the trader." 
 
 Now another traveller came riding out of Lebanon 
 towards him, galloping his horse up-hill and down. 
 
 He also was young, but nothing about him sug- 
 gested power, only self-indulgence. He, too, raised 
 his hat, or rather swung it from his head in a devil-
 
 Prelude 
 
 may-care way, and overdid his salutation. He did 
 not speak. 
 
 The priest's face was very grave, if not a little 
 resentful. His salutation was reserved. 
 
 "The tyranny of gold," he murmured, "and with- 
 out the mind or energy that created it. Felix was 
 no name for him. Ingolby is a builder, perhaps a 
 jerry-builder; but he builds." 
 
 He looked across the prairie towards the young 
 man in the buggy. 
 
 "Sure, he is a builder. He has the Cortez eye. 
 He sees far off, and plans big things. But Felix 
 Marchand there " 
 
 He stopped short. 
 
 "Such men must be, perhaps," he added. Then, 
 after a moment, as he gazed round again upon the 
 land of promise which he had loved so long, he 
 murmured as one murmurs a prayer: 
 
 11 Thou suffer edst men to ride over our heads: we 
 went through fire and water, and Thou broughtest us 
 out into a wealthy place."
 
 BOOK J
 
 THE WORLD FOR SALE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 "THE DRUSES ARE UP!" 
 
 Scott, look at her! She's goin' to 
 try and take *em!" exclaimed Osterhaut, the 
 Jack-of -all- trades at Lebanon. 
 
 "She ain't such a fool as all that. Why, no one 
 ever done it alone. Low water, too, when every 
 rock's got its chance at the canoe. But, my gracious, 
 she is goin' to ride 'em!" 
 
 Jowett, the horse-dealer, had a sportsman's joy 
 in a daring thing. 
 
 "See, old Injun Tekewani 's after her! He's 
 calling at her from the bank. He knows. He done 
 it himself years ago when there was rips in the 
 tribe an' he had to sew up the tears. He run them 
 Rapids in his canoe 
 
 "Just as the Druse girl there is doin' " 
 
 "An' he's done what he liked with the Blackfeet 
 ever since." 
 
 "But she ain't a chief what's the use of her doin' 
 it? She's goin' straight for them. She can't turn 
 3
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 back now. She couldn't make the bank if she wanted 
 to. She's got to run 'em. Holy smoke, see her 
 wavin* the paddle at Tekewani! Osterhaut, she's 
 the limit, that petticoat so quiet and shy and don't- 
 look-at-me, too, with eyes like brown diamonds." 
 
 "Oh, get out, Jowett; she's all right! She'll 
 make this country sit up some day by gorry, 
 she'll make Manitou and Lebanon sit up to-day 
 if she runs the Carillon Rapids safe!" 
 
 "She's runnin' 'em all right, son. She's by jee, 
 well done, Miss Druse! Well done, I say well 
 done!" exclaimed Jowett, dancing about and waving 
 his arms towards the adventurous girl. 
 
 The girl had reached the angry, thrashing waters 
 where the rocks rent and tore into white ribbons 
 the onrushing current, and her first trial had come 
 on the instant the spitting, raging panthers of foam 
 struck the bow of her canoe. The waters were so 
 low that this course, which she had made once be- 
 fore with her friend Tekewani the Blackfeet chief, 
 had perils not met on that desperate journey. Her 
 canoe struck a rock slantwise, shuddered and swung 
 round, but by a dexterous stroke she freed the frail 
 craft. It righted and plunged forward again into 
 fresh death-traps. 
 
 It was these new dangers which had made Teke- 
 wani try to warn her from the shore he and the 
 dozen braves with him: but it was characteristic of 
 his race that, after the first warning, when she must 
 play out the game to the bitter end, he made no 
 further attempt to stop her. The Indians ran down 
 the river-bank, however, with eyes intent on her 
 4
 
 "The Druses Are Up!" 
 
 headlong progress, grunting approval as she plunged 
 safely from danger to danger. 
 
 Osterhaut and Jowett became silent, too, and, like 
 the Indians, ran as fast as they could, over fences, 
 through the trees, stumbling and occasionally curs- 
 ing, but watching with fascinated eyes this adven- 
 turess of the North, taking chances which not one 
 coureur-de-bois or river-driver in a thousand would 
 take, with a five thousand-dollar prize as the lure. 
 Why should she do it? 
 
 "Women folks are sich darn fools when they git 
 goin'," gasped Osterhaut as he ran. "They don't 
 care a split pea what happens when they've got the 
 pip. Look at her my hair's bleachin'." 
 
 "She's got the pip all right," stuttered Jowett 
 as he plunged along; "but she's foreign, and they've 
 all got the pip, foreign men and women both but 
 the women go crazy." 
 
 "She keeps pretty cool for a crazy loon, that girl. 
 If I owned her, I'd " 
 
 Jowett interrupted impatiently. "You'd do what 
 old man Druse does you'd let her be, Osterhaut. 
 What's the good of havin' your 'own way with one 
 that's the apple of your eye, if it turns her agin 
 you? You want her to kiss you on the high cheek- 
 bone, but if you go to play the cat-o' -nine- tails 
 round her, the high cheek-bone gets froze. Gol 
 blast it, look at her, son! What are the wild waves 
 saying? They're sayin', 'This is a surprise, Miss 
 Druse. Not quite ready for ye, Miss Druse.' My, 
 ain't she got the luck of the old devil!" 
 
 It seemed so. More than once the canoe half 
 5
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 jammed between the rocks, and the stern lifted up 
 by the force of the wild current, but again the 
 paddle made swift play, and again the cockle-shell 
 swung clear. But now Fleda Druse was no longer 
 on her feet. She knelt, her strong, slim brown 
 arms bared to the shoulder, her hair blown about 
 her forehead, her daring eyes flashing to left and 
 right, memory of her course at work under such a 
 strain as few can endure without chaos of mind in 
 the end. A hundred times since the day she had run 
 these Rapids with Tekewani, she had gone over the 
 course in her mind, asleep and awake, forcing her 
 brain to see again every yard of that watery way; 
 because she knew that the day must come when she 
 would make the journey alone. Why she would 
 make it she did not know; she only knew that she 
 would do it some day: and the day had come. 
 For long it had been an obsession with her as 
 though some spirit whispered in her ear "Do you 
 hear ike bells ringing at Carillon? Do you hear the 
 river singing towards Carillon? Do you see the wild 
 birds flying towards Carillon? Do you hear the Rapids 
 calling the Rapids of Carillon?" 
 
 Night and day since she had braved death with 
 Tekewani, giving him a gun, a meerschaum pipe, 
 and ten pounds of beautiful brown "plug" tobacco 
 as a token of her gratitude night and day she had 
 heard this spirit murmuring in her ear, and always 
 the refrain was, "Down the stream to Carillon! 
 Shoot the Rapids of Carillon!" 
 
 Why? How should she know? Wherefore 
 should she know? This was of the things beyond 
 6
 
 'The Druses Are Up!" 
 
 the why of the human mind. Sometimes all our lives, 
 if we keep our souls young, and see the world as we 
 first saw it with eyes and heart unsoiled, we hear 
 the murmuring of the Other Self, that Self from which 
 we separated when we entered this mortal sphere, 
 but which followed us, invisible yet whispering in- 
 spiration to us. But sometimes we only hear It, 
 our own soul's oracle, while yet our years are few, 
 and we have not passed that frontier between inno- 
 cence and experience, reality and pretence. Pretence 
 it is which drives the Other Self away with wailing 
 on its lips. Then we hear It cry in the night when, 
 because of the trouble of life, we cannot sleep; or 
 at the play when we are caught away from ourselves 
 into another air than ours ; when music pours around 
 us like a soft wind from a garden of pomegranates; 
 or when a child asks a question which brings us back 
 to the land where everything is so true that it can 
 be shouted from the tree-tops. 
 
 Why was Fleda Druse tempting death in the 
 Carillon Rapids? 
 
 She had heard a whisper as she wandered among 
 the pine-trees there at Manitou, and it said simply 
 the one word, "Now!" She knew that she must do 
 it; she had driven her canoe out into the resistless 
 current to ride the Rapids of Carillon. Her Other 
 Self had whispered to her. 
 
 Yonder, thousands of miles away in Syria, there 
 were the Hills of Lebanon ; and there was one phrase 
 which made every Syrian heart beat faster, if he 
 were on the march. It was, "The Druses are up!" 
 When that wild tribe took to the saddle to war upon 
 7
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 the Caravans and against authority, from Lebanon 
 to Palmyra, from Jerusalem to Damascus men 
 looked anxiously about them and rode hard to refuge. 
 
 And here also in the Far North where the River 
 Sagalac ran a wild race to Carillon, leaving behind 
 the new towns of Lebanon and Manitou, "the 
 Druses were up." 
 
 The daughter of Gabriel Druse, the giant, was 
 riding the Rapids of the Sagalac. The suspense to 
 her and to those who watched her course to Teke- 
 wani and his braves, to Osterhaut and Jowett 
 could not be long. It was a matter of minutes only, 
 in which every second was a miracle and might be 
 a catastrophe. 
 
 From rock to rock, from wild white water to wild 
 white water she sped, now tossing to death as it 
 seemed, now shooting on safely to the next test of 
 skill and courage on, on, till at last there was only 
 one passage to make before the canoe would plunge 
 into the smooth water running with great swiftness 
 till it almost reached Carillon. 
 
 Suddenly, as she neared the last dangerous point, 
 round which she must swing between jagged and 
 unseen barriers of rock, her sight became for an 
 instant dimmed, as though a cloud passed over her 
 eyes. She had never fainted in her life, but it 
 seemed to her now that she was hovering on uncon- 
 sciousness. Commending the will and energy left, 
 she fought the weakness down. It was as though 
 she forced a way through tossing, buffeting shadows; 
 as though she was shaking off from her shoulders 
 shadowy hands which sought to detain her; as 
 8
 
 'The Druses Are Up!" 
 
 though smothering things kept choking back her 
 breath, and darkness like clouds of wool gathered 
 about her face. She was fighting for her life, and 
 for years it seemed to be; though indeed it was only 
 seconds before her will reasserted itself, and light 
 broke again upon her way. Even on the verge of 
 the last ambushed passage her senses came back; 
 but they came with a stark realization of the peril 
 ahead: it looked out of her eyes as a face shows 
 itself at the window of a burning building. 
 
 Memory shook itself free. It pierced the tumult 
 of waters, found the ambushed rocks, and guided 
 the lithe brown arms and hands, so that the swift 
 paddle drove the canoe straight onward, as a fish 
 drives itself through a flume of dragon's teeth be- 
 neath the flood. The canoe quivered for an instant 
 at the last cataract, then responding to Memory 
 and Will, sped through the hidden chasm, tossed 
 by spray and water, and swept into the swift cur- 
 rent of smooth water below. 
 
 Fleda Druse had run the Rapids of Carillon. She 
 could hear the bells ringing for evening service in 
 the Catholic Church of Carillon, and bells soft, 
 booming bells were ringing in her own brain. 
 Like muffled silver these brain-bells were, and she 
 was as one who enters into a deep forest, and hears 
 far away in the boscage the mystic summons of 
 forest deities. Voices from the banks of the river 
 behind called to her hilarious, approving, agitated 
 voices of her Indian friends, and of Osterhaut and 
 Jowett, those wild spectators of her adventure; 
 9
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 but they were not wholly real. Only those soft, 
 booming bells in her brain were real. 
 
 Shooting the Rapids of Carillon was the bridge by 
 which she passed from the world she had left to this 
 other. Her girlhood was ended wondering, hover- 
 ing, unrealizing girlhood. This adventure was the 
 outward sign, the rite in the Lodge of Life which 
 passed her from one degree of being to another. 
 
 She was safe; but now as her canoe shot onward 
 to the town of Carillon, her senses again grew faint. 
 Again she felt the buffeting mist, again her face 
 was muffled in smothering folds; again great hands 
 reached out towards her; again her eyes were 
 drawn into a stupefying darkness; but now there 
 was no will to fight, no energy to resist. The paddle 
 lay inert in her fingers, her head drooped. She 
 slowly raised her head once, twice, as though the 
 call of the exhausted will was heard, but suddenly 
 it fell heavily upon her breast. For a moment so, 
 and then as the canoe shot forward on a fresh cur- 
 rent, the lithe body sank backwards in the canoe, 
 and lay face upward to the evening sky. 
 
 The canoe sped on, but presently it swung 
 round and lay athwart the current, dipping and 
 rolling. 
 
 From the banks on either side, the Indians of the 
 Manitou Reservation and the two men from Lebanon 
 called out and hastened on, for they saw that the 
 girl had collapsed, and they knew only too well 
 that her danger was not yet past. The canoe might 
 strike against the piers of the bridge at Carillon and 
 overturn, or it might be carried to the second cata-
 
 The Druses Are Up!" 
 
 ract below the town. They were too far away to save 
 her, but they kept shouting as they ran. 
 
 None responded to their call, but that defiance of 
 the last cataract of the Rapids of Carillon had been 
 seen by one who, below an eddy on the Lebanon 
 side of the river, was steadily stringing upon maple- 
 twigs, black bass and long-nosed pike. As he sat in 
 the shade of the trees, he had seen the plunge of 
 the canoe into the chasm, and had held his breath 
 in wonder and admiration. Even at that distance 
 he knew who it was. He had seen Fleda only a few 
 times before, for she was little abroad ; but when he 
 had seen her he had asked himself what such a face 
 and form were doing in the Far North. It belonged 
 to Andalusia, to the Carpathians, to Syrian villages. 
 
 " The pluck of the very devil!" he had exclaimed, 
 as Fleda's canoe swept into the smooth current, 
 free of the dragon's teeth; and as he had something 
 of the devil in himself, she seemed much nearer to 
 him than the hundreds of yards of water intervening. 
 Presently, however, he saw her droop and sink 
 away out of sight. 
 
 For an instant he did not realize what had hap- 
 pened, and then, with angry self-reproach, he flung 
 the oars into the rowlocks of his skiff and drove 
 down and athwart the stream with long, powerful 
 strokes. 
 
 "That's like a woman!" he said to himself as he 
 bent to the oars, and now and then turned his head 
 to make sure that the canoe was still safe. "Do 
 the trick better than a man, and then collapse like 
 a rabbit."
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 He was Max Ingolby, the financier, contractor, 
 manager of great interests, disturber of the peace 
 of slow minds, who had come to Lebanon with the 
 avowed object of amalgamating three railways, of 
 making the place the swivel of all the trade and 
 interests of the Western North; but also with the 
 declared intention of uniting Lebanon and Manitou 
 in one municipality, one centre of commercial and 
 industrial power. 
 
 Men said he had bitten off more than he could 
 chew, but he had replied that his teeth were good, 
 and he would masticate the meal or know the reason 
 why. He was only thirty- three, but his will was like 
 nothing the West had seen as yet. It was sublime 
 in its confidence, it was free from conceit, and it 
 knew not the word despair, though once or twice it 
 had known defeat. 
 
 Men cheered him from the shore as his skiff leaped 
 through the water. ''It's that blessed Ingolby," 
 said Jowett, who had tried to "do" the financier 
 in a horse-deal, and had been done instead, and was 
 now a devout admirer and adherent of the Master 
 Man. "I saw him driving down there this morn- 
 ing from Lebanon. He's been fishing at Seely's 
 Eddy." 
 
 "When Ingolby goes fishing, there's trouble goin' 
 on somewhere and he's stalkin' it," rejoined Oster- 
 haut. "But, by gol, he's goin' to do this trump trick 
 first; he's goin' to overhaul her before she gits to 
 the bridge. Look at him swing ! Hell, ain't it pretty ! 
 There you go, old Ingolby. You're right on it, even 
 when you're fishing." 
 
 12
 
 "The Druses Are Up!" 
 
 On the other the Manitou shore Tekewani and 
 his braves were less talkative, but they were more 
 concerned in the incident than Osterhaut and Jowett. 
 They knew little or nothing of Ingolby the hustler, 
 but they knew more of Fleda Druse and her father 
 than all the people of Lebanon and Manitou put 
 together. Fleda had won old Tekewani's heart when 
 she had asked him to take her down the Rapids, 
 for the days of adventure for him and his tribe were 
 over. The adventure shared with this girl had 
 brought back to the chief the old days when Indian 
 women tanned bearskins and deerskins day. in, day 
 out, and made pemmican of the buffalo-meat; when 
 the years were filled with hunting and war and mi- 
 grant journeyings to fresh game-grounds and pas- 
 tures new. 
 
 Danger faced was the one thing v/hich could 
 restore Tekewani's self-respect, after he had been 
 checked and rebuked before his tribe by the Indian 
 Commissioner for being drunk. Danger faced had 
 restored it, and Fleda Druse had brought the danger 
 to him as a gift. 
 
 If the canoe should crash against the piers of 
 the bridge, if it should drift to the cataract below, 
 if anything should happen to this white girl whom 
 he worshipped in his heathen way, nothing could 
 preserve his self-respect; he would pour ashes on 
 his head and fire-water down his throat. 
 
 Suddenly he and his braves stood still. They 
 
 watched as one would watch an enemy a hundred 
 
 times stronger than one's self. The white man's 
 
 skiff was near the derelict canoe; the bridge was near 
 
 13
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 also. Carillon now lined the bank of the river with 
 its people. They ran upon the bridge, but not so 
 fast as to reach the place where, in the nick of time, 
 Ingolby got possession of the rolling canoe; where 
 Fleda Druse lay waiting like a princess to be waked 
 by the kiss of destiny. 
 
 Only five hundred yards below the bridge was the 
 second cataract, and she would never have waked 
 if she had been carried into it. 
 
 To Ingolby she was as beautiful as a human being 
 could be as she lay with white face upturned, the 
 paddle still in her hand. 
 
 "Drowning isn't good enough for her," he said, 
 as he fastened her canoe to his skiff. 
 
 "It's been a full day's work," he added; and even 
 in this human crisis he thought of the fish he had 
 caught, of "the big trouble" he had been thinking 
 out as Osterhaut had said, as well as of the girl that 
 he was saving. 
 
 "I always have luck when I go fishing," he added 
 presently. "I can take her back to Lebanon," 
 he continued with a quickening look. "She'll be 
 all right in a jiffy. I've got room for her in my buggy 
 and room for her in any place that belongs to 
 me," he hastened to reflect with a curious, bashful 
 smile. 
 
 "It's like a thing in a book," he murmured, as he 
 neared the waiting people on the banks of Carillon, 
 and the ringing of the vesper bells came out to him 
 on the evening air. 
 
 "Is she dead?" some one whispered, as eager 
 hands reached out to secure his skiff to the bank. 
 
 14
 
 "The Druses Are Up!" 
 
 "As dead as I am," he answered with a laugh, 
 and drew Fleda's canoe up alongside his skiff. 
 
 He had a strange sensation of new life, as, with 
 delicacy and gentleness, he lifted her up in his strong 
 arms and stepped ashore.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE WHISPER FROM BEYOND 
 
 INGOLBY had a will of his own, but it had never 
 been really tried against a woman's will. It 
 was, however, tried sorely when Fleda came to 
 consciousness again in his arms and realized that a 
 man's face was nearer to hers than any man's had 
 ever been except that of her own father. Her eyes 
 opened slowly, and for the instant she did not un- 
 derstand, but when she did, the blood stole swiftly 
 back to her neck and face and forehead, and she 
 started in dismay. 
 
 "Put me down," she whispered faintly. 
 
 "I'm taking you to my buggy," he replied. "I'll 
 drive you back to Lebanon." He spoke as calmly 
 as he could, for there was a strange fluttering of his 
 nerves, and the crowd was pressing him. 
 
 "Put me down at once," she said peremptorily. 
 
 She trembled on her feet, and swayed, and would 
 have fallen but that Ingolby and a woman in black, 
 who had pushed her way through the crowd with 
 white, anxious face, caught her. 
 
 "Give her air, and stand back!" called the sharp 
 voice of the constable of Carillon, and he heaved 
 the people back with his powerful shoulders. 
 - 16
 
 The Whisper From Beyond 
 
 A space was cleared round the place where Fleda 
 sat with her head against the shoulder of the stately 
 woman in black who had come to her assistance. 
 A dipper of water was brought, and when she had 
 drunk it she raised her head slowly and her eyes 
 sought those of Ingolby. 
 
 "One cannot pay for such things," she said to him, 
 meeting his look firmly and steeling herself to thank 
 him. Though deeply grateful, it was a trial beyond 
 telling to be obliged to owe the debt of a life to any 
 one, and in particular to a man of the sort to whom 
 material gifts could not be given. 
 
 "Such things are paid for just by accepting them," 
 he answered quickly, trying to feel that he had 
 never held her in his arms, as she evidently desired 
 him to feel. He had intuition, if not enough of it, 
 for the regions where the mind of Fleda Druse dwelt. 
 
 "I couldn't very well decline, could I?" she re- 
 joined, quick humour shooting into her eyes. "I 
 was helpless. I never fainted before in my life." 
 
 "I am sure you will never faint again," he re- 
 marked. "We only do such things when we are 
 very young." 
 
 She was about to reply, but paused reflectively. 
 Her half-opened lips did not frame the words she 
 had been impelled to speak. 
 
 Admiration was alive in his eyes. He had never 
 seen this type of womanhood before such energy 
 and grace, so amply yet so lithely framed; such 
 darkness and fairness in one living composition; 
 such individuality, yet such intimate simplicity. 
 Her hair was a very light brown, sweeping over a 
 2 17
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 broad, low forehead, and lying, as though with a 
 sense of modesty, on the tips of the ears, veiling 
 them slightly. The forehead was classic in its in- 
 tellectual fulness; but the skin was so fresh, even 
 when pale as now, and with such an underglow of 
 vitality that the woman in her, sex and the possi- 
 bilities of sex, cast a glamour over the intellect and 
 temperament showing in every line of her contour. 
 In contrast to the light brown of the hair was the 
 very dark brown of the eyes and the still darker 
 brown of the eyelashes. The face shone, the eyes 
 burned, and the piquancy of the contrast between 
 the soft illuminating whiteness of the skin and the 
 flame in the eyes had fascinated many more than 
 Ingolby. 
 
 Her figure was straight yet supple, somewhat 
 fuller than is modern beauty, with hints of Juno- 
 like stateliness to come; and the curves of her bust, 
 the long lines of her limbs, were not obscured by 
 her absolutely plain gown of soft, light-brown linen. 
 She was tall, but not too commanding, and, as her 
 hand was raised to fasten back a wisp of hair, there 
 was the motion of as small a wrist and as tapering 
 a bare arm as ever made prisoner of a man's neck. 
 
 Impulse was written in every feature, in the pas- 
 sionate eagerness of her body; yet the line from the 
 forehead to the chin, and the firm shapeliness of the 
 chin itself, gave promise of great strength of will. 
 From the glory of the crown of hair to the curve of 
 the high instep of a slim foot it was altogether a 
 personality which hinted at history at tragedy, 
 maybe. 
 
 18
 
 The Whisper From Beyond 
 
 "She'll have a history," Madame Bulteel, who now 
 stood beside the girl, herself a figure out of a picture 
 by Velasquez, had said of her sadly; for she saw 
 in Fleda's rare qualities, in her strange beauty, 
 happenings which had nothing to do with the life 
 she was living. So this duenna of Gabriel Druse's 
 household, this aristocratic, silent woman was ever 
 on the watch for some sudden revelation of a being 
 which had not found itself, and which must find itself 
 through perils and convulsions. 
 
 That was why, to-day, she had hesitated to leave 
 Fleda alone and come to Carillon, to be at the bed- 
 side of a dying, friendless woman whom by chance 
 she had come to know. In the street she had heard 
 of what was happening on the river, and had come 
 in time to receive Fleda from the arms of her rescuer. 
 
 "How did you get here?" Fleda asked her. 
 
 "How am I always with you when I am needed, 
 truant?" said the other with a reproachful look. 
 
 "Did you fly? You are so light, so thin, you could 
 breathe yourself here," rejoined the girl, with a gentle, 
 quizzical smile. ' ' But, no, ' ' she added, ' ' I remember, 
 you were to be here at Carillon." 
 
 "Are you able to walk now?" asked Madame 
 Bulteel. 
 
 "To Manitou but of course," Fleda answered 
 almost sharply. 
 
 After the first few minutes the crowd had fallen 
 back. They watched her with respectful admiration 
 from a decent distance. They had the chivalry 
 towards woman so characteristic of the West. 
 There was no vulgarity in their curiosity, though 
 19
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 most of them had never seen her before. All, how- 
 ever, had heard of her and her father, the giant 
 greybeard who moved and lived in an air of mystery, 
 and apparently secret wealth, for more than once 
 he had given large sums large in the eyes of folks 
 of moderate means, when charity was needed; as 
 in the case of the floods the year before, and in 
 the prairie-fire the year before that, when so many 
 people were made homeless, and also when fifty 
 men had been injured in one railway accident. On 
 these occasions he gave disproportionately to his 
 mode of life. 
 
 Now, when they saw that Fleda was about to 
 move away, they drew just a little nearer, and 
 presently one of the crowd could contain his admira- 
 tion no longer. He raised a cheer. 
 
 "Three cheers for Her," he shouted, and loud 
 hurrahs followed. 
 
 "Three cheers for Ingolby," another cried, and the 
 noise was boisterous but not so general. 
 
 "Who shot Carillon Rapids?" another called in 
 the formula of the West. 
 
 "She shot the Rapids," was the choral reply. 
 
 "Who is she?" came the antiphon. 
 
 "Druse is her name," was the gay response. 
 
 "What did she do?" 
 
 "She shot Carillon Rapids shot 'em dead. 
 Hooray!" In the middle of the cheering, Osterhaut 
 and Jowett arrived in a wagon which they had 
 commandeered, and, about the same time, from 
 across the bridge, came running Tekewani and his 
 braves.
 
 The Whisper From Beyond 
 
 "She done it like a kingfisher," cried Osterhaut. 
 "Manitou's got the belt." 
 
 Fleda Druse's friendly eyes were given only for 
 one instant to Osterhaut and his friend. Her gaze 
 became fixed on Tekewani who, silent, and with 
 immobile face, stole towards her. .In spite of the 
 civilization which controlled him, he wore Indian 
 moccasins and deerskin breeches, though his coat 
 was rather like a shortened workman's blouse. He 
 did not belong to the life about him; he was a being 
 apart, the spirit of vanished and vanishing days. 
 
 "Tekewani ah, Tekewani, you have come," the 
 girl said, and her eyes smiled at him as they had 
 not smiled at Ingolby or even at the woman in black 
 beside her. 
 
 " How!" the chief replied, and looked at her with 
 searching, worshipping eyes. 
 
 "Don't look at me that way, Tekewani," she said, 
 coming close to him. "I had to do it, and I did it." 
 
 "The teeth of rock everywhere!" he rejoined 
 reproachfully, with a gesture of awe. 
 
 "I remembered all all. You were my master, 
 Tekewani." 
 
 "But only once with me it was, Summer Song," 
 he persisted. Summer Song was his name for her. 
 
 "I saw it saw it, every foot of the way," she 
 insisted. "I thought hard, oh, hard as the soul 
 thinks. And I saw it all." There was something 
 singularly akin in the nature of the girl and the 
 Indian. She spoke to him as she never spoke to 
 any other. 
 
 "Too much seeing, it is death," he answered. 
 
 21
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 "Men die with too much seeing. I have seen them 
 die. To look hard through deerskin curtains, to 
 see through the rock, to behold the water beneath 
 the earth, and the rocks beneath the black waters, 
 it is for man to see if he has a soul, but the seeing 
 behold, so those die who should live!" 
 
 "I live, Tekewani, though I saw the teeth of rocks 
 beneath the black water," she urged gently. 
 
 "Yet the half -death came " 
 
 "I fainted, but I was not to die it was not my 
 time." 
 
 He shook his head gloomily. "Once it may be, 
 but the evil spirits tempt us to death. It matters 
 not what comes to Tekewani; he is as the leaf that 
 falls from the stem; but for Summer Song that has 
 far to go, it is the madness from beyond the Hills 
 of Life." 
 
 She took his hand. "I will not do it again, Teke- 
 wani." 
 
 "How!" he said, with hand upraised, as one who 
 greets the great in this world. 
 
 "I don't know why I did it," she added meaningly. 
 "It was selfish. I feel that now." 
 
 The woman in black pressed her hand timidly. 
 
 "It is so for ever with the great," Tekewani an- 
 swered. "It comes, also, from beyond the Hills 
 the will to do it. It is the spirit that whispers 
 over the earth out of the Other Earth. No one hears 
 it but the great. The whisper only is for this one 
 here and that one there who is of the Few. It 
 whispers, and the whisper must be obeyed. So it was 
 from the beginning." 
 
 22
 
 The Whisper From Beyond 
 
 "Yes, you understand, Tekewani," she answered 
 softly. "I did it because something whispered from 
 the Other Earth to me." 
 
 Her head drooped a little, her eyes had a sudden 
 shadow. 
 
 "He will understand," answered the Indian; 
 "your father will understand," as though reading 
 her thoughts. 
 
 He had clearly read her thought, this dispossessed, 
 illiterate Indian chieftain. Yet, was he so illiterate? 
 Had he not read in books which so few have learned 
 to read? His life had been broken on the rock of 
 civilization, but his simple soul had learned some 
 elemental truths not many, but the essential ones, 
 without which there is no philosophy, no under- 
 standing. He knew Fleda Druse was thinking of 
 her father, wondering if he would understand, half- 
 fearing, hardly hoping, dreading the moment when 
 she must meet him face to face. She knew she had 
 been selfish, but would Gabriel Druse understand? 
 She raised her eyes in gratitude to the Blackfeet 
 chief. 
 
 "I must go home," she said. 
 
 She turned to go, but as she did so, a man came 
 swaggering down the street, broke through the 
 crowd, and made towards her with an arm raised, 
 a hand waving, and a leer on his face. He was a 
 thin, rather handsome, dissolute-looking fellow of 
 middle height and about forty, in dandified dress. 
 His glossy black hair fell carelessly over his smooth 
 forehead from under a soft, wide-awake hat. 
 
 "Manitou for ever!" he cried, with a flourish 
 23
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 of his hand. " I salute the brave. I escort the brave 
 to the gates of Manitou. I escort the brave. I 
 escort the brave. Salut! Salut! Salut! Well done, 
 Beauty! Beauty Beauty Beauty, well done 
 again!" 
 
 He held out his hand to Fleda, but she drew back 
 with disgust. Felix Marchand, the son of old Hector 
 Marchand, money-lender and capitalist of Manitou, 
 had pressed his attentions upon her during the last 
 year since he had returned from the East, bringing 
 dissoluteness and vulgar pride with him. Women 
 had spoiled him, money had corrupted and de- 
 graded him. 
 
 "Come, beautiful brave, it's Salut! Salut! Salut!" 
 he said, bending towards her familiarly. 
 
 Her face flushed with anger. 
 
 "Let me pass, monsieur," she said sharply. 
 
 "Pride of Manitou " he apostrophized, but 
 
 got no farther. 
 
 Ingolby caught him by the shoulders, wheeled 
 him round, and then flung him at the feet of Teke- 
 wani and his braves. 
 
 At this moment Tekewani's eyes had such a fire 
 as might burn in Wotan's smithy. He was ready 
 enough to defy the penalty of the law for assaulting 
 a white man, but Felix Marchand was in the dust, 
 and that would do for the moment. 
 
 With grim face Ingolby stood over the begrimed 
 figure. "There's the river if you want more," he 
 said. "Tekewani knows where the water's deepest." 
 Then he turned and followed Fleda and the woman 
 in black. 
 
 24
 
 The Whisper From Beyond 
 
 Felix Marchand's face was twisted with hate as 
 he got slowly to his feet. 
 
 "You'll eat dust before I'm done," he called after 
 Ingolby. Then, amid the jeers of the crowd, he 
 went back to the tavern where he had been carousing.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 CONCERNING INGOLBY AND THE TWO TOWNS 
 
 A WORD about Max Ingolby. 
 He was the second son of four sons, with a 
 father who had been a failure ; but with a mother of 
 imagination and great natural strength of brain, 
 yet whose life had been so harried in bringing up a 
 family on nothing at all, that there only emerged 
 from her possibilities a great will to do the impos- 
 sible things. From her had come the spirit which 
 would not be denied. 
 
 In his boyhood Max could not have those things 
 which boys prize fishing-rods, cricket-bats and 
 sleds, and all such things; but he could take most 
 prizes at school open to competition; he could win 
 in the running-jump, the high-jump and the five 
 hundred yards' race; and he could organize a pic- 
 nic, or the sports of the school or town at no cost 
 to himself. His finance in even this limited field 
 had been brilliant. Other people paid, and he did 
 the work; and he did it with such ease that the others 
 intriguing to crowd him out, suffered failure and came 
 to him in the end to put things right. 
 
 He became the village doctor's assistant and dis- 
 26
 
 Concerning Ingolby and the Two Towns 
 
 penser at seventeen and induced his master to start 
 a drug-store. He made the drug-store a success 
 within two years, and meanwhile he studied Latin 
 and Greek and mathematics in every spare hour he 
 had getting up at five in the morning, and doing 
 as much before breakfast as others did in a whole 
 day. His doctor loved him and helped him; a ven- 
 erable Archdeacon, an Oxford graduate, gave him 
 many hours of coaching, and he went to the Uni- 
 versity with three scholarships. These were suffi- 
 cient to carry him through in three years, and there 
 was enough profit-sharing from the drug-business 
 he had founded on terms to shelter his mother and 
 his younger brothers, while he took honours at the 
 University. 
 
 There he organized all that students organize, 
 and was called in at last by the Bursar of his college 
 to re-organize the commissariat, which he did with 
 such success that the college saved five thousand 
 dollars a year. He had genius, the college people 
 said, and after he had taken his degree with honours 
 in classics and mathematics they offered him a 
 professorship at two thousand dollars a year. 
 
 He laughed ironically, but yet with satisfaction, 
 when the professorship was offered. It was all so 
 different from what was in his mind for the future. 
 As he looked out of the oriel window in the sweet 
 gothic building, to the green grass and the maples 
 and elms which made the college grounds like an 
 old-world park, he had a vision of himself perma- 
 nently in these surroundings of refinement growing 
 venerable with years, seeing pass under his influence 
 27
 
 The World For Sale~ 
 
 thousands of young men directed, developed and 
 inspired by him. 
 
 He had, however, shaken himself free of this mod- 
 est vision. He knew that such a life would act like 
 a narcotic to his real individuality. He thirsted 
 for contest, for the control of brain and will; he 
 wanted to construct; he was filled with the idea of 
 simplifying things, of economizing strength; he saw 
 how futile was much competition, and how the big 
 brain could command and control with ease, wasting 
 no force, saving labour, making the things controlled 
 bigger and better. 
 
 So it came that his face was seen no more in the 
 oriel window. With a mere handful of dollars, and 
 some debts, he left the world of scholarship and su- 
 perior pedagogy, and went where the head offices 
 of railways were. Railways were the symbol of 
 progress in his mind. The railhead was the advance 
 post of civilization. It was like Cortez and his 
 Conquistadores overhauling and appropriating the 
 treasures of long generations. So where should he 
 go if not to the Railway? 
 
 His first act, when he got to his feet inside the 
 offices of the President of a big railway, was to 
 show the great man how two "outside" proposed 
 lines could be made one, and then further merged 
 into the company controlled by the millionaire in 
 whose office he sat. He got his chance by his very 
 audacity the President liked audacity. In attempt- 
 ing this merger, however, he had his first failure, 
 but he showed that he could think for himself, 
 and he was made increasingly responsible. After a 
 28
 
 Concerning Ingolby and the Two Towns 
 
 few years of notable service, he was offered the task 
 of building a branch line of railway from Lebanon 
 and Manitou north, and north-west, and on to the 
 Coast ; and he had accepted it, at the same time plan- 
 ning to merge certain outside lines competing with 
 that which he had in hand. For over four years he 
 worked night and day, steadily advancing towards 
 his goal, breaking down opposition, manoeuvring, 
 conciliating, fighting. 
 
 Most men loved his whimsical turn of mind, even 
 those who were the agents of the financial clique 
 which had fought him in their efforts to get control 
 of the commercial, industrial, transport and banking 
 resources of the junction city of Lebanon. In the 
 days when vast markets would be established for 
 Canadian wheat in Shanghai and Tokio, then these 
 two towns of Manitou and Lebanon on the Sagalac 
 would be like the swivel to the organization of trade 
 of a continent. 
 
 Ingolby had worked with this end in view. In 
 doing so he had tried to get what he wanted without 
 trickery; to reach his goal by playing the game 
 according to the rules, and this policy nonplussed 
 his rivals and associates. They expected secret 
 moves, and he laid his cards on the table. Sharp, 
 quick, resolute and ruthless, he was, however, if he 
 knew that he was being tricked. Then he struck, 
 and struck hard. The war of business was war and 
 not "gollyfoxing," as he said. 
 
 Selfish, stubborn and self-centred he was in much, 
 but he had great joy in the natural and sincere, 
 and he had a passionate love of Nature. To him the 
 29
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 flat prairie was never ugly. Its very monotony had 
 its own individuality. The Sagalac, even when 
 muddy had its own deep interest, and when it was 
 full of logs drifting down to the sawmills, for which 
 he had found the money by interesting capitalists 
 in the East, he sniffed the stinging smell of the pines 
 with elation. As the great saws in the mills, for 
 which he had secured the capital, throwing off the 
 spray of mangled wood, hummed and buzzed and 
 sang, his mouth twisted in the droll smile it always 
 wore when he talked with such as Jowett and Oster- 
 haut, whose idiosyncrasies were like a meal to him; 
 as he described it once to some of the big men from 
 the East who had been behind his schemes, yet 
 who cavilled at his ways. He was never diverted 
 from his course by such men, and while he was 
 loyal to those who had backed him, he vowed that 
 he would be independent of these wooden souls in 
 the end. They and the great bankers behind them 
 were for monopoly; he was for organization and for 
 economic prudence. So far they were necessary to 
 all he did; but it was his intention to shake himself 
 free of all monopoly in good time. One or two of his 
 colleagues saw the drift of his policy and would 
 have thrown him over, if they could have replaced 
 him by a man as capable, who would, at the time, 
 consent to grow rich on their terms. 
 
 They could not understand a man who would 
 stand for a half -hour watching a sunset, or a morning 
 sky dappled with all the colours that shake from a 
 prism ; they were suspicious of a business-mind which 
 could gloat over the light falling on snow-peaked 
 30
 
 Concerning Ingolby and the Two Towns 
 
 mountains, while it planned a great bridge across 
 a gorge in the same hour; of a man who would quote 
 a verse of poetry while a flock of wild pigeons went 
 whirring down a pine-girt valley in the shimmer 
 of the sun. 
 
 On the occasion when he had quoted a verse of 
 poetry to them, one of them said to him, with a 
 sidelong glance, "You seem to be dead-struck on 
 Nature, Ingolby." 
 
 To that, with a sly quirk of the mouth, and mean- 
 ing to mystify his wooden-headed questioner still 
 more, he answered: "Dead-struck? Dead-drunk, 
 you mean. I'm a Nature's dipsomaniac as you 
 can see," he added with a sly note of irony. 
 
 Then instantly he had drawn the little circle of 
 experts into a discussion upon technical questions 
 of railway-buildings and finance, which made de- 
 mands upon all their resources and knowledge. In 
 that conference he gave especial attention to the 
 snub-souled financier who had sneered at his love 
 of Nature. He tied his critic up in knots of self- 
 assertion and bad logic which presently he deftly, 
 deliberately and skilfully untied, to the delight of 
 all the group. 
 
 "He's got as much in his ten years in the business 
 as we've got out of half a life-time," said the chief 
 of his admirers. This was the President who had 
 first welcomed him into business, and introduced 
 him to his colleagues in enterprise. 
 
 "I shouldn't be surprised if the belt flew off the 
 wheel some day," savagely said Ingolby 's snub- 
 souled critic, whose enmity was held in check by the 
 3 1
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 fact that on Ingolby, for the moment, depended the 
 safety of the hard cash he had invested. 
 
 But the qualities which alienated an expert here 
 and there caught the imagination of the pioneer 
 spirits of Lebanon. Except those who, for financial 
 reasons, were opposed to him, and must therefore 
 pit themselves against him, as the representatives 
 of bigger forces behind them, he was a leader of 
 whom Lebanon was combatively proud. At last he 
 came to the point where his merger was practically 
 accomplished, and a problem arising out of it had 
 to be solved. It was a problem which taxed every 
 quality of an able mind. 
 
 The situation had at last become acute, and Time, 
 the solvent of most complications, had not quite 
 eased the strain. Indeed, on the day that Fleda 
 Druse had made her journey down the Carillon 
 Rapids, Time's influence had not availed. So he 
 had gone fishing, with millions at stake to the 
 despair of those who were risking all on his skill 
 and judgment. 
 
 But that was Ingolby. Thinking was the essence 
 of his business, not Time. As fishing was the friend 
 of thinking, therefore he fished in Seely's Eddy, 
 saw Fleda Druse run the Carillon Rapids, saved her 
 from drowning and would have brought her in pride 
 and peace to her own home, but that she decreed 
 otherwise.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE COMING OF JETHRO PAWE 
 
 ABRIEL DRUSE'S house stood on a little knoll 
 on the outskirts of the town of Manitou, backed 
 by a grove of pines. Its front windows faced the 
 Sagalac, and the windows behind looked into cool 
 coverts where in old days many Indian tribes had 
 camped; where Hudson's Bay Company's men had 
 pitched their tents to buy the red man's furs. But 
 the red man no longer set up his tepee in these 
 secluded groves; the wapiti and red deer had fled 
 to the north never to return, the snarling wolf had 
 stolen into regions more barren; the ceremonial of 
 the ancient people no longer made weird the lonely 
 nights; the medicine-man's incantations, the har- 
 vest-dance, the green-corn-dance, the sun-dance had 
 gone. The braves, their women, and their tepees 
 had been shifted to reservations where Governments 
 solemnly tried to teach them to till the field, and grow 
 corn, and drive the cart to market; while yet they 
 remembered the herds of buffalo which had pounded 
 down the prairie like storm-clouds and given their 
 hides for the tepee; and the swift deer whose skins 
 made the wigwam luxurious. 
 
 3 33
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 Originally Manitou had been the home of Ice- 
 landers, Mennonites, and Doukhobors ; settlers from 
 lands where the conditions of earlier centuries pre- 
 vailed, who, simple as they were in habits and in 
 life, were ignorant, primitive, coarse, and none too 
 cleanly. They had formed an unprogressive poly- 
 glot settlement, and the place assumed a still more 
 primeval character when the Indian Reservation was 
 formed near by. When French Canadian settlers 
 arrived, however, the place became less discordant 
 to the life of a new democracy, though they did 
 little to make it modern in the sense that Lebanon, 
 across the river, where Ingolby lived, was modern 
 from the day the first shack was thrown up. 
 
 Manitou showed itself antagonistic to progress; 
 it was old-fashioned, and primitively agricultural. 
 It looked with suspicion on the factories built after 
 Ingolby came and on the mining propositions, which 
 circled the place with speculation. Unlike other 
 towns of the West, it was insanitary and uneducated; 
 it was also given to nepotism and a primitive kind 
 of jobbery; but, on the whole, it was honest. It 
 was a settlement twenty years before Lebanon had a 
 house, though the latter exceeded the population 
 of Manitou in five years, and became the home of 
 all adventuring spirits land agents, company pro- 
 moters, mining prospectors, railway men, politicians, 
 saloon-keepers, and up-to-date dissenting preachers. 
 Manitou was, however, full of back-water people, 
 religious fanatics, little farmers, guides, trappers, 
 old coureurs-de-bois, Hudson's Bay Company factors 
 and ex-factors, half -breeds; and all the rest. 
 34
 
 The Coming of Jethro Fawe 
 
 The real feud between the two towns began about 
 the time of the arrival of Gabriel Druse, his daugh- 
 ter, and Madame Bulteel, the woman in black, 
 and it had grown with great rapidity and increasing 
 intensity. Manitou condemned the sacrilegiousness 
 of the Protestants, whose meeting-houses were used 
 for "socials," "tea-meetings," "strawberry festi- 
 vals," and entertainments of many kinds; while 
 comic songs were sung at the table where the solemn 
 Love Feast was held at the quarterly meetings. 
 At last when attempts were made to elect to Parlia- 
 ment an Irish lawyer who added to his impecunious- 
 ness, eloquence, a half -finished University education, 
 and an Orangeman's prejudices of the best brand 
 of Belfast or Deny, inter-civic strife took the form 
 of physical violence. The great bridge built by 
 Ingolby between the two towns might have been 
 ten thousand yards long, so deep was the estrange- 
 ment between the two places. They had only one 
 thing in common a curious compromise in the 
 person of Nathan Rockwell, an agnostic doctor, 
 who had arrived in Lebanon with a reputation for 
 morality somewhat clouded; though, where his pa- 
 tients in Manitou and Lebanon were concerned, he 
 had been the "pink of propriety." 
 
 Rockwell had arrived in Lebanon early in its 
 career, and had remained unimportant until a rail- 
 way accident occurred at Manitou and the resident 
 doctors were driven from the field of battle, one by 
 death, and one by illness. Then it was that the 
 silent, smiling, dark-skinned, cool-headed and cool- 
 handed Rockwell stepped in, and won for himself the 
 35
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 gratitude of all from Monseigneur Lourde, the 
 beloved Catholic priest, to Tekewani, the Indian 
 chief. This accident was followed by an epidemic. 
 
 That was at the time, also, when Fleda Druse 
 returned from Winnipeg, where she had been at 
 school for one memorable and terrible six months, 
 pining for her father, defying rules, and crying the 
 night through for "the open world" as she called 
 it. So it was that, to her father's dismay and joy 
 in one, she had fled from school, leaving all her things 
 behind her; and had reached home with only the 
 clothes on her back and a few cents in her pocket. 
 
 Instantly on her return she had gone among the 
 stricken people as fearlessly as Rockwell had done, 
 but chiefly among the women and children; and 
 it was said that the herbal medicine she administered 
 was marvellous in its effect so much so, that Rock- 
 well asked for the prescription, which she declined 
 to give. 
 
 Thus it was that the French Canadian mothers 
 with daughters of their own, bright-eyed brunettes, 
 ready for the man-market, regarded with toleration 
 the girl who took their children away for picnics 
 down the river or into the woods, and brought 
 them back safe and sound at the end of the day. 
 Not that they failed to be shocked sometimes, 
 when, on her wild, Indian pony, Fleda swept through 
 Manitou like a wind and out into the prairie, riding, 
 as it were, to the end of the world. Try as they 
 would, these grateful mothers of Manitou, they 
 could not get as near to Fleda Druse as their children 
 did, and they were vast distances from her father. 
 36
 
 The Coming of Jethro Fawe 
 
 "There, there, look at him," said old Madame 
 Thibadeau to her neighbour Christine Brisson 
 "look at him with his great grey beard, and his eyes 
 like black fires, and that head of hair like a bundle 
 of burnt flax! He comes from the place no man 
 ever saw, that's sure." 
 
 "Ah, surelee, men don't grow so tall in any Chris- 
 tian country," announced Christine Brisson, her 
 head nodding sagely. "I've seen the pictures in 
 the books, and there's nobody so tall and that looks 
 like him not anywhere since Adam." 
 
 "Nom de pipe, sometimes trulee, sometimes, I 
 look up there at where he lives, and I think I see a 
 thousand men on horses ride out of the woods behind 
 his house and down here to gobble us all up. That's 
 the way I feel. It's fancy, but I can't h.elp that," 
 Dame Thibadeau rested her hands on her iiuge 
 stomach as though the idea had its origin there. 
 
 "I've seen a lot of fancies come to pass," gloomily 
 returned her friend. " It's a funny world. I don't 
 know what to make of it sometimes." 
 
 " And that girl of his, the strangest creature, as 
 proud as a peacock, but then as kind as kind to the 
 children of a good heart, surelee. They say she has 
 plenty of gold rings and pearls and bracelets, and all 
 like that. Babette Courton, she saw them when she 
 went to sew. Why doesn't Ma'm'selle wear them?" 
 
 Christine looked wise and smoothed out her apron 
 as though it was a parchment. "With such queer 
 ones, who knows? But, yes, as you say, she has a 
 kind heart. The children, well, they follow her 
 everywhere," 
 
 37
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 "Not the children only," sagely added the other. 
 "From Lebanon they come, the men, and plenty 
 here, too; and there's that Felix Marchand, the 
 worst of all in Manitou or anywhere." 
 
 "I'd look sharp if Felix Marchand followed me," 
 remarked Christine. "There are more papooses at 
 the Reservation since he come back, and over in 
 
 Lebanon !" She whispered darkly to her friend, 
 
 and they nodded knowingly. 
 
 "If he plays pranks in Manitou he'll get his throat 
 cut, for sure. Even with Protes'ants and Injuns 
 it's bad enough," remarked Dame Thibadeau, pant- 
 ing with the thought of it. 
 
 "He doesn't even leave the Doukhobors alone. 
 
 There's " Again Christine whispered, and again 
 
 that ugly look came to their faces which belongs 
 to the thought of forbidden things. 
 
 "Felix Marchand 11 have much money bad penny 
 as he is," continued Christine in her normal voice. 
 
 "He'll have more money than he can put in all 
 the trouser legs he has. Old Hector, his father, has 
 enough for a gover'ment. But that M'sieu' Felix 
 will get his throat cut if he follows Ma'm'selle Druse 
 about too much. She hates him I've seen when 
 they met. Old man Druse '11 make trouble. He 
 don't look as he does for nothing." 
 
 "Ah, that's so. One day, we shall see what we 
 shall see," murmured Christine, and waved a hand 
 to a friend in the street. 
 
 This conversation happened on the evening of 
 the day that Fleda Druse shot the Carillon Rapids 
 38
 
 The Coming of Jethro Fawe 
 
 alone. An hour after the two gossips had had their 
 say Gabriel Druse paced up and down the veranda 
 of his house, stopping now and then to view the 
 tumbling, hurrying Sagalac, or to dwell upon the 
 sunset which crimsoned and bronzed the western 
 sky. His walk had an air of impatience; he seemed 
 disturbed of mind and restless of body. 
 
 He gave an impression of great force. He would 
 have been picked out of a multitude, not alone 
 because of his remarkable height, but because he 
 had an air of command and the aloofness which 
 shows a man sufficient unto himself. 
 
 As he stood gazing reflectively into the sunset, a 
 strange, plaintive, birdlike note pierced the still 
 evening air. His head lifted quickly, yet he did not 
 look in the direction of the sound, which came from 
 the woods behind the house. He did not stir, and 
 his eyes half-closed, as though he hesitated what to 
 do. The call was not that of a bird familiar to the 
 Western world. It had a melancholy softness like 
 that of the bell-bird of the Australian bush. Yet, 
 in the insistence of the note, it was, too, a challenge 
 or a summons. 
 
 Three times during the past week he had heard it 
 once as he went by the market-place of Manitou; 
 once as he returned in the dusk from Tekewani's 
 Reservation, and once at dawn from the woods be- 
 hind the house. His present restlessness and sup- 
 pressed agitation had been the result. 
 
 It was a call he knew well. It was like a voice 
 from a dead world. It asked, he knew, for an an- 
 swering call, yet he had not given it. It was seven 
 39
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 days since he first heard it in the market-place, and 
 in that seven days he had realized that nothing in 
 this world which has ever been, really ceases to be. 
 Presently, the call was repeated. On the three former 
 occasions there had been no repetition. The call 
 had trembled in the air but once and had died away 
 into unbroken silence. Now, however, it rang out 
 with an added poignancy. It was like a bird calling 
 to its vanished mate. 
 
 With sudden resolution Druse turned. Leaving 
 the veranda, he walked slowly behind the house 
 into the woods and stood still under the branches 
 of a great cedar. Raising his head, a strange, solemn 
 note came from his lips; but the voice died away 
 in a sharp broken sound which was more human 
 than birdlike, which had the shrill insistence of 
 authority. The call to him had been almost ventril- 
 oquial in its nature. His lips had not moved at all. 
 
 There was silence for a moment after he had 
 called into the void, as it were, and then there 
 appeared suddenly from behind a clump of juniper, 
 a young man of dark face and upright bearing. 
 He made a slow obeisance with a gesture suggestive 
 of the Oriental world, yet not like the usual gesture 
 of the East Indian, the Turk or the Persian; it was 
 composite of all. 
 
 He could not have been more than twenty-five 
 years of age. He was so sparely made, and his face 
 being clean-shaven, he looked even younger. His 
 clothes were the clothes of the Western man; and 
 yet there was a manner of wearing them, there were 
 touches which were evidence to the watchful ob- 
 40
 
 The Coming of Jethro Fawe 
 
 server that he was of other spheres. His wide, felt, 
 Western hat had a droop on one side and a broken 
 treatment of the crown, which of itself was enough 
 to show him a stranger to the prairie, while his brown 
 velveteen jacket, held by its two lowest buttons, 
 was reminiscent of an un-English life. His eyes alone 
 would have announced him as of some foreign race, 
 though he was like none of the foreigners who had 
 been the pioneers of Manitou. Unlike as he and 
 Gabriel Druse were in height, build, and movement, 
 still there was something akin in them both. 
 
 After a short silence evidently disconcerting to 
 him, "Blessing and hail, my Ry," he said in a low 
 tone. He spoke in a strange language and with a 
 voice rougher than his looks would have suggested. 
 
 The old man made a haughty gesture of impa- 
 tience. "What do you want with me, my Romany 
 chal?" * he asked sharply. 
 
 The young man replied hastily. He seemed to 
 speak by rote. His manner was too eager to suit 
 the impressiveness of his words. "The sheep are 
 without a shepherd," he said. "The young men 
 marry among the Gorgios, or they are lost in the cities 
 and return no more to the tents and the fields and 
 the road. There is disorder in all the world among 
 the Romanys. The ancient ways are forgotten. 
 Our people gather and settle upon the land and live 
 as the Gorgios live. They forget the way beneath 
 the trees, they lose their skill in horses. If the 
 fountain is choked, how shall the water run?" 
 
 * A glossary of Romany words will be found at the end of the 
 book. 
 
 41
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 A cold sneer came to the face of Gabriel Druse. 
 "The way beneath the trees!" he growled. "The 
 way of the open road is enough. The way beneath 
 the trees is the way of the thief, and the skill of the 
 horse is the skill to cheat." 
 
 "There is no other way. It has been the way of 
 the Romany since the time of Timur Beg and cen- 
 turies beyond Timur, so it is told. One man and 
 all men must do as the tribe has done since the begin- 
 ning." 
 
 The old man pulled at his beard angrily. "You 
 do not talk like a Romany, but like a Gorgio of the 
 schools." 
 
 The young man's manner became more confident 
 as he replied. "Thinking on what was to come to 
 me, I read in the books as the Gorgio reads. I sat 
 in my tent and worked with a pen; I saw in the 
 printed sheets what the world was doing every day. 
 This I did because of what was to come." 
 
 "And have you read of me in the printed sheets? 
 Did they tell you where I was to be found?" Gabriel 
 Druse's eyes were angry, his manner was authori- 
 tative. 
 
 The young man stretched out his hands eloquently. 
 "Hail and blessing, my Ry, was there need of printed 
 pages to tell me that? Is not everything known of 
 the Ry to the Romany people without the written 
 or printed thing? How does the wind go? How 
 does the star sweep across the sky? Does not the 
 whisper pass as the lightning flashes? Have you 
 forgotten all, my Ry? Is there a Romany camp at 
 Scutari? Shall it not know what is the news of the 
 42
 
 The Coming of Jethro Fawe 
 
 Bailies of Scotland and the Caravans by the Tagus? 
 It is known always where my lord is. All the Ro- 
 manys everywhere know it, and many hundreds 
 have come hither from overseas. They are east, 
 they are south, they are west." 
 
 He made gesture towards these three points of 
 the compass. A dark frown came upon the old 
 man's forehead. "I ordered that none should seek 
 to follow, that I be left in peace till my pilgrimage 
 was done. Even as the first pilgrims of our people 
 in the days of Timur Beg in India, so I have come 
 forth from among you all till the time be fulfilled." 
 
 There was a crafty look in the old man's eyes as 
 he spoke, and ages of dubious reasoning and purpose 
 showed in their velvet depths. 
 
 "No one has sought me but you in all these years," 
 he continued. "Who are you that you should come? 
 I did not call, and there was my command that none 
 should call to me." 
 
 A bolder look grew in the other's face. His carriage 
 gained in ease. "There is trouble everywhere 
 in Italy, in Spain, in France, in England, in Russia, 
 in mother India" he made a gesture of salutation 
 and bowed low "and our rites and mysteries are 
 like water spilt upon the ground. If the head be 
 cut off, how shall the body move? That is how it is. 
 You are vanished, my lord, and the body dies." 
 
 The old man plucked his beard again fiercely and 
 his words came with guttural force. "That is fool's 
 talk. In the past I was never everywhere at once. 
 When I was in Russia, I was not in Greece ; when I 
 was in England, I was not in Portugal. I was al- 
 43
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 ways 'vanished' from one place to another, yet 
 the body lived." 
 
 "But your word was passed along the roads 
 everywhere, my Ry. Your tongue was not still from 
 sunrise to the end of the day. Your call was heard 
 always, now here, now there, and the Romanys were 
 one; they held together." 
 
 The old man's face darkened still more and his 
 eyes flashed fire. "These are lies you are telling, 
 and they will choke you, my Romany chal. Am I 
 deceived, I who have known more liars than any 
 man under the sky? Am I to be fooled, who have 
 seen so many fools in their folly? There is roguery 
 in you, or I have never seen roguery." 
 
 "I am a true Romany, my Ry," the other an- 
 swered, with an air of courage and a little defiance 
 also. 
 
 "You are a rogue and a liar, that is sure. These 
 wailings are your own. The Romany goes on his way 
 as he has gone these hundreds of years. If I am 
 silent, my people will wait until I speak again; 
 if they see me not they will wait till I enter their 
 camps once more. Why are you here? Speak, 
 rogue and liar." 
 
 The wrathful old man, sure in his reading of the 
 youth, towered above him commandingly. It al- 
 most seemed as though he would do him bodily harm, 
 so threatening was his attitude, but the young Ro- 
 many raised his head, and with a note of triumph 
 said, "I have come for my own, as it is my right." 
 
 "What is your own?" 
 
 "What has been yours until now, my Ry." 
 44
 
 The Coming of Jethro Fawe 
 
 A grey look stole slowly up the strong face of the 
 exiled leader, for his mind suddenly read the truth 
 behind the young man's confident words. 
 
 "What is mine is always mine," he answered 
 roughly. "Speak! What is it I have that you 
 come for?" 
 
 The young man braced himself and put a hand 
 upon his lips. "I come for your daughter, my Ry." 
 
 The old man suddenly regained his composure, 
 and authority spoke in his bearing and his words. 
 "What have you to do with my daughter?" 
 
 "She was married to me when I was seven years 
 of age, as my Ry knows. I am the son of Lemuel 
 Fawe Jethro Fawe is my name. For three thou- 
 sand pounds it was so arranged. On his death-bed 
 three thousand pounds did my father give to you 
 for this betrothal. I was but a child, yet I remem- 
 bered, and my kinsmen remembered, for it is their 
 honour also. I am the son of Lemuel Fawe, the 
 husband of Fleda, daughter of Gabriel Druse, King 
 and Duke and Earl of all the Romanys; and I come 
 for my own." 
 
 Something very like a sigh of relief came from 
 Gabriel Druse's lips, but the anger in his face did 
 not pass, and a rigid pride made the distance be- 
 tween them endless. He looked like a patriarch 
 giving judgment as he raised his hand and pointed 
 with a menacing finger at Jethro Fawe, his Romany 
 subject and, according to the laws of the Romany 
 tribes, his son-in-law. It did not matter that the 
 girl but three years of age when it happened 
 had no memory of the day when the chiefs and great 
 45
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 people assembled outside the tent of Lemuel Fawe 
 when he lay dying, and, by the simple act of stepping 
 over a branch of hazel, the two children were mar- 
 ried: if Romany law and custom were to abide, 
 then the two now were man and wife. Did not 
 Lemuel Fawe, the old-time rival of Gabriel Druse 
 for the kingship of the Romanys, the claimant whose 
 family had been rulers of the Romanys for genera- 
 tions before the Druses gained ascendancy did 
 not Fawe, dying, seek to secure for his son by mar- 
 riage what he had failed to get for himself by other 
 means? 
 
 All these things had at one time been part of 
 Gabriel Druse's covenant of life, until one year in 
 England, when Fleda, at twelve years of age, was 
 taken ill and would have died, but that a great lady 
 descended upon their camp, took the girl to her own 
 house, and there nursed and tended her, giving her 
 the best medical aid the world could produce, so 
 that the girl lived, and with her passionate nature 
 loved the Lady Barrowdale as she might have loved 
 her own mother, had that mother lived and she 
 had ever known her. And when the Lady Barrow- 
 dale sickened and died of the same sickness which 
 had nearly been her own death, the promise she made 
 then overrode all other covenants made for her. 
 She had promised the great lady who had given her 
 own widowed, childless life for her own, that she 
 would not remain a Gipsy, that she would not marry 
 a Gipsy; but that if ever she gave herself to any 
 man it would be to a Gorgio, a European, who 
 travelled oftenest "the open road" leading to his 
 46
 
 The Coming of Jethro Fawe 
 
 own door. The years which had passed since those 
 tragic days in Gloucestershire had seen the shadows 
 of that dark episode pass, but the pledge had re- 
 mained; and Gabriel Druse had kept his word to 
 the dead, because of the vow made to the woman 
 who had given her life for the life of a Romany lass. 
 
 The Romany tribes of all the nations did not know 
 why their Ry had hidden himself in the New World; 
 they did not know that the girl had for ever forsworn 
 their race, and would never become head of all the 
 Romanys, solving the problem of the rival dynasties 
 by linking her life with that of Jethro Fawe. But 
 Jethro Fawe had come to claim his own. 
 
 Now Gabriel Druse's eyes followed his own 
 menacing finger with sharp insistence. In the past 
 such a look had been in his eyes when he had sen- 
 tenced men to death. They had not died by the 
 gallows or the sword or the bullet, but they had 
 died as commanded, and none had questioned his 
 decree. None asked where or how the thing was 
 done when a fire sprang up in a field, or a quarry, or 
 on a lonely heath or hill-top, and on the pyre were 
 all the belongings of the condemned, being resolved 
 into dust as their owner had been made earth again. 
 
 "Son of Lemuel Fawe," the old man said, his voice 
 rough with authority, "but that you are of the 
 Blood, you should die now for this disobedience. 
 When the time is fulfilled, I will return. Until then, 
 my daughter and I are as those who have no people. 
 Begone! Nothing that is here belongs to you. 
 Begone, and come no more!" 
 
 "I have come for my own for my Romany chi, 
 47
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 and I will not go without her. I am blood of tho 
 Blood, and she is mine." 
 
 "You have not seen her," said the old man craftily, 
 and fighting hard against the wrath consuming him, 
 though he liked the young man's spirit. "She has 
 changed. She is no longer Romany." 
 
 "I have seen her, and her beauty is like the rose 
 and the palm." 
 
 . "When have you seen her since the day before 
 the tent of Lemuel Fawe now seventeen years ago?" 
 There was an uneasy note in the commanding tone. 
 
 "I have seen her three times of late, and the last 
 time I saw her was an hour or so since, when she 
 rode the Rapids of Carillon." 
 
 The old man started, his lips parted, but for a 
 moment he did not speak. At last words came. 
 ' ' The Rapids speak. What have you heard, Jethro, 
 son of Lemuel?" 
 
 "I did not hear, I saw her shoot the Rapids. I 
 ran to follow. At Carillon I saw her arrive. She 
 was in the arms of a Gorgio of Lebanon Ingolby 
 is his name." 
 
 A malediction burst from Gabriel Druse's lips, 
 words sharp and terrible in their intensity. For 
 the first time since they had met the young man 
 blanched. The savage was alive in the giant. 
 
 "Speak. Tell all," Druse said, with hands clench- 
 ing. 
 
 Swiftly the young man told all he had seen, and 
 described how he had run all the way four miles 
 from Carillon, arriving before Fleda and her Indian 
 escort. 
 
 48
 
 The Coming of Jethro Fawe 
 
 He had hardly finished his tale, shrinking, as he 
 told it, from the fierceness of his chief, when a voice 
 called from the direction of the house. 
 
 "Father father," it cried. 
 
 A change passed over the old man's face. It 
 cleared as the face of the sun clears when a cloud 
 drives past and is gone. The transformation was 
 startling. Without further glance at his companion 
 he moved swiftly towards the house. Once more 
 Fleda's vohe called, and before he could answer 
 they were face to face. 
 
 She stood radiant and elate, and seemed not 
 apprehensive of disfavour or reproach. Behind her 
 was Tekewani and his braves. 
 
 "You have heard?" she asked, reading her father's 
 face. 
 
 1 ' I have heard. Have you no heart ?" he answered. 
 "If the Rapids had drowned you!" 
 
 She came close to him and ran her fingers through 
 his beard tenderly. ' ' I was not born to be drowned," 
 she said softly. 
 
 Now that she wan a long distance from Ingolby, 
 the fact that a man had held her in his arms left no 
 shadow on her face. Ingolby was now only a part of 
 her triumph of the Rapids. She tossed a hand affec- 
 tionately towards Tekewani and his braves. 
 
 "How!" said Gabriel Druse, and made a gesture 
 of salutation to the Indian chief. 
 
 "How!" answered Tekewani, and raised his arm 
 high in response. An instant afterwards Tekewani 
 and his followers were gone their ways. 
 
 Suddenly Fleda's eyes rested on the young Ro 
 4 49
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 many who was now standing at a little distance 
 away. Apprehension came to her face. She felt her 
 heart stand still and her hands grow cold, she knew 
 not why. But she saw that the man was a Romany. 
 
 Her father turned sharply. A storm gathered in 
 his face once more, and a murderous look came 
 into his eyes. 
 
 "Who is he?" Fleda asked, scarce above a whisper, 
 and she noted the insistent, amorous look of the 
 stranger. 
 
 "He says he is your husband," answered her father 
 harshly.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 "BY THE RIVER STARZKE ... IT WAS SO DONE*' 
 
 THERE was absolute silence for a moment. 
 The two men fixed their gaze upon the girl. 
 The fear which had first come to her face passed 
 suddenly, and a will, new-born and fearless, possessed 
 it. Yesterday this will had been only a trembling, 
 undisciplined force, but since then she had been 
 passed through the tests which her own soul, or 
 Destiny, had set for her, and she had emerged a 
 woman, confident and understanding, if tremulous. 
 In days gone by her adventurous, lonely spirit had 
 driven her to the prairies, savagely riding her Indian 
 pony through the streets of Manitou and out on the 
 North Trail, or south through coultes, or westward 
 into the great woods, looking for what she never 
 found. 
 
 Her spirit was no longer the vague thing driving 
 here and there with pleasant torture. It had found 
 freedom and light; what the Romany folk call its 
 own tan, its home, though it be but home of each 
 day's trek. That wild spirit was now a force which 
 understood itself in a new if uncompleted way. It 
 was a sword free from its scabbard,
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 The adventure of the Carillon Rapids had been a 
 kind of deliverance of an unborn thing which, 
 desiring the overworld, had found it. A few hours 
 ago the face of Ingolby, as she waked to conscious- 
 ness in his arms, had taught her something suddenly ; 
 and the face of Felix Marchand had taught her even 
 more. Something new and strange had happened to 
 her, and her father's uncouth but piercing mind saw 
 the change in her. Her quick, fluttering moods, her 
 careless, undirected energy, her wistful wayward- 
 ness, had of late troubled and vexed him, called on 
 capacities in him which he did not possess; but 
 now he was suddenly aware that she had emerged 
 from passionate inconsistencies and in some good 
 sense had found herself. 
 
 Like a wind she had swept out of childhood into 
 a woman's world where the eyes saw things unseen 
 before, a world how many thousand leagues in the 
 future; and here in a flash, also, she was swept 
 like a wind back again to a time before there was even 
 conscious childhood a dim, distant time when she 
 lived and ate and slept for ever in the field or the 
 vale, in the quarry, beside the hedge, or on the edge 
 of harvest-fields; when she was carried in strong 
 arms, or sat in the shelter of a man's breast as a horse 
 cantered down a glade, under an ardent sky, amid 
 blooms never seen since then. She was whisked back 
 into that distant, unreal world by the figure of a 
 young Romany standing beside a spruce-tree, and 
 by her father's voice which uttered the startling 
 words, "He says he is your husband!" 
 
 Indignation and a bitter pride looked out of her 
 52
 
 "By the River Starzke ... It Was So Done" 
 
 eyes, as she heard the preposterous claim as though 
 she were some wild dweller of the jungle being 
 called by her savage mate back to the lair she had 
 forsaken. 
 
 "Since when were you my husband?" she asked 
 Jethro Fawe composedly. 
 
 Her quiet scorn brought a quiver to his spirit; 
 for he was of a people to whom anger and passion 
 were part of every relationship of life, its stimulus 
 and its recreation, its expression of the individual. 
 
 His eyelids trembled, but he drew himself together. 
 
 "Seventeen years ago by the River Starzke in 
 the Roumelian country, it was so done," he replied 
 stubbornly. "You were sealed to me, as my Ry 
 here knows, and as you will remember, if you fix 
 your mind upon it. It was beyond the city of Starzke 
 three leagues, under the brown scarp of the Dragbad 
 Hills. It was in the morning when the sun was by 
 a quarter of its course. It happened before my 
 father's tent, the tent of Lemuel Fawe. There you 
 and I were sealed before our Romany folk. For three 
 thousand pounds which my father gave to your 
 father, you " 
 
 With a swift gesture she stopped him. Walking 
 close up to him, she looked him full in the eyes. 
 There was a contemptuous pride in her face which 
 forced him to lower his eyelids sulkily. 
 
 He would have understood a torrent of words 
 to him that would have regulated the true value of 
 the situation; but this disdainful composure em- 
 barrassed him. He had come prepared for trouble 
 and difficulty, but he had rather more determination 
 53
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 than most of his class and people, and his spirit of 
 adventure was high. Now that he had seen the 
 girl who was his own according to Romany law, he 
 felt he had been a hundred times justified in demand- 
 ing her from her father, according to the pledge 
 and bond of so many years ago. He had nothing 
 to lose but his life, and he had risked that before. 
 This old man, the head of the Romany folk, had the 
 bulk of the fortune which had been his own father's 
 and he had the logic of lucre which is the most 
 convincing of all logic. Yet with the girl holding his 
 eyes commandingly, he was conscious that he was 
 asking more than a Romany lass to share his tan, 
 to go wandering from Romany people to Romany 
 people, king and queen of them all when Gabriel 
 Druse had passed away. Fleda Druse would be 
 a queen of queens, but there was that queenliness 
 in her now which was not Romany something which 
 was Gorgio, which was caste, which made a shivering 
 distance between them. 
 
 As he had spoken, she saw it all as he described it. 
 
 Vaguely, cloudily, the scene passed before her. 
 Now and again in the passing years had filmy 
 impressions floated before her mind of a swift- 
 flowing river and high crags, and wooded hills and 
 tents and horsemen and shouting, and a lad that held 
 her hand, and banners waved over their heads, and 
 galloping and shouting, and then a sudden quiet, 
 and many men and women gathered about a tent, 
 and a wailing thereafter. After which, in her faint 
 remembrance, there seemed to fall a mist, and a 
 space of blankness, and then a starting up from a 
 54
 
 "By the River Starzke ... It Was So Done" 
 
 bed, and looking out of the doors of a tent, where 
 many people gathered about a great fire, whose 
 flames licked the heavens, and seemed to devour 
 a Romany tent standing alone with a Romany 
 wagon full of its household things. 
 
 As Jethro Fawe had spoken, the misty, elusive 
 visions had become living memories, and she knew 
 that he had spoken the truth, and that these fleeting 
 things were pictures of her sealing to Jethro Fawe 
 and the death of Lemuel Fawe, and the burning 
 of all that belonged to him in that last ritual of 
 Romany farewell to the dead. 
 
 She knew now that she had been bargained for 
 like any slave for three thousand pounds. How 
 far away it all seemed, how barbaric and revolting! 
 Yet here it all was rolling up like a flood to her feet, 
 to bear her away into a past with its sordidness and 
 vagabondage, however gilded and graded above the 
 lowest vagabondage. 
 
 Here at Manitou she had tasted a free life which 
 was not vagabondage, the passion of the open road 
 which was not an elaborate and furtive evasion of the 
 law and a defiance of social ostracism. Here she and 
 her father moved in an atmosphere of esteem 
 touched by mystery, but not by suspicion; here 
 civilization in its most elastic organization and flex- 
 ible conventions, had laid its hold upon her, had 
 done in this expansive, loosely knitted social system 
 what could never have been accomplished in a great 
 city in London, Vienna, Rome, or New York. 
 She had had here the old free life of the road, so full 
 of the scent of deep woods the song of rivers,
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 the carol of birds, the murmuring of trees, the mys- 
 terious and devout whisperings of the night, the 
 happy communings of stray peoples meeting and 
 passing, the gaiety and gossip of the market-place, 
 the sound of church bells across a valley, the storms 
 and wild lightnings and rushing torrents, the cries 
 of frightened beasts, the wash and rush of rain, 
 the sharp pain of frost, and the agonies of some lost 
 traveller rescued from the wide inclemency, the 
 soft starlight after, the balm of the purged air, and 
 "rosy-fingered morn" blinking blithely at the world. 
 The old life of the open road she had had here with- 
 out anything of its shame, its stigma, and its sepa- 
 rateness, its discordance with the stationary forces 
 of law and organized community. 
 
 Wild moments there had been of late years when 
 she longed for the faces of Romany folk gathered 
 about the fire, while some Romany pral drew all 
 hearts with the violin or the dulcimer. When 
 Ambrose or Gilderoy or Christo responded to the 
 pleadings of some sentimental lass, and sang to the 
 harpist's strings 
 
 "Cold blows the wind over my true love, 
 Cold blow the drops of rain; 
 I never, never had but one sweetheart; 
 In the green wood he was slain," 
 
 and to cries of "Again! Ay bor! again!" the black- 
 eyed lover, hypnotizing himself into an ecstasy, 
 poured out race and passion and war with the law, 
 in the true Gipsy rant which is sung from Transyl- 
 vania to Yetholm or Carnarvon or Vancouver 
 
 56
 
 "By the River Starzke ... It Was So Done" 
 
 "Time was I went to my true love, 
 Time was she came to me " 
 
 The sharp passion which moved her now as she 
 stood before Jethro Fawe would not have been so 
 acute yesterday; but to-day she had lain in a 
 Gorgio's arms to-day; and though he was nothing 
 to her, he was still a Gorgio of Gorgios; and this 
 man before her her husband was at best but a 
 man of the hedges and the byre and the clay-pit, the 
 quarry and the wood; a nomad with no home, 
 nothing that belonged to what she was now a part 
 of organized, collective existence, the life of the 
 house-dweller, not the life of the tan, the koppa 
 and the vellgouris the tent, the blanket, and the fair. 
 
 "I was never bought, and I was never sold," 
 she said to Jethro Fawe at last "not for three 
 thousand pounds, not in three thousand years. 
 Look at me well, and see whether you think it was 
 so, or ever could be so. Look at me well, Jethro 
 Fawe." 
 
 "You are mine it was so done seventeen years 
 ago," he answered, defiantly and tenaciously. 
 
 "I was three years old, seventeen years ago," 
 she returned quietly, but her eyes forced his to look 
 at her, when they turned away as though their 
 light hurt him. 
 
 "It is no matter," he rejoined. "It is the way 
 of our people. It has been so, and it will be so while 
 there is a Romany tent standing or moving on." 
 
 In his rage Gabriel Druse could keep silence no 
 longer. 
 
 "Rogue, what have you to say of such things?'* 
 57
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 he growled. ' ' I am the head of all. I pass the word, 
 and things are so and so. By long and by last, if I 
 pass the word that you shall sleep the sleep, it will 
 be so, my Romany chal." 
 
 His daughter stretched out lier hand to stop 
 further speech from her father "Hush!" she said 
 maliciously, "he has come a long way for naught. 
 It will be longer going back. Let him have his say. 
 It is his capital. He has only breath and beauty." 
 
 Jethro shrank from the sharp irony of her tongue 
 as he would not have shrunk before her father's 
 violence. Biting rejection was in her tones. He knew 
 dimly that the thing he shrank from belonged to 
 nothing Romany in her, but to that scornful pride 
 of the Gorgios which had kept the Romany outside 
 the social pale. 
 
 "Only breath and beauty!" she had said, and that 
 she could laugh at his handsomeness was certain 
 proof that it was not wilfulness which rejected his 
 claims. Now there was rage in his heart greater 
 than had been in that of Gabriel Druse. 
 
 "I have come a long way for a good thing," he 
 said with head thrown back, "and if 'breath and 
 beauty' is all I bring, yet that is because what my 
 father had in his purse has made my Ry rich"- 
 he flung a hand out towards Gabriel Druse "and 
 because I keep to the open road as my father did, 
 true to my Romany blood. The wind and the sun 
 and the fatness of the field have made me what I 
 am, and never in my life had I an ache or a pain. 
 You have the breath and the beauty, too, but you 
 have the gold also ; and what you are and what you 
 58
 
 "By the River Starzke ... It Was So Done" 
 
 have is mine by the Romany law, and it will come 
 to me, by long and by last." 
 
 Fleda turned quietly to her father. "If it is true 
 concerning the three thousand pounds, give it to 
 him and let him go. It will buy him what he would 
 never get by what he is." 
 
 The old man flashed a look of anger upon her. 
 "He came empty, he shall go empty. Against my 
 commands, his insolence has brought him here. And 
 let him keep his eyes skinned, or he shall have no 
 breath with which to return. I am Gabriel Druse, 
 lord over all the Romany people in all the world 
 from Teheran to San Diego, and across the seas and 
 back again; and my will shall be done." 
 
 He paused, reflecting for a moment, though his 
 fingers opened and shut in anger. "This much I 
 will do," he added. "When I return to my people 
 I will deal with this matter in the place where Lemuel 
 Fawe died. By the place called Starzke, I will come 
 to reckoning, and then and then only." 
 
 "When?" asked the young man eagerly. 
 
 Gabriel Druse's eyes flashed. "When I return 
 as I will to return." Then suddenly he added, 
 "This much I will say, it shall be before " 
 
 The girl stopped him. "It shall be when it shall 
 be. Am I a chattel to be bartered by any will except 
 my own ? I will have naught to do with any Romany 
 law. Not by Starzke shall the matter be dealt with, 
 but here by the River Sagalac. This Romany has 
 no claim upon me. My will is my own; I myself 
 and no other shall choose my husband, and he will 
 never be a Romany." 
 
 59
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 The young man's eyes suddenly took on a dream- 
 ing, subtle look, submerging the sulkiness which had 
 filled him. Twice he essayed to speak, but faltered. 
 At last, with an air, he said: 
 
 "For seventeen years I have kept the faith. I 
 was sealed to you, and I hold by the sealing. Wher- 
 ever you went, it was known to me. In my thoughts 
 I followed. I read the Gorgio books; I made ready 
 for this day. I saw you as you were that day by 
 Starzke, like the young bird in the nest; and the 
 thought of it was with me always. I knew that when 
 I saw you again the brown eyes would be browner, 
 the words at the lips would be sweeter and so it is. 
 All is as I dreamed for these long years. I was 
 ever faithful. By night and day I saw you as you 
 were when Romany law made you mine for ever. 
 I looked forward to the day when I would take you 
 to my tan, and there we two would " 
 
 A flush sprang suddenly to Fleda Druse's face, 
 then slowly faded, leaving it pale and indignant. 
 Sharply she interrupted him. 
 
 "They should have called you Ananias," she said 
 scornfully. ' ' My father has called you a rogue, and 
 now I know you are one. I have not heard, but I 
 know I know that you have had a hundred loves, 
 and been true to none. The red scarfs you have 
 given to the Romany and the Gorgio flyaways would 
 make a tent for all the Fawes in all the world." 
 
 At first he flung up his head in astonishment at 
 
 her words, then, as she proceeded, a flush swept 
 
 across his face and his eyes filled up again with 
 
 sullermess, She had read the real truth concerning 
 
 60
 
 "By the River Starzke ... It Was So Done" 
 
 him. He had gone too far. He had been convincing 
 while he had said what was true, but her instinct 
 had suddenly told her what he was. Her perception 
 had pierced to the core of his life a vagabondage, 
 a little more gilded than was common among his 
 fellows, made possible by his position as the successor 
 to her father, and by the money of Lemuel Fawe 
 which he had dissipated. 
 
 He had come when all his gold was gone to do 
 the one bold thing which might at once restore his 
 fortunes. He had brains, and he knew now that his 
 adventure was in grave peril. 
 
 He laughed in his anger. "Is only the Gorgio to 
 embrace the Romany lass? One fondled mine to- 
 day in his arms down. there at Carillon. That's 
 the way it goes! The old song tells the end of it 
 
 'But the Gorgio lies 'neath the beech-wood tree; 
 He'll broach my tan no more; 
 And my love she sleeps afar from me, 
 But near to the churchyard door. 
 
 'Time was I went to my true love, 
 Time was she came to me '" 
 
 He got no farther. Gabriel Druse was on him, 
 gripping his arms so tight to his body that his swift 
 motion to draw a weapon was frustrated. The old 
 man put out all his strength, a strength which in his 
 younger days was greater than any two men in any 
 Romany camp, and the "breath and beauty" of 
 Jethro Fawe grew less and less. His face became 
 purple and distorted, his body convulsed, then limp, 
 61
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 and presently he lay on the ground with a knee on 
 his chest and fierce, bony hands at his throat. 
 
 "Don't kill him father, don't!" cried the girl, 
 laying restraining hands on the old man's shoulders. 
 
 He withdrew his hands and released the body from 
 his knee. Jethro Fawe lay still. 
 
 "Is he dead?" she whispered, awestricken. 
 
 "Dead?" The old man felt the breast of the 
 unconscious man. He smiled grimly. "He is lucky 
 not to be dead." 
 
 "What shall we do?" the girl asked again with a 
 white face. 
 
 The old man stooped and lifted the unconscious 
 form in his arms as though it was that of a child. 
 
 "Where are you going?" she asked anxiously, as 
 he moved away. 
 
 "To the hut in the juniper wood," he answered. 
 
 She watched till he had disappeared with his limp 
 burden into the depths of the trees. Then she turned 
 and went slowly towards the house.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE UNGUARDED FIRES 
 
 'T'HE public knew well that Ingolby had solved 
 * his biggest business problem, because three 
 offices of three railways one big and two small 
 suddenly became merged under his control. At 
 which there was rejoicing at Lebanon, followed by 
 dismay and indignation at Manitou, for one of the 
 smaller merged railways had its offices there, and it 
 was now removed to Lebanon; while several of the 
 staff, having proved cantankerous, were promptly 
 retired. As they were French Canadians, their 
 retirement became a public matter in Manitou and 
 begot fresh quarrel between the rival towns. 
 
 Ingolby had made a tactical mistake in at once 
 removing the office of the merged railway from 
 Manitou, and he saw it quickly. It was not possible 
 to put the matter right at once, however. 
 
 There had already been collision between his own 
 railway-men and the rivermen from Manitou, whom 
 Felix Marchand had bribed to cause trouble: two 
 Manitou men had been seriously hurt, and feeling 
 ran high. Ingolby's eyes opened wide when he saw 
 Marchand's ugly game. He loathed the dissolute 
 63
 
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 fellow, but he realized now that his foe was a factor 
 to be reckoned with, for Marchand had plenty of 
 money as well as a bad nature. He saw he was in 
 for a big fight with Manitou, and he had to think 
 it out. 
 
 So this time he went pigeon-shooting. 
 
 He got his pigeons, and the slaughter did him 
 good. As though in keeping with the situation, he 
 shot on both sides of the Sagalac with great good 
 luck, and in the late afternoon sent his Indian lad 
 on ahead to Lebanon with the day's spoil, while he 
 loitered through the woods, a gun slung in the hollow 
 of his arm. He had walked many miles, but there 
 was still a spring to his step and he hummed an air 
 with his shoulders thrown back and his hat on the 
 back of his head. He had had his shooting, he had 
 done his thinking, and he was pleased with himself. 
 He had shaped his homeward course so that it would 
 bring him near to Gabriel Druse's house. 
 
 He had seen Fleda only twice since the episode at 
 Carillon, and met her only once, and that was but 
 for a moment at a Fete for the hospital at Manitou, 
 and with other people present people who lay in 
 wait for crumbs of gossip. 
 
 Since the running of the Rapids, Fleda had filled 
 a larger place in the eyes of Manitou and Lebanon. 
 She had appealed to the Western mind : she had done 
 a brave physical thing. Wherever she went she was 
 made conscious of a new attitude towards herself, 
 a more understanding feeling. At the Fete when she 
 and Ingolby met face to face, people had immediately 
 drawn round them curious and excited. These 
 64
 
 The Unguarded Fires 
 
 could not understand why the two talked so little, 
 and had such an every-day manner with each other. 
 Only old Mother Thibadeau, who had a heart that 
 sees, caught a look in Fleda's eyes, a warm deepening 
 of colour, a sudden embarrassment, which she knew 
 how to interpret. 
 
 "See now, monseigneur," she said to Monseigneur 
 Lourde, nodding towards Fleda and Ingolby, "there 
 would be work here soon for you or Father Bidette 
 if they were not two heretics." 
 
 "Is she a heretic, then, madame?" asked the old 
 white-headed priest, his eyes quizzically following 
 Fleda. 
 
 "She is not a Catholic, and she must be a heretic, 
 that's certain," was the reply. 
 
 "I'm not so sure," mused the priest. Smiling, 
 he raised his hat as he caught Fleda's eyes. He 
 made as if to go towards her, but something in her 
 look held him back. He realized that Fleda did not 
 wish to speak with him, and that she was even hurry- 
 ing away from her father, who lumbered through 
 the crowd as though unconscious of them all. 
 
 Presently Monseigneur Lourde saw Fleda leave the 
 Fete and take the road towards home. There was a 
 sense of excitement in her motions, and he also had 
 seen that tremulous, embarrassed look in her eyes. 
 It puzzled him. He did not connect it wholly with 
 Ingolby as Madame Thibadeau had done. He had 
 lived so long among primitive people that he was 
 more accustomed to study faces than find the truth 
 from words, and he had always been conscious that 
 this girl, educated and even intellectual, was at 
 5 65
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 heart as primitive as the wildest daughter of the 
 tepees of the North. There was also in her something 
 of that mystery which belongs to the universal itin- 
 erary that cosmopolitan something which is the 
 native human. 
 
 "She has far to go," the priest said to himself as 
 he turned to greet Ingolby with a smile, bright and 
 shy, but gravely reproachful, too. 
 
 This happened on the day before the collision 
 between the railway-men and the river-drivers, and 
 the old priest already knew what trouble was afoot. 
 
 There was little Felix Marchand did which was 
 hidden from him. He made his way to Ingolby to 
 warn him. 
 
 As Ingolby now walked in the woods towards 
 Gabriel Druse's house, he recalled one striking phrase 
 used by the aged priest in reference to the closing 
 of the railway offices. 
 
 "When you strike your camp, put out the fires" 
 was the aphorism. 
 
 Ingolby stopped, humming to himself as the words 
 came to his memory again. Bending his head in 
 thought for a moment, he stood still, cogitating. 
 
 "The dear old fellow was right," he said presently 
 aloud with uplifted head. "I struck camp, but I 
 didn't put out the fires. There's a lot of that in life." 
 
 That is what had happened also to Gabriel Druse 
 and his daughter. They had struck camp, but had 
 not put out the camp-fires. That which had been 
 done by the River Starzke came again in its ap- 
 pointed time, The untended, unguarded fire may 
 66
 
 The Unguarded Fires 
 
 spread devastation and ruin, following with angry 
 freedom the marching feet of hose who builded it. 
 
 "Yes, you've got to put out your fires when you 
 quit the bivouac," continued Ingolby aloud, as he 
 gazed ahead of him through the opening greenery, 
 beyond which lay Gabriel Druse's home. Where 
 he was the woods were thick, and here and there 
 on either side it was almost impenetrable. Few 
 people ever came through this wood. It belonged in 
 greater part to Gabriel Druse, and in lesser part to 
 the Hudson's Bay Company and the Government; 
 and as the land was not valuable till it was cleared, 
 and there was plenty of prairie land to be had, from 
 which neither stick nor stump must be removed, 
 these woods were very lonely. Occasionally a trapper 
 or a sportsman wandered through them, but just 
 here where Ingolby was none ever loitered. It was 
 toa thick for game, there was no roadway leading 
 anywhere, but only an overgrown path, used in the 
 old days by Indians. It was this path which Ingolby 
 trod with eager steps. 
 
 Presently, as he stood still at sight of a ground- 
 hog making for its hiding-place, he saw a shadow 
 fall across the light breaking through the trees 
 some distance in front of him. It was Fleda. She 
 had not seen him, and she came hurrying towards 
 where he was with head bent, a brightly ribboned 
 hat swinging in her fingers. She seemed part of the 
 woods, its wild simplicity, its depth, its colour 
 already Autumn was crimsoning the leaves, touching 
 them with amber tints, making the woodland warm 
 and kind. She wore a dress of golden brown which 
 67
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 matched her hair, and at her throat was a black- 
 velvet ribbon with a Jbrooch of antique paste which 
 flashed the light like diamonds, but more softly. 
 
 Suddenly, as she came on, she stopped and raised 
 her head in a listening attitude, her eyes opening 
 wide as if listening, too it was as though she heard 
 with them as well; alive to catch sounds which 
 evaded capture. She was like some creature of an 
 ancient wood with its own secret and immemorial 
 history which the world could never know. There 
 was that in her face which did not belong to civiliza* 
 tion or to that fighting world of which Ingolby was 
 so eager a factor. All the generations of the wood 
 and road, the combe and the river, the quarry and 
 the secluded boscage were in her look. There was 
 that about her which was at once elusive and prime- 
 vally real. 
 
 She was not of those who would be lost in the dust 
 of futility. Whatever she was, she was an inde- 
 pendent atom in the mass of the world's breeding. 
 Perhaps it was consciousness of the dynamic quality 
 in the girl, her nearness to naked nature, which 
 made Madame Bulteel say that she would "have a 
 history." 
 
 If she got twisted as she came wayfaring, if her 
 mind became possessed of a false passion or purpose 
 which she thought a true one, then tragedy would 
 await her. Yet in this quiet wood so near to the 
 centuries that were before Adam was, she looked 
 like a spirit of comedy listening till the Spirit of the 
 Wood should break the silence. 
 
 Ingolby felt his blood beat faster. He had a feeling 
 68
 
 The Unguarded Fires 
 
 that he was looking at a wood-nymph who might 
 flash out of his vision as a mere fantasy of the mind. 
 There shot through him the strangest feeling that 
 if she were his, he would be linked with something 
 alien to the world of which he was. 
 
 Yet, recalling the day at Carillon when her cheek 
 lay on his shoulder and her warm breast was pressed 
 unresistingly against him, as he lifted her from his 
 boat, he knew that he would have to make the 
 hardest fight of his life if he meant not to have more 
 of her than this brief acquaintance, so touched by 
 sensation and romance. He was, maybe, somewhat 
 sensational; his career had, even in its present re- 
 stricted compass, been spectacular; but romance, 
 with its reveries and its moonshinings, its impulses 
 and its blind adventures, had not been any part 
 of his existence. 
 
 Hers were not the first red lips which, voluntarily 
 r involuntarily, had invited him; nor hers the first 
 eyes which had sparkled to his glances; and this 
 triumphant Titian head of hers was not the only 
 one he had seen. When he had taken her hand at 
 the Hospital Fete, her fingers, long and warm and 
 fine, had folded round his own with a singular confi- 
 dence, an involuntary enclosing friendliness; and 
 now as he watched her listening did she hear some- 
 thing? he saw her hand stretch out as though com- 
 manding silence, the "hush!" of an alluring gesture. 
 
 This assuredly was not the girl who had run the 
 Carillon Rapids, for that adventuress was full of a 
 vital force like a man's, and this girl had the evanish- 
 ing charm of a dryad. 
 
 69
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 Suddenly a change passed over her. She was as 
 one who had listened and had caught the note of 
 song for which she waited; but her face clouded, 
 and the rapt look gave way to an immediate distress. 
 The fantasy of the wood-nymph underwent transla- 
 tion in Ingolby's mind; she was now like a mortal, 
 who, having been .transformed, at immortal dictate 
 was returning to mortal state again. 
 
 To heighten the illusion, he thought he heard faint 
 singing in the depths of the wood. He put his hands 
 to his ears for a moment, and took them away 
 again to make sure that it was really singing and not 
 his imagination; and when he saw Fleda's face 
 again, there was fresh evidence that his senses had 
 not deceived him. After all, it was not strange that 
 some one should be singing in that deepest wood 
 beyond. 
 
 Now Fleda moved forward towards where he stood, 
 quickening her footsteps as though remembering 
 something she must do. He stepped out into the 
 path and came to meet her. She heard his foot- 
 steps, saw him, and stood still abruptly. 
 
 She did not make a sound, but a hand went to 
 her bosom quickly, as though to quiet her heart or to 
 steady herself. He had broken suddenly upon her 
 intent thoughts, he had startled her as she had been 
 seldom startled, for all her childhood training had 
 been towards self-possession before surprise and 
 danger. 
 
 "This is not your side of the Sagalac," she said 
 with a half -smile, regaining composure. 
 
 "That is in dispute," he answered gaily. "I 
 70
 
 The Unguarded Fires 
 
 want to belong to both sides of the Sagalac, I want 
 both sides to belong to each other so that either side 
 shall not be my side or your side, or " 
 
 "Or Monsieur Felix Marchand's side," she inter- 
 rupted meaningly. 
 
 "Oh, he's on the outside!" snapped the fighter, 
 with a hardening mouth. 
 
 She did not reply at once, but put her hat on, and 
 tied the ribbons loosely under her chin, looking 
 thoughtfully into the distance. 
 
 "Is that the Western slang for saying he belongs 
 nowhere?" she asked. 
 
 "Nowhere here," he answered with a grim twist 
 to the corner of his mouth, his eyes half -closing with 
 sulky meaning. "Won't you sit down?" he added 
 quickly, in a more sprightly tone, for he saw she 
 was about to move on. He motioned towards a 
 log lying beside the path and kicked some branches 
 out of the way. 
 
 After slight hesitation she sat down, burying her 
 shoes in the fallen leaves. 
 
 "You don't like Felix Marchand?" she remarked 
 presently. 
 
 "No. Do you?" 
 
 She met his eyes squarely so squarely that his 
 own rather lost their courage, and he blinked more 
 quickly than is needed with a healthy eye. He had 
 been audacious, but he had not surprised the garrison. 
 
 1 ' I have no deep reason for liking or disliking him, 
 and you have," she answered firmly; yet her colour 
 rose slightly, and he thought he had never seen skin 
 that looked so like velvet creamy, pink velvet.
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 "You seemed to think differently at Carillon not 
 long ago," he returned. 
 
 "That was an accident," she answered calmly. 
 "He was drunk, and that is for forgetting always." 
 
 "Always! Have you seen many men drunk?" 
 he asked quickly. He did not mean to be quizzical, 
 but his voice sounded so, and she detected it. 
 
 "Yes, many," she answered with a little ring of 
 defiance in her tone "many, often." 
 
 "Where?" he queried recklessly. 
 
 "In Lebanon," she retorted. "In Lebanon your 
 side." 
 
 How different she seemed from a few moments 
 ago when she stood listening like a nymph for the 
 song of the Spirit of the Wood! Now she was gay, 
 buoyant, with a chamois-like alertness and a beaming 
 vigour. 
 
 "Now I know what 'blind drunk' means," he 
 replied musingly. "In Manitou when men get 
 drunk, the people get astigmatism and can't see the 
 tangle-footed stagger." 
 
 "It means that the pines of Manitou are straighter 
 than the cedars of Lebanon," she remarked. 
 
 "And the pines of Manitou have needles," he re- 
 joined, meaning to give her the victory. 
 
 ' ' Is my tongue as sharp as that ?" she asked, amuse- 
 ment in her eyes. 
 
 "So sharp I can feel the point when I can't see 
 it," he retorted. 
 
 "I'm glad of that," she replied with an affectation 
 of conceit. "Of course if you live in Lebanon you 
 need surgery to make you feel a point." 
 72
 
 The Unguarded Fires 
 
 "I give in you have me," he remarked. 
 
 "You give in to Manitou?" she asked provokingly. 
 
 "Certainly not only to you. I said, 'You have 
 me.'" 
 
 "Ah, you give in to that which won't hurt you ' 
 
 "Wouldn't you hurt me?" he asked in a softening 
 tone. 
 
 "You only play with words," she answered with 
 sudden gravity. "Hurt you? I owe you what I 
 cannot pay back. I owe you my life ; but as nothing 
 can be given in exchange for a life, I cannot pay you." 
 
 "But like may be given for like," he rejoined 
 in a tone suddenly full of meaning. 
 
 "Again you are playing with words and with 
 me," she answered brusquely, and a little light of 
 anger dawned in her eyes. Did he think that he 
 could say a thing of that sort to her when he 
 pleased? Did he think that because he had done 
 her a great service, he could say casually what be- 
 longed only to the sacred moments of existence? 
 She looked at him with rising indignation, but there 
 suddenly came to her the conviction that he had 
 not spoken with affronting gallantry, but that for 
 him the moment had a gravity not to be marred 
 by the place, or the circumstance. 
 
 ' ' I beg your pardon if I spoke hastily," he answered 
 presently. "Yet there's many a true word spoken 
 in jest." 
 
 There was a moment's silence. She realized that 
 
 he was drawn to her, and that the attraction was 
 
 not alone due to his having saved her at Carillon; 
 
 that he was not taking advantage of the thing which 
 
 73
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 must ever be a bond between them, whatever came 
 of life. When she had seen him at the Hospital Fe"te, 
 a feeling had rushed over her that he had got nearer 
 to her than any man had ever done. Then even 
 then, she felt the thing which all lovers, actual, or 
 in the making, feel that they must do something 
 for the being who to them is more than all else and 
 all others. She was not in love with Ingolby. How 
 could she be in love with this man she had seen but 
 a few times this Gorgio! Why was it that even 
 as they talked together now, she felt the real, true 
 distance between them of race, of origin, of history, 
 of life, of circumstance? The hut in the wood where 
 Gabriel Druse had carried Jethro Fawe was not three 
 hundred yards away. 
 
 She sighed, stirred, and a wild look came in her 
 eyes a look of rebellion or of protest. Presently she 
 recovered herself. She was a creature of sudden 
 moods. 
 
 "What is it you want to do with Manitou and 
 Lebanon?" she asked after a pause in which the 
 thoughts of both had travelled far. 
 
 "You really wish to know you don't know?" he 
 asked with sudden intensity. 
 
 She regarded him frankly, smiled, then she laughed 
 outright, showing her teeth very white and regular 
 and handsome. The boyish eagerness of his look, 
 the whimsical twist of his mouth, which always 
 showed when he was keenly roused as though 
 everything that really meant anything was part of 
 a comet -like comedy had caused her merriment. 
 All the hidden things in his face seemed to open out 
 74
 
 The Unguarded Fires 
 
 into a swift shrewdness and dry candour when he 
 was in his mood of "laying all the cards upon the 
 table." 
 
 "I don't know," she answered quietly. "I have 
 heard things, but I should like to learn the truth 
 from you. What are your plans?" 
 
 Her eyes were burning with inquiry. She was 
 suddenly brought to the gateways of a new world. 
 Plans what had she or her people to do with plans ! 
 What Romany ever constructed anything? What 
 did the building of a city or a country mean to a 
 Romany chal or a Romany chi, they who lived from 
 field to field, from common to moor, from barn to 
 city wall? A Romany tent or a Romany camp, 
 with its families, was the whole territory of their 
 enterprise, designs and patriotism. They saw the 
 thousand places where cities could be made, and 
 built their fires on the sites of them, and camped 
 a day, and were gone, leaving them waiting and bar- 
 ren as before. They travelled through the new lands 
 in America from the fringe of the Arctic to Patagonia, 
 but they raised no roof tree; they tilled no acre, 
 opened no market, set up no tabernacle: they had 
 neither home nor country. 
 
 Fleda was the heir of all this, the product of gen- 
 erations of such vagabondage. Had the last few 
 years given her the civic sense, the home sense? 
 From the influence of the Englishwoman, who had 
 made her forsake the Romany life, had there come 
 habits of mind in tune with the women of the Sagalac, 
 who were helping to build so much more than their 
 homes? Since the incident of the Carillon Rapids 
 75
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 she had changed, but what the change meant was 
 yet in her unopened Book of Revelations. Yet 
 something stirred in her which she had never felt 
 before. She had come of a race of wayfarers, but 
 the spirit of the builders touched her now. 
 
 "What are my plans ?" Ingolby drew a long breath 
 of satisfaction. "Well, just here where we are 
 will be seen a great thing. There's the Yukon and 
 all its gold; there's the Peace River country and 
 all its unploughed wheat-fields; there's the whole 
 valley of the Sagalac, which alone can maintain 
 twenty millions of people; there's the East and the 
 British people overseas who must have bread; 
 there's China and Japan going to give up rice, and 
 eat the wheaten loaf; there's the U. S. A. with its 
 hundred millions of people it 11 be that in a few 
 years and its exhausted wheat-fields; and here, 
 right here, is the bread-basket for all the hungry 
 peoples; and Manitou and Lebanon are the centre 
 of it. They will be the distribution centre. I want 
 to see the base laid right. I'm not going to stay here 
 till it all happens, but I want to plan it all so that it 
 will happen, then I'll go on and do a bigger thing 
 somewhere else. These two towns have got to come 
 together; they must play one big game. I want to 
 lay the wires for it. That's why I've got capitalists 
 to start paper-works, engineering works, a foundry, 
 and a sash-door-and-blind-factory just the begin- 
 ning. That's why I've put two factories on one side 
 of the river and two on the other." 
 
 "Was it really you who started those factories?" 
 she asked incredulously. 
 
 76
 
 The Unguarded Fires 
 
 "Of course! It was part of my plans. I wasn't 
 foolish enough to build and run them myself. I 
 looked for the right people that had the money 
 and the brains, and I let them sweat let them sweat 
 it out. I'm not a manufacturer; I'm an inventor 
 and a builder. I built the bridge over the river; 
 and " 
 
 She nodded. "Yes, the bridge is good; but they 
 say you are a schemer," she added suggestively. 
 
 "Certainly. But if I have schemes which '11 do 
 good, I ought to be supported. I don't mind what 
 they call me, so long as they don't call me too late 
 for dinner." 
 
 They both laughed. It was seldom he talked 
 like this, and never had he talked to such a listener 
 before. 
 
 "The merging of the three railways was a good 
 scheme, and I was the schemer," he continued. "It 
 might mean monopoly, but it won't work out that 
 way. It will simply concentrate energy and save 
 elbow-grease. It will set free capital and capacity 
 for other things." 
 
 "They say there will be fewer men at work, not 
 only in the offices but on the whole railway system, 
 and they don't like that in Manitou ah, no, they 
 don't!" she urged. 
 
 "They're right in a sense," he answered. "But 
 the men will be employed at other things, which 
 won't represent waste and capital overlapping. Over- 
 lapping capital hits everybody in the end. But who 
 says all that? Who raises the cry of 'wolf* in 
 Manitou?" 
 
 77
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 "A good many people say it now," she answered, 
 "but I think Felix Marchand said it first. He is 
 against you, and he is dangerous." 
 
 He shrugged a shoulder. "Oh, if any fool said it, 
 it would be the same!" he answered. "That's a fire 
 easily lighted; though it sometimes burns long and 
 hard." He frowned, and a fighting look came into 
 his face. 
 
 "Then you know all that is working against you 
 in Manitou working harder than ever before?" 
 
 "I think I do, but I probably don't know all. 
 Have you any special news about it?" 
 
 "Felix Marchand is spending money among the 
 men. They are going on strike on your railways 
 and in the mills." 
 
 "What mills in Manitou?" he asked abruptly. 
 
 "In both towns." 
 
 He laughed harshly. "That's a tall order," he 
 said sharply. "Both towns I don't think so, not 
 yet." 
 
 "A sympathetic strike is what he calls it," she 
 rejoined. 
 
 "Yes, a row over some imagined grievance on the 
 railway, and all the men in all the factories to strike 
 that's the new game of the modern labour agitator! 
 Marchand has been travelling in France," he added 
 disdainfully, "but he has brought his goods to the 
 wrong shop. What do the priests what does 
 Monseigneur Lourde say to it all?" 
 
 "I am not a Catholic," she replied gravely. "I've 
 heard, though, that Monseigneur is trying to stop the 
 
 trouble. But " She paused. 
 
 78
 
 The Unguarded Fires 
 
 "Yes but?" he asked. "What were you going 
 to say?" 
 
 "But there are many roughs in Manitou, and 
 Felix Marchand makes friends with them. I don't 
 think the priests will be able to help much in the end, 
 and if it is to be Manitou against Lebanon, you 
 can't expect a great deal." 
 
 "I never expect more than I get generally less," 
 he answered grimly; and he moved the gun about 
 on his knees restlessly, fingering the lock and the 
 trigger softly. 
 
 "I am sure Felix Marchand means you harm," 
 she persisted. 
 
 "Personal harm?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 He laughed sarcastically again. "We are not in 
 Bulgaria or Sicily," he rejoined, his jaw hardening; 
 4 ' and I can take care of myself. What makes you say 
 he means personal harm ? Have you heard anything ?" 
 
 "No, nothing, but I feel it is so. That day at the 
 Hospital Fete he looked at you in a way that told 
 me. I think such instincts are given to some people 
 and some races. You read books I read people. 
 I wanted to warn you, and I do so. This has been 
 lucky in a way, this meeting. Please don't treat what 
 I've said lightly. Your plans are in danger and you 
 also." 
 
 Was the psychic and fortune-telling instinct of the 
 Romany alive in her and working involuntarily, 
 doing that faithfully which her people did so faith- 
 lessly? The darkness which comes from intense 
 feeling had gathered underneath her eyes, and gave 
 79
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 them a look of pensiveness not in keeping with the 
 glow of her perfect health, the velvet of her cheek. 
 
 "Would you mind telling me where you got your 
 information?" he asked presently. 
 
 "My father heard here and there, and I, also, 
 and some I got from old Madame Thibadeau who 
 is a friend of mine. I talk with her more than with 
 any one else in Manitou. First she taught me how 
 to crochet, but she teaches me many other things, 
 too." 
 
 "I know the old girl by sight. She is a character. 
 She would know a lot, that woman." 
 
 He paused, seemed about to speak, hesitated, 
 then after a moment hastily said: "A minute ago 
 you spoke of having the instinct of your race, or 
 something like that. What is your race? Is it 
 Irish, or do you mind my asking? Your English 
 is perfect, but there is something something ' 
 
 She turned away her head, a flush spreading over 
 her face. She was unprepared for the question. 
 No one had ever asked it directly of her since they 
 had come to Manitou. Whatever speculation there 
 had been, she had never been obliged to tell any one 
 of what race she was. She spoke English with no 
 perceptible accent, as she spoke Spanish, Italian, 
 French, Hungarian and Greek; and there was noth- 
 ing in her speech marking her as different from the 
 ordinary Western woman. Certainly she would have 
 been considered pure English among the polyglot 
 population of Manitou. 
 
 What must she say? What was it her duty to 
 say? She was living the life of a British woman, she 
 80
 
 The Unguarded Fires 
 
 was as much a Gorgio in her daily existence as this 
 man beside her. Manitou was as much home 
 nay, it was a thousand times more home than 
 the shifting habitat of the days when they wandered 
 from the Caspians to John o' Groat's. 
 
 For years all traces of the past had been removed 
 as completely as though the tide had washed over 
 them; for years it had been so, until the fateful day 
 when she ran the Carillon Rapids. That day saw 
 her whole horizon alter; that day saw this man 
 beside her enter on the stage of her life. And on 
 that very day also came Jethro Fawe out of the 
 Past and demanded her return. 
 
 That had been a day of Destiny. The old, pant- 
 ing, unrealized, tempestuous longing was gone. She 
 was as one who saw danger and faced it, who had a 
 fight to make and would make it. 
 
 What would happen if she told this man that she 
 was a Gipsy the daughter of a Gipsy ruler, which 
 was no more than being head of a clan of the world's 
 transients, the leader of the world's nomads? Money 
 her father had that, at least much money; got 
 in ways that could not bear the light at times, yet, 
 as the world counts things, not dishonestly; for 
 more than one great minister in a notable country in 
 Europe had commissioned him, more than one ruler 
 and crowned head had used him when "there was 
 trouble in the Balkans," or the "sick man of Europe" 
 was worse, or the Russian Bear came prowling. 
 His service had ever been secret service, when he 
 lived the life of the caravan and the open highway. 
 He had no stable place among the men of all nations, 
 6 81
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 and yet secret rites and mysteries and a language 
 which was known from Bokhara to Wandsworth, 
 and from Waikiki to Valparaiso, gave him dignity 
 of a kind, clothed him with importance. 
 
 Yet she wanted to tell this man beside her the 
 whole truth, and see what he would do. Would he 
 turn his face away in disgust ? What had she a right 
 to tell? She knew well that her father would wish 
 her to keep to that secrecy which so far had sheltered 
 them at least until Jethro Fawe's coming. 
 
 At last she turned and looked him in the eyes, 
 the flush gone from her face. 
 
 "I'm not Irish do I look Irish?" she asked 
 quietly, though her heart was beating unevenly. 
 
 "You look more Irish than anything else, except, 
 maybe, Slav or Hungarian or Gipsy," he said 
 admiringly and unwittingly. 
 
 "I have Gipsy blood in me," she answered slowly, 
 "but no Irish or Hungarian blood." 
 
 "Gipsy is that so?" he said spontaneously, as 
 she watched him so intently that the pulses throbbed 
 at her temples. 
 
 A short time ago Fleda might have announced 
 her origin defiantly, now her courage failed her. She 
 did not wish him to be prejudiced against her. 
 
 "Well, well," he added, "I only just guessed at 
 it, because there's something unusual and strong 
 in you, not because your eyes are so dark and 
 your hair so brown." 
 
 "Not because of my 'wild beauty' I thought you 
 were going to say that," she added, ironically and a 
 little defiantly. " I got some verses by post the other 
 82
 
 The Unguarded Fires 
 
 day from one of your friends in Lebanon a stock- 
 rider I think he was, and they said I had a 'wild 
 beauty' and a 'savage sweetness.'" 
 
 He laughed, yet he suddenly saw her sensitive 
 vigilance, and by instinct he felt that she was watch- 
 ing for some sign of shock or disdain on his part; 
 yet in truth he cared no more whether she had 
 Gipsy blood in her than he would have done if she 
 had said she was a daughter of the Czar. 
 
 "Men do write that kind of thing," he added 
 cheerfully, "but it's quite harmless. There was a 
 disease at college we called adjectivitis. Your poet 
 friend had it. He could have left out the 'wild* 
 and 'savage' and he'd have been pleasant, and 
 truthful too no, I apologize." 
 
 He had seen her face darken under the compli- 
 ment, and he hastened to put it right. 
 
 "I loved a Gipsy once," he added whimsically to 
 divert attention from his mistake, and with so> 
 genuine a sympathy in his voice that she was dis- 
 armed. "I was ten and she was fifty at least. Oh, 
 a wonderful woman! I had a boy friend, a fat, 
 happy little joker he was; his name was Charley 
 Long. Well, this woman was his aunt. When she 
 moved through the town, people looked twice. She 
 was tall and splendidly made, and her manner 
 oh, as if she owned the place. She did own a lot 
 she had more money than any one else thereabouts, 
 anyhow. It was the tallest kind of a holiday when 
 Charley and I walked out to the big white house 
 golly, but it was white to visit her! We didn't eat 
 much the day before we went to see her; and we 
 83
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 didn't eat much the day after, either. She used to 
 feed us I wish I could eat like that now ! I can see 
 her brown eyes following us about, full of fire, but 
 soft and kind, too. She had a great temper, they 
 said, but everybody liked her, and some loved her. 
 She'd had one girl, but she died of consumption, got 
 camping out in bad weather. Aunt Cynthy that 
 was what we called her, her name being Cynthia 
 never got over her girl's death. She blamed herself 
 for it. She had had those fits of going back to the 
 open for weeks at a time. The girl oughtn't to 
 have been taken to camp out. She was never strong, 
 and it was the wrong place and the wrong time of 
 year all right in August and all wrong in October. 
 
 "Well, always after her girl's death Aunt Cynthy 
 was as I knew her, being good to us youngsters as 
 no one else ever was, or could be. Her tea-table was 
 a sight; and the rest of the meals were banquets. 
 The first time I ever ate hedgehog was at her place. 
 A little while ago, just before you came, I thought 
 of her. A hedgehog crossed the path here, and it 
 brought those days back to me Charley Long and 
 Aunt Cynthy and all. Yes, the first time I ever ate 
 hedgehog was in Aunt Cynthy's house. Hi-yi, as 
 old Tekewani says, but it was good!" 
 
 "What is the Romany word for hedgehog?" Fleda 
 asked in a low tone. 
 
 "Hotchewitchi" he replied instantly. "That's 
 right, isn't it?" 
 
 "Yes, it is right," she answered, and her eyes had 
 a far-away look, but there was a kind of trouble at 
 her mouth, 
 
 84
 
 The Unguarded Fires 
 
 "Do you speak Romany?" she added a little 
 breathlessly. 
 
 "No, no. I only picked up words I heard Aunt 
 Cynthy use now and then when she was in the mood." 
 
 "What was the history of Aunt Cynthy?" 
 
 "I only know what Charley Long told me. Aunt 
 Cynthy was the daughter of a Gipsy they say the 
 only Gipsy in that part of the country at the time 
 who used to buy and sell horses, and travel in a big 
 van as comfortable as a house. The old man sud- 
 denly died on the farm of Charley's uncle. In a 
 month the uncle married the girl. She brought him 
 thirty thousand dollars." 
 
 Fleda knew that this man who had fired her spirit 
 for the first time had told his childhood story to 
 show her the view he took of her origin; but she 
 did not like him less for that, though she seemed to 
 feel a chasm between them still. The new things 
 moving in her were like breezes that stir the trees, 
 not like the wind turning the windmill which grinds 
 the corn. She had scarcely yet begun to grind the 
 corn of life. 
 
 She did not know where she was going, what she 
 would find, or where the new trail would lead her. 
 The Past dogged her footsteps, hung round her like 
 the folds of a garment. Even as she rejected it, 
 it asserted its power, troubled her, angered her 
 humiliated her, called to her. 
 
 She was glad of this meeting with Ingolby. It 
 
 had helped her. She had set out to do a thing she 
 
 dreaded, and it was easier now than it would have 
 
 been if they had not met. She had been on her way 
 
 85
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 co the Hut in the Wood, and now the dread of the 
 visit to Jethro Fawe had diminished. The last 
 voice she would hear before she entered Jethro 
 Fawe's prison was that of the man who represented 
 to her, however vaguely, the life which must be her 
 future the settled life, the life of Society and not 
 of the Saracen. 
 
 After he had told his boyhood story they sat in 
 silence for a moment or two, then she rose, and, 
 turning to him, was about to speak. At that instant 
 there came distinctly through the wood a faint, 
 trilling sound. Her face paled a little, and the words 
 died upon her lips. Ingolby, having turned his head 
 as though to listen, did not see the change in her 
 face, and she quickly regained her self-control. 
 
 "I heard that sound before," he said, "and I 
 thought from your look you heard it, too. It's 
 funny. It is singing, isn't it?" 
 
 "Yes, it's singing," she answered. 
 
 "Who is it some of the heathen from the Reser- 
 vation?" 
 
 "Yes, some of the heathen," she answered. 
 
 "Has Tekewani got a lodge about here?" 
 
 "He had one here in the old days." 
 
 "And his people go to it still was that where 
 you were going when I broke in on you?" 
 
 "Yes, I was going there. I am a heathen, also, 
 you know." 
 
 "Well, I'll be a heathen, too, if you'll show me 
 how; if you think I'd pass for one. I've done a lot 
 of heathen things in my time." 
 
 She gave him her hand to say good-bye. 
 86
 
 The Unguarded Fires 
 
 "Mayn't I go with you?" he asked. 
 
 "'I must finish my journey alone,'" she answered 
 slowly, repeating a line from the first English book 
 she had ever read. 
 
 "That's English enough," he responded with a 
 laugh. "Well, if I mustn't go with you, I mustn't, 
 but my respects to Robinson Crusoe." He slung the 
 gun into the hollow of his arm. "I'd like much to 
 go with you," he urged. 
 
 "Not to-day," she answered firmly. 
 
 Again the voice came through the woods, a little 
 louder now. 
 
 "It sounds like a call," he remarked. 
 
 "It is a call," she answered "the call of the 
 heathen." 
 
 An instant after she had gone on, with a look 
 half-smiling, half -forbidding, thrown over her shoul- 
 der at him. 
 
 "I've a notion to follow her," he said eagerly, 
 and he took a step in her direction. 
 
 Suddenly she turned and came back to him. 
 "Your plans are in danger don't forget Felix 
 Marchand," she said, and then turned from him 
 again. 
 
 "Oh, I'll not forget," he answered, and waved 
 his cap after her. "No, I'll not forget monsieur," 
 he added sharply, and he stepped out with a light 
 of battle in his eyes.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 IN WHICH THE PRISONER GOES FREE 
 
 AS Fleda wound her way through the deeper 
 wood, remembering the things which had just 
 been said between herself and Ingolby, the colour 
 came and went in her face. To no man had she 
 ever talked so long and intimately, not even in the 
 far-off days when she lived the Romany life. 
 
 Then, as daughter of the head of all the Romanys, 
 she had her place apart ; and the Romany lads had 
 been few who had talked with her even as a child. 
 Her father had jealously guarded her until the time 
 when she fell under the spell and influence of Lady 
 Barrowdale. Here, by the Sagalac, she had moved 
 among this polyglot people with an assurance of 
 her own separateness which was the position of every 
 girl in the West, but developed in her own case 
 to the nth degree. 
 
 Never before had she come so near not to a man, 
 but to what concerned a man; and never had a 
 man come so near to her or what concerned her in- 
 most life. It was not a question of opportunity or 
 temptation these always attend the footsteps of 
 those who would adventure; but for long she had 
 88
 
 In Which the Prisoner Goes Free 
 
 fenced herself round with restrictions of her own mak- 
 ing; and the secrecy and strangeness of her father's 
 course had made this not only possible, but in a sense 
 imperative. 
 
 The end to that had come. Gaiety, daring, pas- 
 sion, elation, depression, were alive in her now, 
 and in a sense had found an outlet in a handful of 
 days indeed since the day when Jethro Fawe and 
 Max Ingolby had come into her life, each in his own 
 way, for good or for evil. If Ingolby came for good, 
 then Jethro Fawe came for evil. She would have 
 revolted at the suggestion that Jethro Fawe came 
 for good. 
 
 Yet, during the last few days, she had been drawn 
 again and again towards the hut in the wood. It 
 was as though a power stronger than herself had 
 ordered her not to wander far from where the Ro- 
 many claimant of herself awaited his fate. As 
 though Jethro knew she was drawn towards him, he 
 had sung the Gipsy songs which she and Ingolby 
 had heard in the distance. He might have shouted 
 for relief in the hope of attracting the attention of 
 some passer-by, and so found release and brought 
 confusion and perhaps punishment to Gabriel Druse; 
 but that was not possible to him. First and last he 
 was a Romany, good or bad ; and it was his duty to 
 obey his Ry of Rys, the only rule which the Romany 
 acknowledged. "Though he slay me, yet will I trust 
 him,' 1 he would have said, if he had ever heard the 
 phrase ; but in his stubborn way he made the mean- 
 ing of the phrase the pivot of his own action. If he 
 could but see Fleda face to face, he made no doubt 
 89
 
 The World .For Sale 
 
 that something would accrue to his advantage. 
 He would not give up the hunt without a struggle. 
 
 Twice a day Gabriel Druse had placed food and 
 water inside the door of the hut and locked him 
 fast again, but had not spoken to him save once, 
 and then but to say that his fate had not yet been 
 determined. Jethro's reply had been that he was in 
 no haste, that he could wait for what he came to 
 get; that it was his own ay bar! it was his own, 
 and God or devil could not prevent the thing meant 
 to be from the beginning of the world. 
 
 He did not hear Fleda approach the hut; he was 
 singing to himself a song he had learned in Monte- 
 negro. There the Romany was held in high regard, 
 because of the help his own father had given to the 
 Montenegrin people, fighting for their independence, 
 by admirable weapons of Gipsy workmanship, setting 
 all the Gipsies in that part of the Balkans at work 
 to supply them. 
 
 This was the song he sang : 
 
 "He gave his soul for a thousand days, 
 The sun was his in the sky, 
 
 His feet were on the neck of the world 
 
 He loved his Romany chi. 
 
 "He sold his soul for a thousand days, 
 
 By her side to walk, in her arms to lie; 
 His soul might burn, but her lips were his, 
 And the heart of his Romany chi." 
 
 He repeated the last two lines into a rising note 
 of exultation : 
 
 "His soul might burn, but her lips were his, 
 
 And the heart of his Romany chi." 
 
 90
 
 In Which the Prisoner Goes Free 
 
 The key suddenly turned in the lock, the door 
 opened on the last words of the refrain, and, without 
 hesitation, Fleda stepped inside, closing the door 
 behind her. 
 
 "Mi Duvel, but who would think ah, did you 
 hear me call then?" he asked, rising from the plank 
 couch where he had been sitting. He showed his 
 teeth in a smile which was meant to be a welcome, 
 but it had an involuntary malice. 
 
 "I heard you singing," she answered composedly, 
 "but I do not come here because I'm called." 
 
 "But I do," he rejoined. "You called me from 
 over the seas, and I came. I was in the Balkans; 
 there was trouble Servia, Montenegro, and Austria 
 were rattling the fire-irons again, and there was I 
 as my father was before me. But I heard you calling, 
 and I came." 
 
 "You never heard me call, Jethro Fawe," she 
 returned quietly. "My calling of you is as silent 
 as the singing of the stars, where you are concerned. 
 And the stars do not sing." 
 
 "But the stars do sing, and you call just the same," 
 he responded with a twist to his moustache, and 
 posing against the wall. "I've heard the stars sing. 
 What's the noise they make in the heart, if it's not 
 singing? You don't hear with the ears only. The 
 heart hears. It's only a manner of speaking, this 
 talk about the senses. One sense can do the same as 
 all can do and a Romany ought to know how to use 
 one or all. When your heart called I heard it, and 
 across the seas I came. And by long and by last, 
 but I was right in coming."
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 His impudence at once irritated her and provoked 
 her admiration. She knew by instinct how false he 
 was, and how a lie was as common with him as the 
 truth; but his submission to her father, his indiffer- 
 ence to his imprisonment, forced her interest, even 
 as she was humiliated by the fact that he was sib 
 to her, bound by ties of clan and blood apart from 
 his monstrous claim of marriage. He was indeed 
 such a man as a brainless or sensual woman could 
 yield to with ease. He had an insinuating animal 
 grace, that physical handsomeness which marks so 
 many of the Tziganies who fill the red coats of a 
 Gipsy musical sextette! He was not distinguished, 
 yet there was an intelligence in his face, a daring 
 at his lips and chin, which, in the discipline and con- 
 ventions of organized society, would have made him 
 superior. Now, with all his sleek handsomeness, he 
 looked a cross between a splendid peasant and a 
 chevalier of industry. 
 
 She compared him instinctively with Ingolby 
 the Gorgio as she looked at him. What was it made 
 the difference between the two? It was the world 
 in a man personality, knowledge of life, the cul- 
 ture of the thousand things which make up civiliza- 
 tion: it was personality got from life and power in 
 contest with the ordered world. 
 
 Yet was this so after all? Tekewani was only an 
 Indian brave who lived on the bounty of a govern- 
 ment, and yet he had presence and an air of com- 
 mand. Tekewani had been a nomad; he had not 
 been bound to one place, settled in one city, held 
 subservient to one flag. But, no, she was wrong: 
 92
 
 In Which the Prisoner Goes Free 
 
 Tekewani had been the servant and child of a system 
 which was as fixed and historical as that of Russia 
 or Spain. He belonged to a people who had tradi- 
 tions and laws of their own ; organized communities 
 moving here and there, but carrying with them 
 their system, their laws and their national feeling. 
 
 There was the difference. This Romany was the 
 child of irresponsibility, the being that fed upon life, 
 that did not feed life; that left one place in the world 
 to escape into another; that squeezed one day dry, 
 threw it away, and then went seeking another day 
 to bleed; for ever fleeing from yesterday, and using 
 to-day only as a camping-ground. Suddenly, how- 
 ever, she came to a stop in her reflections. Her 
 father, Gabriel Druse, was of the same race as this 
 man, the same unorganized, irresponsible, useless 
 race, with no weight of civic or social duty upon its 
 shoulders where did he stand? Was he no better 
 than such as Jethro Fawe? Was he inferior to such 
 as Ingolby, or even Tekewani? 
 
 She realized that in her father's face there was the 
 look of one who had no place in the ambitious de- 
 signs of men, who was not a builder, but a wayfarer. 
 She had seen the look often of late, and had never 
 read it until now, when Jethro Fawe stared at her 
 with the boldness of possession, with the insolence 
 of a soul of lust which had had its victories. 
 
 She read his look, and while one part of her shrank 
 from him as from some noisome thing, another part 
 of her to her dismay and anger understood him, 
 and did not resent him. It was the Past dragging 
 at her life. It was inherited predisposition, the un- 
 93
 
 The World For Sale' 
 
 regulated passions of her forebears, the mating of 
 the fields, the generated dominance of the body, 
 which was not to be commanded into obscurity, 
 but must taunt and tempt her while her soul sickened. 
 She put a hand on herself. She must make this 
 man realize once and for all that they were as far 
 apart as Adam and Cagliostro. 
 
 "I never called to you," she said at last. "I 
 did not know of your existence, and, if I had, then I 
 certainly shouldn't have called." 
 
 "The Gorgios have taken away your mind, or 
 you'd understand," he replied coolly. "Your soul 
 calls and those that understand come. It isn't that 
 you know who hears or who is coming till he 
 comes." 
 
 "A call to all creation!" she answered disdainfully. 
 "Do you think you can impress me by saying things 
 like that?" 
 
 "Why not? It's true. Wherever you went in 
 all these years the memory of you kept calling me, 
 my little rinkne rakli my pretty little girl, made 
 mine by the River Starzke over in the Roumelian 
 country." 
 
 "You heard what my father said " 
 
 "I heard what the Duke Gabriel said Mi Duvel, 
 I heard enough what he said, and I felt enough 
 what he did!" 
 
 He laughed, and began to roll a cigarette mechan- 
 ically, keeping his eyes fixed on her, however. 
 
 "You heard what my father said and what I said, 
 and you will learn that it is true, if you live long 
 enough," she added meaningly. 
 94
 
 In Which the Prisoner Goes Free 
 
 A look of startled perception flashed into his eyes. 
 "If I live long enough, I'll turn you, my mad wife, 
 into my Romany queen and the blessing of my tan. 11 
 
 "Don't mistake what I mean," she urged. "I 
 shall never be ruler of the Romanys. I shall never 
 hear " 
 
 "You'll hear the bosh played fiddle, they call it 
 in these heathen places at your second wedding 
 with Jethro Fawe," he rejoined insolently, lighting 
 his cigarette. "Home you'll come with me soon 
 ay bor!" 
 
 "Listen to me," she answered with anger tingling 
 in every nerve and fibre. "I come of your race, 
 I was what you are, a child of the hedge and the 
 wood and the road ; but that is all done. Home, you 
 say! Home in a tent by the roadside or " 
 
 "As your mother lived where you were born 
 well, well, but here's a Romany lass that's forgot 
 her cradle!" 
 
 "I have forgotten nothing. I have only moved 
 on. I have only seen that there is a better road to 
 walk than that where people, always looking be- 
 hind lest they be followed, and always looking in 
 front to find refuge, drop the patrin in the dust or 
 the grass or the bushes for others to follow after 
 always going on and on because they dare not go 
 back." 
 
 Suddenly he threw his cigarette on the ground, 
 and put his heel upon it in fury real or assumed. 
 "Great Heaven and Hell," he exclaimed, "here's 
 a Romany has sold her blood to the devil ! And this 
 is the daughter of Gabriel Druse, King and Duke 
 95
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 of all the Romanys, him with ancestor King Panuel, 
 Duke of Little Egypt, who had Sigismund, and 
 Charles the Great, and all the kings for friends. 
 By long and by last, but this is a tale to tell to the 
 Romanys of the world!" 
 
 For reply she went to the door and opened it wide. 
 
 "Then go and tell it, Jethro Fawe, to all the 
 world. Tell them I am the renegade daughter of 
 Gabriel Druse, ruler of them all. Tell them there 
 is no fault in him, and that he will return to his own 
 people in his own time, but that I, Fleda Druse, will 
 never return never ! Now, get you gone from here. ' ' 
 
 The sunlight broke through the trees, and fell in 
 a narrow path of light upon the doorway. A little 
 grey bird fluttered into the radiance and came 
 tripping across the threshold; a whippoorwill called 
 in the ash- trees; and the sweet smell of the thick 
 woodland, of the bracken and fern, crept into the 
 room. The balm of a perfect evening of summer 
 was upon the face of nature. The world seemed 
 untroubled and serene; but in this hidden hut two 
 stormy spirits broke the peace to which the place 
 and the time were all entitled. 
 
 After Fleda 's scornful words of release and dis- 
 missal, Jethro stood for a moment confounded and 
 dismayed. He had not reckoned with this. During 
 their talk it had come to him how simple it would 
 be to overpower any check to his exit, how devilishly 
 easy to put the girl at a disadvantage; but he drove 
 the thought from him. In the first place, he was by 
 no means sure that escape was what he wanted 
 not yet, at any rate; in the second place, if Gabriel 
 96
 
 In Which the Prisoner Goes Free 
 
 Druse passed the word along the subterranean wires 
 of the Romany world, that Jethro Fawe should 
 vanish, he would not long cumber the ground. 
 
 Yet it was not cowardice or fear of consequences 
 which had held him back; it was a staggering 
 admiration for this girl who had been given to him 
 in marriage so many years ago. He had fared far 
 and wide in his adventures and amours when he had 
 gold in plenty; and he had swung more than one 
 Gorgio woman in the wild dance of sentiment, 
 dazzling them by the splendour of his passion. 
 The fire gleaming in his dark eyes lighted a face 
 which would have made memorable a picture by 
 Guido. He had fared far and wide, but he had never 
 seen a woman who had seized his imagination as this 
 girl was doing; who roused in him, not the old hot 
 desire, but the hungry will to have a tan of his own, 
 and go travelling down the world with one who alone 
 could satisfy him for all his days. 
 
 As he sat in this improvised woodland prison he 
 had had visions of a hundred glades and valleys 
 through which he had passed in days gone by in 
 England, in Spain, in Italy, in Roumania, in Austria, 
 in Australia, in India where his camp-fires had 
 burned. In his visions he had seen her Fleda Fawe, 
 not Fleda Druse laying the cloth, and bringing 
 out the silver cups, or stretching the Turkey rugs 
 upon the ground to make a couch for two bright- 
 eyed lovers to whom the night was as the day, 
 radiant and full of joy. He had shut his eyes and 
 beheld hillsides where abandoned castles stood, and 
 the fox and the squirrel and the hawk gave shade 
 7 97
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 and welcome to the dusty pilgrims of the road; or, 
 when the wild winds blew in winter, gave shelter 
 and w r ood for the fire, and a sense of homeliness 
 among the companionable trees. 
 
 He had seen himself and this beautiful Romany 
 chi at some village fair, while the lesser Romany 
 folk told fortunes, or bought and sold horses, and 
 the lesser still tinkered or worked in gold or brass; 
 he had seen them both in a great wagon with bright 
 furnishings and brass-girt harness on their horses, 
 lording it over all, rich, dominant and admired. 
 In his visions he had even seen a Romany babe 
 carried in his arms to a Christian church and there 
 baptized in grandeur as became the child of the head 
 of the people. His imagination had also seen his 
 own tombstone in some Christian churchyard near 
 to the church porch, where he would not be lonely 
 when he was dead, but could hear the gossip of the 
 people as they went in and out of church ; and on the 
 tombstone some such inscription as he had seen once 
 at Pforzheim ' ' To the high-born Lord Johann, Earl 
 of Little Egypt, to whose soul God be gracious and 
 merciful." 
 
 To be sure, it was a strange thing for a Romany 
 to be buried in a Gorgio churchyard ; but it was what 
 had chanced to many great men of the Romanys, 
 such as the high-born Lord Panuel at Steinbrock, and 
 Peter of Kleinschild at Mantua all of whom had 
 great emblazoned monuments in Christian churches, 
 just to show that in all-levelling death they conde- 
 scended from high estate to mingle their ashes with 
 the dust of the Gorgio. 
 
 98
 
 In Which the Prisoner Goes Free 
 
 He had sought out his chieftain here in the new 
 world in a spirit of adventure, cupidity and desire. 
 He had come like one who betrays, but he acknowl- 
 edged to a higher force than his own and to superior 
 rights when Gabriel Druse's strong arm brought 
 him low; and, waking to life and consciousness again, 
 he was aware that another force also had levelled 
 him to the earth. That force was this woman's 
 spirit which now gave him his freedom so scornfully ; 
 who bade him begone and tell their people every- 
 where that she was no longer a Romany, while she 
 would go no doubt a thousand times without doubt 
 unless he prevented it to the swaggering Gorgio 
 who had saved her on the Sagalac. 
 
 She stood waiting for him to go, as though he 
 could not refuse his freedom. As a bone is tossed 
 to a dog, she gave it to him. 
 
 "You have no right to set me free," he said coolly 
 now. "I am not your prisoner. You tell me to 
 take that word to the Romany people that you 
 leave them for ever. I will not do it. You are a 
 Romany, and a Romany you must stay. You belong 
 nowhere else. If you married a Gorgio, you would 
 still sigh for the camp beneath the stars, for the tam- 
 bourine and the dance " 
 
 "And the fortune- telling," she interjected sharply, 
 "and the snail-soup, and the dirty blanket under the 
 hedge, and the constable on the road behind, always 
 just behind, watching, waiting and 
 
 "The hedge is as clean as the dirty houses where 
 the low-class Gorgios sleep. In faith, you are a long 
 way from the River Starzke!" he added. "But 
 99
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 you are my mad wife, and I must wait till you've 
 got sense again." 
 
 He sat down on the plank couch, and began to 
 roll a cigarette once more. 
 
 "You come fitted out like a Gorgio lass now, and 
 you look like a Gorgio countess, and you have the 
 manners of an Archduchess; but that's nothing; 
 it will peel off like a blister when it's pricked. Un- 
 derneath is the Romany. It's there, and it will 
 show red and angry when we've stripped off the 
 Gorgio. It's the way with a woman, always acting, 
 always imagining herself something else than what 
 she is if she's a beggar fancying herself a princess; 
 if she's a princess fancying herself a flower-girl. 
 Mi Duvel, but I know you all!" 
 
 Every word he said went home. She knew that 
 there was truth in what he said, and that beneath 
 all was the Romany blood; but she meant to con- 
 quer it. She had made her vow to one in England 
 that she loved, and she would not change. What- 
 ever happened, she had finished with Romany life, 
 and to go back would only mean black tragedy in 
 the end. A month ago it was a vow and an inner 
 desire which made her determined; to-day it was 
 the vow and a man a Gorgio whom she had but 
 now left in the woods, gazing after her with the 
 look which a woman so well interprets. 
 
 ' ' You mean you won't go free from here ? Because 
 I was a Romany, and wish you no harm, I have 
 come here to-day to let you go where you will to 
 go back to the place where the patrins show where 
 your people travel. I set you free, and you say what 
 100
 
 In Which the Prisoner Goes Free 
 
 you think will hurt and shame me. You have a cruel 
 soul. You would torture any woman till she died. 
 You shall not torture me. You are as far from me as 
 the River Starzke. I could have let you stay here 
 for my father to deal with, but I have set you 
 free. I open the door for you, though you are nothing 
 to me, and I am no more to you than one of the 
 women you have fooled and left to eat the vile 
 bread of the forsaken. You have been, you are a 
 wolf a wolf." 
 
 He got to his feet again, and the blood rushed to 
 his face, so that it seemed almost black. A torrent 
 of mad words gathered in his throat, but they choked 
 him, and in the pause his will asserted itself. He 
 became cool and deliberate. 
 
 "You are right, my girl, I have sucked the orange 
 and thrown the skin away, and I've picked flowers 
 and cast them by, but that was before the first day 
 I saw you as you now are. You were standing by 
 the Sagalac looking out to the west where the pack- 
 trains were travelling into the sun over the moun- 
 tains, and you had your hand on the neck of your 
 pony. I was not ten feet away from you, behind 
 a juniper-bush. I looked at you, and I wished that 
 I had never seen a woman before and could look 
 at the world as you did then it was like water from 
 a spring, that look. You are right in what you say. 
 By long and by last I had a hard hand, and when I 
 left what I'd struck down I never looked back. 
 But I saw you, and I wished I had never seen a 
 woman before. You have been here alone with me 
 with that door shut. Have I said or done anything 
 101
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 that a Gorgio duke wouldn't do? Ah, God's love, 
 but you were bold to come! I married you by the 
 River Starzke; I looked upon you as my wife; and 
 here you were alone with me! I had my rights, and 
 I had been trampled underfoot by your father 
 
 "By your Chief." 
 
 11 Ay bor, by my Chief! I had my wrongs, and I 
 had my rights, and you were mine by Romany law. 
 It was for me here to claim you here where a Ro- 
 many and his wife were alone together!" 
 
 His eyes were fixed searchingly on hers, as though 
 he would read the effect of his words before he re- 
 plied, and his voice had a curious, rough note, as 
 though with difficulty he quelled the tempest within 
 him. "I have my rights, and you had spat upon 
 me," he said with ferocious softness. 
 
 She did not blench, but looked him steadily in the 
 eyes. 
 
 "I knew what would be in your mind," she an- 
 swered, "but that did not keep me from coming. 
 You would not bite the hand that set you free."' 
 
 "You called me a wolf a minute ago." 
 
 "But a wolf would not bite the hand that freed 
 it from the trap. Yet if such shame could be, I 
 still would have had no fear, for I should have 
 shot you as wolves are shot that come too near the 
 fold." 
 
 He looked at her piercingly, and the pupils of 
 his eyes narrowed to a pin-point. "You would have 
 shot me you are armed?" he questioned. 
 
 "Am I the only woman that has armed herself 
 against you and such as you? Do you not see?" 
 102
 
 In Which the Prisoner Goes Free 
 
 "Mi Duvel, but I do see now with a thousand 
 eyes!" he said hoarsely. 
 
 His senses were reeling. Down beneath every- 
 thing had been the thought that, as he had prevailed 
 with other women, he could prevail with her; that 
 she would come to him in the end. He had felt, but 
 he had declined to see, the significance of her bearing, 
 of her dress, of her speech, of her present mode of 
 life, of its comparative luxury, its social distinction 
 of a kind which lifted her above even the Gorgios 
 by whom she was surrounded. A fatuous belief in 
 himself and in his personal powers had deluded him. 
 He had told the truth when he said that no woman 
 had ever appealed to him as she did; that she had 
 blotted out all other women from the book of his 
 adventurous and dissolute life; and he had dreamed 
 a dream of conquest of her when Fortune should 
 hand out to him the key of the situation. Did not 
 the beautiful Russian countess on the Volga flee 
 from her liege lord and share his tan? When he 
 played his fiddle to the Austrian princess, did she 
 not give him a key to the garden where she walked 
 of an evening? And this was a Romany lass, daugh- 
 ter of his Chieftain, as he was son of a great Romany 
 chief; and what marvel could there be that she who 
 had been made his child wife, should be conquered 
 as others had been! 
 
 "Mi Duvel, but I see!" he repeated in a husky 
 fierceness. ' ' I am your husband, but you would have 
 killed me if I had taken a kiss from your lips, sealed to 
 me by all our tribes and by your father and mine." 
 
 "My lips are my own, my life is my own, and when 
 103
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 I marry, I shall marry a man of my own choosing, 
 and he will not be a Romany," she replied with a 
 look of resolution which her beating heart belied. 
 "I'm not a pedlar's basket." 
 
 "Kek! Kek! That's plain," he retorted. "But 
 the 'wolf' is no lamb either! I said I would not go 
 till your father set me free, since you had no right 
 to do so, but a wife should save her husband, and her 
 husband should set himself free for his wife's sake" 
 his voice rose in fierce irony "and so I will now go 
 free. But I will not take the word to the Romany 
 people that you are no more of them. I am a true 
 Romany. I disobeyed my Ry in coming here because 
 my wife was here, and I wanted her. I am a true 
 Romany husband who will not betray his wife to 
 her people; but I will have my way, and no Gorgio 
 shall take her to his home. She belongs to my tent, 
 and I will take her there." 
 
 Her gesture of contempt, anger and negation 
 infuriated him. "If I do not take you to my tan, 
 it will be because I'm dead," he said, and his white 
 teeth showed fiercely. 
 
 "I have set you free. You had better go," she 
 rejoined quietly. 
 
 Suddenly he turned at the doorway. A look of 
 passion burned in his eyes. His voice became soft 
 and persuasive. "I would put the past behind me, 
 and be true to you, my girl," he said. "I shall be 
 chief over all the Romany people when Duke Gabriel 
 dies. We are sib; give me what is mine. I am yours 
 and I hold to my troth. Come, beloved, let us go 
 together." 
 
 104
 
 In Which the Prisoner Goes Free 
 
 A sigh broke from her lips, for she saw that, 
 bad as he was, there was a moment's truth in his 
 words. "Go while you can," she said. "You are 
 nothing to me." 
 
 For an instant he hesitated, then, with a muttered 
 oath, sprang out into the bracken, and was presently 
 lost among the trees. 
 
 For a long time she sat in the doorway, and again 
 and again her eyes filled with tears. She felt a cloud 
 of trouble closing in upon her. At last there was 
 the sound of footsteps, and a moment later Gabriel 
 Druse came through the trees towards her. His 
 eyes were sullen and brooding. 
 
 "You have set him free?" he asked. 
 
 She nodded. ' ' It was madness keeping him here," 
 she said. 
 
 -"It is madness letting him go," he answered 
 morosely. "He wii'l do Harm. Ay bor, he will! 
 I might have known women are chicken-hearted. 
 I ought to have put him out of the way, but I have 
 no heart any more no heart, I have the soul of a 
 rabbit."
 
 BOOK
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE SULTAN 
 
 TNGOLBY'S square head jerked forwards in stern 
 1 inquiry and his eyes fastened those of Jowett, 
 the horse-dealer. "Take care what you're saying, 
 Jowett," he said. "It's a penitentiary job, if it 
 can be proved. Are you sure you got it right?" 
 
 Jowett had unusual shrewdness, some vanity and 
 a, humorous tongue. He was a favourite in both 
 towns, and had had the better of both in horse- 
 dealing a score of times. 
 
 That did not make him less popular. However, 
 it was said he liked low company, and it was true 
 that though he had "money in the bank," and owned 
 a corner lot or so, he seemed to care little what his 
 company was. His most constant companion was 
 Fabian Osterhaut, who was the common property 
 of both towns, doing a little of everything for a 
 living, from bill-posting to the solicitation of an in- 
 surance agent. 
 
 For any casual work connected with public func- 
 tions Osterhaut was indispensable, and he would 
 serve as a doctor's assistant and help cut off a leg, 
 be the majordomo for a Sunday-school picnic, or 
 109
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 arrange a soiree at a meeting-house with equal im- 
 partiality. He had been known to attend a temper- 
 ance meeting and a wake in the same evening. Yet 
 no one ever questioned his bona fides, and if he had 
 attended mass at Manitou in the morning, joined 
 a heathen dance in Tekewani's Reserve in the after- 
 noon, and listened to the oleaginous Rev. Reuben 
 Tripple in the evening, it would have been taken 
 as a matter of course. 
 
 He was at times profane and impecunious, and he 
 had been shifted from one boarding-house to another 
 till at last, having exhausted credit in Lebanon, he 
 had found a room in the house of old Madame 
 Thibadeau in Manitou. She had taken him in 
 because, in years gone by, he had nursed her only 
 son through an attack of smallpox on the Siwash 
 River, and somehow Osterhaut had always paid his 
 bills to her. He was curiously exact where she was 
 concerned. If. he had not enough for his week's 
 board and lodging, he borrowed it, chiefly of Jowett, 
 who used him profitably at times to pass the word 
 about a horse, or bring news of a possible deal. 
 
 "It's a penitentiary job, Jowett," Ingolby re- 
 peated. "I didn't think Marchand would be so 
 mad as that." 
 
 "Say, it's all straight enough, Chief," answered 
 Jowett, sucking his unlighted cigar. "Osterhaut got 
 wind of it he's staying at old Mother Thibadeau's, 
 as you know. He moves round a lot, and he put me 
 on to it. I took on the job at once. I got in with the 
 French toughs over at Manitou, at Barbazon's 
 Tavern, and I gave them gin we made it a gin night, 
 no
 
 The Sultan 
 
 It struck their fancy gin, all gin! 'Course there's 
 nothing in gin different from any other spirit; but 
 it fixed their minds, and took away suspicion. 
 
 "I got drunk oh, yes, of course, blind drunk, 
 didn't I? Kissed me, half a dozen of the Quebec 
 boys did said I was 'bully boy' and 'hell-fellow'; 
 said I was 'bon enfant'; and I said likewise in my 
 best patois. They liked that. I've got a pretty 
 good stock of monkey-French, and I let it go. They 
 laughed till they cried at some of my mistakes, but 
 they weren't no mistakes, not on your life. It was 
 all done a-purpose. They said I was the only man 
 from Lebanon they wouldn't have cut up and boiled, 
 and they was going to have the blood of the Lebanon 
 lot before they'd done. I pretended to get mad, 
 and I talked wild. I said that Lebanon would get 
 them first, that Lebanon wouldn't wait, but 'd 
 have it out; and I took off my coat and staggered 
 about blind fair blind boozy. I tripped over 
 some fool's foot purposely, just beside a bench against 
 the wall, and I come down on that bench hard. 
 They laughed Lord, how they laughed! They 
 didn't mind my givin' 'em fits all except one or 
 two. That was what I expected. The one or two 
 was mad. They begun raging towards me, but there 
 I was asleep on the bench stony blind, and then 
 they only spit fire a bit. Some one threw my coat 
 over me. I hadn't any cash in the pockets, not 
 much I knew better than that and I snored like a 
 sow. Then it happened what I thought would hap- 
 pen. They talked. And here it is. They're going 
 to have a strike in the mills, and you're to get a 
 in
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 toss into the river. That's to be on Friday. But 
 the other thing well, they all cleared away but two. 
 They were the two that wanted to have it out with 
 me. They stayed behind. There was I snoring 
 like a locomotive, but my ears open all right. 
 
 "Well, they give the thing away. One of 'em 
 had just come from Felix Marchand and he was full 
 of it. What was it? Why, the second night of the 
 strike your new bridge over the river was to be blown 
 up. Marchand was to give these two toughs three 
 hundred dollars each for doing it." 
 
 "Blown up with what?" Ingolby asked sharply. 
 
 "Dynamite." 
 
 "WTiere would they get it?" 
 
 "Some left from blasting below the mills." 
 
 "All right! Goon." 
 
 "There wasn't much more. Old Barbazon, the 
 landlord, come in and they quit talking about it; 
 but they said enough to send 'em to gaol for ten 
 years." 
 
 Ingolby blinked at Jowett reflectively, and his 
 mouth gave a twist that lent to his face an almost 
 droll look. 
 
 "What good would it do if they got ten years 
 or one year, if the bridge was blown up? If they 
 got skinned alive, and if Marchand was handed over 
 to a barnful of hungry rats to be gnawed to death, 
 it wouldn't help. I've heard and seen a lot of hellish 
 things, but there's nothing to equal that. To blow 
 up the bridge for what? To spite Lebanon, and 
 to hurt me; to knock the spokes out of my wheel 
 He's the dregs, is Marchand." 
 
 112
 
 The Sultan 
 
 "I guess he's a shyster by nature, that fellow," 
 interposed Jowett. "He was boilin' hot when he 
 was fifteen. He spoiled a girl I knew when he was 
 twenty- two, not fourteen she was Lil Sarnia; and 
 he got her away before well, he got her away East ; 
 and she's in a dive in Winnipeg now. As nice a 
 girl as nice a little girl she was, and could ride any 
 broncho that ever bucked. What she saw in him 
 but there, she was only a child, just the mind of a 
 child she had, and didn't understand. He'd ha' 
 been tarred and feathered if it 'd been known. 
 But old Mick Sarnia said hush, for his wife's sake, 
 and so we hushed, and Sarnia's wife doesn't know 
 even now. I thought a lot of Lil, as much almost as 
 if she'd been my own; and lots o' times, when I 
 think of it, I sit up straight, and the thing freezes me; 
 and I want to get Marchand by the scruff of the neck. 
 I got a horse, the worst that ever was so bad I 
 haven't had the heart to ride him or sell him. He's 
 so bad he makes me laugh. There's nothing he won't 
 do, from biting to bolting. Well, I'd like to tie Mr. 
 Felix. Marchand, Esquire, to his back, and let him 
 loose on the prairie, and pray the Lord to save 
 him if he thought fit. I fancy I know what the 
 Lord would do. And Lil Sarnia's only one. Since 
 he come back from the States, he's the limit, oh, 
 the damnedest limit. He's a pest all round and 
 now, this!" 
 
 Ingolby kept blinking reflectively as Jowett talked. 
 He was doing two things at once with a facility 
 quite his own. He was understanding all Jowett was 
 saying, but he was also weighing the whole situation. 
 
 8 . 113
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 His mind was gone fishing, figuratively speaking. 
 He was essentially a man of action, but his action 
 was the bullet of his mind; he had to be quiet 
 physically when he was really thinking. Then he 
 was as one in a dream where all physical motion 
 was mechanical, and his body was acting auto- 
 matically. His concentration, and therefore his ab- 
 straction, was phenomenal. 
 
 Jowett's reminiscences at a time so critical did 
 not disturb him did not, indeed, seem to be 
 irrelevant. It was as though Felix Marchand was 
 being passed in review before him in a series of 
 aspects. He nodded encouragement to Jowett to 
 go on. 
 
 "It's because Marchand hates you, Chief. The 
 bump he got when you dropped him on the ground 
 that day at Carillon hurts still. It's a chronic inflam- 
 mation. Closing them railway offices at Manitou, 
 and dislodging the officials, give him his first good 
 chance. The feud between the towns is worse now 
 than it's ever been. Make no mistake. There's a 
 whole lot of toughs in Manitou. Then there's re- 
 ligion, and there's race, and there's a want-to-stand- 
 still and leave-me-alone feeling. They don't want 
 to get on. They don't want progress. They want 
 to throw the slops out of the top windows into the 
 street; they want their cesspools at the front door; 
 they think that everybody's got to have smallpox 
 some time or another, and the sooner they have it 
 the better; they want to be bribed; and they think 
 that if a vote's worth having it's worth paying for 
 and yet there's a bridge between these two towns! 
 114
 
 The Sultan 
 
 A bridge why, they're as far apart as the Yukon 
 and Patagonia." 
 
 "What 'd buy Felix Marchand?" Ingolby asked 
 meditatively. "What's his price?" 
 
 Jowett shifted with impatience. "Say, Chief, I 
 don't know what you're thinking about. Do you 
 think you could make a deal with Felix Marchand? 
 Not much. You've got the cinch on him. You 
 could send him to quod, and I'd send him there as 
 quick as lightning. I'd hang him, if I could, for 
 what he done to Lil Sarnia. Years ago when he was 
 a boy he offered me a gold watch for a mare I had. 
 The watch looked as right as could be solid four- 
 teen-carat, he said it was. He got my horse, and 
 I got his watch. It wasn't any more gold than he 
 was. It was filled just plated with nine-carat 
 gold. It was worth about ten dollars." 
 
 "What was the mare worth?" asked Ingolby, his 
 mouth twisting again with quizzical meaning. 
 
 "That mare she was all right." 
 
 "Yes, but what was the matter with her?" 
 
 "Oh, a spavin she was all right when she got 
 wound up go like Dexter or Maud S." 
 
 "But if you were buying her what would you 
 have paid for her, Jowett ? Come now, man to man, 
 as they say. How much did you pay for her?" 
 
 "About what she was worth, Chief, within a dollar 
 or two." 
 
 "And what was she worth?" 
 
 "What I paid for her ten dollars." 
 
 Then the two men looked at each other full in the 
 eyes, and Jowett threw back his head and laughed
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 outright laughed loud and hard. "Well, you got 
 me, Chief, right under the guard," he observed. 
 
 Ingolby did not laugh outright, but there was a 
 bubble of humour in his eyes. "What happened 
 to the watch?" he asked. 
 
 "I got rid of it." 
 
 "In a horse-trade?" 
 
 "No, I got a town lot with it." 
 
 "In Lebanon?" 
 
 "Well, sort of in Lebanon's back-yard." 
 
 "What's the lot worth now?" 
 
 "About two thousand dollars!" 
 
 "Was it your first town lot?" 
 
 "The first lot of Mother Earth I ever owned." 
 
 "Then you got a vote on it?" 
 
 "Yes, my first vote." 
 
 "And the vote let you be a town-councillor?" 
 
 "It and my good looks." 
 
 "Indirectly, therefore, you are a landowner, a 
 citizen, a public servant, and an instrument of prog- 
 ress because of Felix Marchand. If you hadn't had 
 the watch you wouldn't have had that town lot." 
 
 "Well, mebbe, not that lot." 
 
 Suddenly Ingolby got to his feet and squared him- 
 self, and his face became alight with purpose. His 
 mind had come back from fishing, and he was 
 ready now for action. His plans were formed. He 
 was in for a fight, and he had made up his mind, 
 how, with the new information to his hand, he 
 would develop his campaign further. 
 
 "You didn't make a fuss about the watch, Jowett. 
 You might have gone to Felix Marchand or to his 
 . 116
 
 The Sultan 
 
 father and proved him a liar, and got even that way. 
 You didn't; you got a corner lot with it. That's 
 what I'm going to do. I can have Felix Marchand 
 put in the jug, and make his old father Hector Mar- 
 chand sick; but I like old Hector Marchand, and 
 I think he's bred as bad a pup as ever was. I'm 
 going to try and do with this business as you did 
 with that watch. I'm going to try and turn it to 
 account and profit in the end. Felix Marchand's 
 profiting by a mistake of mine a mistake in policy. 
 It gives him his spring-board; and there's enough 
 dry grass in both towns to get a big blaze with a very 
 little match. I know that things are seething. The 
 Chief Constable keeps me posted as to what's go- 
 ing on here, and pretty fairly as to what's going on 
 in Manitou. The police in Manitou are straight 
 enough. That's one comfort. I've done Felix Mar- 
 chand there. I guess that the Chief Constable of 
 Manitou and Monseigneur Lourde and old Mother 
 Thibadeau are about the only people that Marchand 
 can't bribe. I see I've got to face a scrimmage 
 before I can get what I want." 
 
 "What you want you'll have, I bet," was the 
 admiring response. 
 
 "I'm going to have a good try. I want these two 
 towns to be one. That '11 be good for your town 
 lots, Jowett," he added whimsically. "If my policy 
 is carried out, my town lot '11 be worth a pocketful 
 of gold-plated watches or a stud of spavined mares." 
 
 He chuckled to himself, and his fingers reached 
 towards a bell on the table, but he paused. "When 
 was it they said the strike would begin?" he asked. 
 117
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 "Friday." 
 
 "Did they say what hour?" 
 
 "Eleven in the morning." 
 
 "Third of a day's work and a whole day's pay," 
 he mused. ' ' Jowett , ' ' he added, ' ' I want you to have 
 faith. I'm going to do Marchand, and I'm going to 
 do him in a way that '11 be best in the end. You 
 can help as much if not more than anybody you 
 and Osterhaut. And if I succeed, it '11 be worth your 
 while." 
 
 "I ain't followin* you because it's worth while, 
 but because I want to, Chief." 
 
 ' ' I know ; but a man every man likes the count- 
 ers for the game." He turned to the table, opened 
 a drawer, and took out a folded paper. He looked 
 it through carefully, wrote a name on it, and handed 
 it to Jowett. 
 
 "There's a hundred shares in the Northwest Rail- 
 way, with my regards, Jowett. Some of the counters 
 of the game." 
 
 Jowett handed it back at once with a shake of the 
 head. "I don't live in Manitou," he said. "I'm 
 almost white, Chief. I've never made a deal with 
 you, and don't want to. I'm your man for the 
 fun of it, and because I'd give my life to have your 
 head on my shoulders for one year." 
 
 "I'd feel better if you'd take the shares, Jowett. 
 You've helped me, and I can't let you do it for 
 nothing." 
 
 "Then I can't do it at all. I'm discharged." Sud- 
 denly, however, a humorous, eager look shot into 
 Jowett's face. "Will you toss for it?" he blurted out. 
 118
 
 The Sultan 
 
 "Certainly, if you like," was the reply. 
 
 "Heads I win, tails it's yours?" 
 
 "Good." 
 
 Ingolby took a silver dollar from his pocket, 
 and tossed. It came down tails. Ingolby had won. 
 
 "My corner lot against double the shares?" 
 Jowett asked sharply, his face flushed with eager 
 pleasure. He was a born gambler. 
 
 "As you like," answered Ingolby with a smile. 
 
 Ingolby tossed, and they stooped over to look at 
 the dollar on the floor. It had come up heads. 
 
 "You win," said Ingolby, and turning to the table, 
 took out another hundred shares. In a moment 
 they were handed over. 
 
 "You're a wonder, Jowett," he said. "You risked 
 a lot of money. Are you satisfied?" 
 
 "You bet, Chief. I come by these shares honestly 
 now." 
 
 He picked up the silver dollar from the floor, 
 and was about to put it in his pocket. 
 
 "Wait that's my dollar," said Ingolby. 
 
 "By gracious, so it is!" said Jowett, and handed 
 it over reluctantly. 
 
 Ingolby pocketed it with satisfaction. 
 
 Neither dwelt on the humour of the situation. 
 They were only concerned for the rules of the game, 
 and both were gamesters in their way. 
 
 After a few brief instructions to Jowett, and a 
 message for Osterhaut concerning a suit of work- 
 man's clothes, Ingolby left his offices and walked 
 down the main street of the town with his normal 
 rapidity, responding cheerfully to the passers-by, 
 119
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 but not encouraging evident desire for talk with him. 
 Men half -started forward to him, but he held them 
 back with a restraining eye. They knew his ways. 
 He was responsive in a brusque, inquisitive, but 
 good-humoured and sometimes very droll way; but 
 there were times when men said to themselves that 
 he was to be left alone; and he was so much master 
 of the place that, as Osterhaut and Jowett frequently 
 remarked, "What he says goes!" It went even with 
 those whom he had passed in the race of power. 
 
 He had had his struggles to be understood in his 
 first days in Lebanon. He had fought intrigue and 
 even treachery, had defeated groups which were the 
 forces at work before he came to Lebanon, and had 
 compelled the submission of others. All these had 
 vowed to "get back at him," but when it became a 
 question of Lebanon against Manitou they swung 
 over to his side and acknowledged him as leader. 
 The physical collision between the rougher elements 
 of the two towns had brought matters to a head, 
 and nearly every man in Lebanon felt that his honour 
 was at stake, and was ready "to have it out with 
 Manitou." 
 
 As he walked along the main street after his inter- 
 view with Jowett, his eyes wandered over the build- 
 ings rising everywhere; and his mind reviewed as 
 in a picture the same thinly inhabited street five 
 years ago when he first came. Now farmers' wagons 
 clacked and rumbled through the prairie dust, 
 small herds of cattle jerked and shuffled their way 
 to the slaughter-yard, or out to the open prairie, 
 and caravans of settlers with their effects moved
 
 The Sultan 
 
 sturdily forward to the trails which led to a new life 
 beckoning from three points of the compass. That 
 point which did not beckon was behind them. 
 Flaxen-haired Swedes and Norwegians; square- 
 jawed, round-headed North Germans; square-shoul- 
 dered, loose-jointed Russians with heavy contem- 
 plative eyes and long hair, looked curiously at each 
 other and nodded understandingly. Jostling them 
 all, with a jeer and an oblique joke here and there, 
 and crude chaff on each other and everybody, the 
 settler from the United States asserted himself. He 
 invariably obtruded himself, with quizzical inquiry, 
 half contempt and half respect, on the young English- 
 man, who gazed round with phlegm upon his fellow 
 adventurers, and made up to the sandy-faced Scot 
 or the cheerful Irishman with his hat on the back of 
 his head, who showed in the throng here and there. 
 This was one of the days when the emigrant and 
 settlers' trains arrived both from the East and from 
 "the States," and Front Street in Lebanon had, from 
 early morning, been alive with the children of hope 
 and adventure. 
 
 With hands plunged deep in the capacious pockets 
 of his grey jacket, Ingolby walked on, seeing every- 
 thing; yet with his mind occupied intently, too, 
 on the trouble which must be faced before Lebanon 
 and Manitou would be the reciprocating engines of 
 his policy. Coming to a spot where a great gap of 
 vacant land showed in the street land which he 
 had bought for the new offices of his railway combine 
 he stood and looked at it abstractedly. Beyond it, 
 a few blocks away, was the Sagalac, and beyond the 
 
 121
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 Sagalac was Manitou, and a little way to the right 
 was the bridge which was the symbol of his policy. 
 His eyes gazed almost unconsciously on the people 
 and the horses and wagons coming and going upon 
 the bridge. Then they were lifted to the tall chim- 
 neys rising at two or three points on the outskirts of 
 Manitou. 
 
 "They don't know a good thing when they get 
 it," he said to himself. "A strike why, wages are 
 double what they are in Quebec where most of 'em 
 come from! Marchand " 
 
 A hand touched his arm. "Have you got a min- 
 ute to spare, kind sir?" a voice asked. 
 
 Ingolby turned and saw Nathan Rockwell, the 
 doctor. "Ah, Rockwell," he responded cheerfully, 
 "two minutes and a half, if you like! What is it?" 
 
 The Boss Doctor, as he was familiarly called by 
 everyone, to identify him from the newer importa- 
 tions of medical men, drew from his pocket a news- 
 paper. 
 
 "There's an infernal lie here about me," he replied. 
 "They say that I " 
 
 He proceeded to explain the misstatement, as 
 Ingolby studied the paper carefully, for Roclcvell 
 was a man worth any amount of friendship. 
 
 "It's a lie, of course," Ingolby said firmly as he 
 finished the paragraph. "Well?" 
 
 "Well, I've got to deal with it." 
 
 "You mean you're going to deny it in the papers?" 
 
 "Exactly." 
 
 "I wouldn't, Rockwell." 
 
 "You wouldn't?" 
 
 122
 
 The Sultan 
 
 "No. You never can really overtake a newspaper 
 lie. Lots of the people who read the lie don't see 
 the denial. Your truth doesn't overtake the lie 
 it's a scarlet runner." 
 
 "I don't see that. When you're lied about, when 
 a lie like that " 
 
 "You can't overtake it, Boss. It's no use. It's 
 sensational, it runs too fast. Truth's slow-footed. 
 When a newspaper tells a lie about you, don't try 
 to overtake it, tell another." 
 
 He blinked with quizzical good-humour. Rock- 
 well could not resist the audacity. "I don't believe 
 you'd do it just the same," he retorted decisively, 
 and laughing. 
 
 "I don't try the overtaking anyhow; I get some- 
 thing spectacular in my own favour to counteract 
 the newspaper lie." 
 
 "In what way?" 
 
 "For instance, if they said I couldn't ride a moke 
 at a village steeplechase, I'd at once publish the fact 
 that, with a jack-knife, I'd killed two pumas that 
 were after me. Both things would be lies, but the 
 one would neutralize the other. If I said I could 
 ride a moke, nobody would see it, and if it were 
 seen it wouldn't make any impression; but to say 
 I killed two mountain-lions with a jack-knife on 
 the edge of a precipice, with the sun standing still 
 to look at it, is as good as the original lie and better; 
 and I score. My reputation increases." 
 
 Nathan Rockwell's equilibrium was restored. 
 "You're certainly a wonder," he declared, "That's 
 why you've succeeded." 
 
 "3
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 "Have I succeeded?" 
 
 "Thirty-three and what you are!" 
 
 "What am I?" 
 
 "Pretty well master here." 
 
 "Rockwell, that 'd do me a lot of harm if it was 
 published. Don't say it again. This is a democratic 
 country. They'd kick at my being called master 
 of anything, and I'd have to tell a lie to counteract 
 it." 
 
 "But it's the truth, and it hasn't to be overtaken." 
 
 A grim look came into Ingolby's face. "I'd 
 like to be master-boss of life and death, holder of 
 the sword and balances, the Sultan, here just for 
 one week. I'd change some things. I'd gag some 
 people that are doing terrible harm. It's a real bad 
 business. The scratch-your-face period is over, and 
 we're in the cut-your- throat epoch." 
 
 Rockwell nodded assent, opened the paper again, 
 and pointed to a column. "I expect you haven't 
 seen that. To my mind, in the present state of 
 things, it's dynamite." 
 
 Ingolby read the column hastily. It was the 
 report of a sermon delivered the evening before by 
 the Rev. Reuben Tripple, the evangelical minister 
 of Lebanon. It was a paean of the Scriptures accom- 
 panied by a crazy charge that the Roman Church 
 forbade the reading of the Bible. It had a tirade 
 also about the Scarlet Woman and Popish idolatry. 
 
 Ingolby made a savage gesture. "The insatiable 
 
 Christian beast!" he growled in anger. "There's 
 
 no telling what this may do. You know what those 
 
 fellows are over in Manitou. The place is full of them 
 
 124
 
 The Sultan 
 
 going to the woods, besides the toughs at the mills 
 and in the taverns. They're not psalm-singing, 
 and they don't keep the Ten Commandments, but 
 they're savagely fanatical, and " 
 
 "And there's the funeral of an Orangeman to- 
 morrow. The Orange Lodge attends in regalia." 
 
 Ingolby started and looked at the paper again. 
 "The sneaking, praying liar," he said, his jaw setting 
 grimly. "This thing's a call to riot. There's an 
 element in Lebanon as well that 'd rather fight than 
 eat. It's the kind of lie that " 
 
 "That you can't overtake," said the Boss Doctor 
 appositely: "and I don't know that even you can 
 tell another that '11 neutralize it. Your prescription 
 won't work here." 
 
 An acknowledging smile played at Ingolby's 
 mouth. 
 
 "We've got to have a try. We've got to draw 
 off the bull with a red rag somehow." 
 
 "I don't see how myself. That Orange funeral 
 will bring a row on to us. I can just see the toughs 
 at Manitou when they read this stuff, and know 
 about that funeral." 
 
 "It's announced?" 
 
 "Yes, here's an invitation in the Budget to Orange- 
 men to attend the funeral of a brother sometime of 
 the banks of the Boyne!" 
 
 "Who's the Master of the Lodge?" asked Ingolby. 
 
 Rockwell told him, urging at the same time that 
 he see the Chief Constable as well, and Monseigneur 
 Lourde at Manitou. 
 
 "That's exactly what I mean to do with a num- 
 "5
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 her of other things. Between ourselves, Rockwell, 
 I'd have plenty of lint and bandages ready for emer- 
 gencies if I were you." 
 
 "I'll see to it. That collision the other day was 
 serious enough, and it's gradually becoming a ven- 
 detta. Last night one of the Lebanon champions 
 lost his nose." 
 
 "His nose how?" 
 
 "A French river-driver bit a third of it off." 
 
 Ingolby made a gesture of disgust. "And this is 
 the twentieth century!" 
 
 They had moved along the street until they 
 reached a barber-shop, from which proceeded the 
 sound of a violin. "I'm going in here," Ingolby said. 
 "I've got some business with Berry, the barber. 
 You'll keep me posted as to anything important?" 
 
 "You don't need to say it. Shall I see the Master 
 of the Orange Lodge or the Chief Constable for you?" 
 
 Ingolby thought for a minute. "No, I'll tackle 
 them myself, but you get in touch with Monseigneur 
 Lourde. He's grasped the situation, and though he'd 
 like to have Tripple boiled in oil, he doesn't want 
 broken heads and bloodshed." 
 
 "And Tripple?" 
 
 " I'll deal with him at once. I've got a hold on him. 
 I never wanted to use it, but I will now without 
 compunction. I have the means in my pocket. 
 They've been there for three days, waiting for the 
 chance." 
 
 "It doesn't look like war, does it?" said Rockwell, 
 looking up the street and out towards the prairie 
 where the day bloomed like a flower. Blue above 
 126
 
 The Sultan 
 
 a deep, joyous blue, against which a white cloud 
 rested or slowly travelled westward; a sky down 
 whose vast cerulean bowl flocks of wild geese sailed, 
 white and grey and black, while the woods across 
 the Sagalac were glowing with a hundred colours, 
 giving tender magnificence to the scene. The busy 
 eagerness of a pioneer life was still a quiet orderly 
 thing, so immense was the theatre for effort and 
 movement. In these wide streets, almost as wide 
 as a London square, there was room to move; 
 nothing seemed huddled, pushing, or inconvenient. 
 Even the disorder of building lost its ugly crudity 
 in the space and the sunlight. 
 
 "The only time I get frightened in life is when 
 things look like that," Ingolby answered. "I go 
 round with a life-preserver on me when it seems as 
 if 'all's right with the world.'" 
 
 The violin inside the barber-shop kept scraping 
 out its cheap music a coon-song of the day. 
 
 "Old Berry hasn't much business this morning," 
 remarked Rockwell. "He's in keeping with this 
 surface peace." 
 
 "Old Berry never misses anything. What we're 
 thinking, he's thinking. I go fishing when I'm in 
 trouble; Berry plays his fiddle. He's a philosopher 
 and a friend." 
 
 "You don't make friends as other people do." 
 
 "I make friends of all kinds. I don't know why, 
 but I've always had a kind of kinship with the 
 roughs, the no-accounts, and the rogues." 
 
 "As well as the others I hope I don't intrude!" 
 
 Ingolby laughed. ' ' You ? Oh, I wish all the others 
 127
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 were like you. It's the highly respectable members 
 of the community I've always had to watch." 
 
 The fiddle-song came squeaking out upon the 
 sunny atmosphere. It arrested the attention of a 
 man on the other side of the street a stranger in 
 strange Lebanon. He wore a suit of Western clothes 
 as a military man wears mufti, if not awkwardly, yet 
 with a manner not wholly natural the coat too 
 tight across the chest, too short in the body. How- 
 ever, the man was handsome and unusual in his 
 leopard way, with his brown curling hair and well- 
 cared-for moustache. 
 
 It was Jethro Fawe. 
 
 Attracted by the sound of the violin he stayed 
 his steps and smiled scornfully. Then his look fell 
 on the two figures at the door of the barber-shop, 
 and his eyes flashed. 
 
 Here was the man he wished to see Max Ingolby, 
 the man who stood between him and his Romany 
 lass. Here was a chance of speaking face to face 
 with the man who was robbing him. What he should 
 do when they met must be according to circum- 
 stances. That did not matter. There was the 
 impulse storming in his brain, and it drove him across 
 the street as the Boss Doctor walked away, and 
 Ingolby entered the shop. All Jethro realized was 
 that the man who stood in his way, the big, rich 
 masterful Gorgio was there. 
 
 He entered the shop after Ingolby, and stood for 
 
 an instant unseen. The old negro barber with his 
 
 curly white head, slave-black face, and large, shrewd, 
 
 meditative eyes was standing in a corner with a violin 
 
 128
 
 The Sultan 
 
 under his chin, his cheek lovingly resting against 
 it, as he drew his bow through the last bars of the 
 melody. He had smiled in welcome as Ingolby 
 entered, instantly rising from his stool, but continu- 
 ing to play. He would not have stopped in the mid- 
 dle of a tune for an emperor, and he put Ingolby 
 higher than an emperor. For one who had been born 
 a slave and had still the scars of the overseer's 
 whip on his back, he was very independent. He 
 cut everybody's hair as he wanted to cut it, trimmed 
 each beard as he wished to trim it, regardless of its 
 owner's wishes. If there was dissent, then his 
 customer need not come again, that was all. There 
 were other barbers in the place, but Berry was the 
 master barber. To have your head massaged by him 
 was never to be forgotten, especially if you found 
 your hat too small for your head in the morning. 
 Also he singed the hair with a skill and care, which 
 had filled many a thinly covered scalp with luxuriant 
 growth, and his hair-tonic, known as "Smilax," 
 gave a pleasant odour to every meeting-house or 
 church or public hall where the people gathered. 
 Berry was an institution even in this new Western 
 town. He kept his place and he forced the white 
 man, whoever he was, to keep his place. 
 
 When he saw Jethro Fawe enter the shop he did 
 not stop playing, but his eyes searched the new- 
 comer. Following his glance, Ingolby turned round 
 and saw the Romany. His first impression was one 
 of admiration, but suspicion was quickly added. 
 He was a good judge of men, and there was something 
 secluded about the man, which repelled him. Yet 
 9 129
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 he was interested. The dark face had a striking 
 racial peculiarity. 
 
 The music died away, and old Berry lowered the 
 fiddle from his chin and gave his attention to the 
 Romany. 
 
 "Yeth-'ir?" he said questioningly. 
 
 For an instant Jethro was confused. When he 
 entered the shop he had not made up his mind what 
 he should do. It had been mere impulse and the 
 fever of his brain. 
 
 As old Berry spoke, however, his course opened out. 
 
 ' ' I heard. I am a stranger. My fiddle is not here. 
 My fingers itch for the cat-gut. Eh?" 
 
 The look in old Berry's face softened a little. His 
 instinct had been against his visitor, and he had 
 been prepared to send him to another shop besides, 
 not every day could he talk to the greatest man in 
 the West. 
 
 "If you can play, there it is," he said after a slight 
 pause, and handed the fiddle over. 
 
 It was true that Jethro Fawe loved the fiddle. 
 He had played it in many lands. Twice, in order to 
 get inside the palace of a monarch for a purpose 
 once in Berlin and once in London he had played 
 the second violin in a Tzigany orchestra. He turned 
 the fiddle slowly round, looking at it with mechanical 
 intentness. Through the passion of emotion the 
 sure sense of the musician was burning. His fingers 
 smoothed the oval brown breast of the instrument 
 with affection. His eyes found joy in the colour of 
 the wood, which had all the graded, merging tints 
 of Autumn leaves. 
 
 130
 
 The Sultan 
 
 "It is old and strange," he said, his eyes going 
 from Berry to Ingolby and back again with a veiled 
 look, as though he had drawn down blinds before 
 his inmost thoughts. "It was not made by a pro- 
 fessional." 
 
 "It was made in the cotton-field by a slave," 
 observed old Berry sharply, yet with a content 
 which overrode antipathy to his visitor. 
 
 Jethro put the fiddle to his chin, and drew the bow 
 twice or thrice sweepingly across the strings. Such 
 a sound had never come from Berry's violin before. 
 It was the touch of a born musician, who certainly 
 had skill, but who had infinitely more of musical 
 passion. 
 
 "Made by a slave in the cotton-fields!" Jethro 
 said with a veiled look, and as though he was thinking 
 of something else: "Dordi, I'd like to meet a slave 
 like that!" 
 
 At the Romany exclamation Ingolby swept the 
 man with a searching look. He had heard the 
 Romany wife of Ruliff Zaphe use the word many 
 years ago when he and Charley Long visited 
 the big white house on the hill. Was the man a 
 Romany, and, if so, what was he doing here? Had 
 it anything to do with Gabriel Druse and his daugh- 
 ter? But no what was there strange in the man 
 being a Romany and playing the fiddle? Here and 
 there in the West, during the last two years, he had 
 seen what he took to be Romany faces. He looked 
 to see the effect of the stranger's remark on old 
 Berry. 
 
 "I was a slave, and I was like that. My father
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 made that fiddle in the 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 com- 
 pounds; 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 won- 
 derful 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, 
 132
 
 The Sultan 
 
 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 his 
 own. His rage, his love, and his malignant hate, 
 his tenderness and his lust should fill the barber's 
 shop with a flood which would drown the Gorgio 
 raider. He laughed to himself, almost unconsciously. 
 Then suddenly he leaned his cheek to the instrument 
 and drew the bow across the strings with a savage 
 softness. The old cotton-field fiddle cried out with 
 a thrilling, exquisite pain, but muffled, as a hand 
 at the lips turns agony into a tender moan. Some 
 one some spirit in the fiddle was calling for its 
 own. 
 
 Five minutes later a five minutes in which peo- 
 133
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 pie gathered at the door of the shop, and heads were 
 thrust inside in ravished wonder the palpitating 
 Romany lowered the fiddle from his chin, and stood 
 for a minute looking into space, as though he saw a 
 vision. 
 
 He was roused by old Berry's voice. ' ' Das a fiddle 
 I wouldn't sell for a t'ousand dollars. If I could play 
 like dat I wouldn't sell it for ten t'ousand. You 
 kin play a fiddle to make it worth a lot you." 
 
 The Romany handed back the instrument. "It's 
 got something inside it that makes it better than 
 it is. It's not a good fiddle, but it has something 
 ah, man alive, it has something!" It was as though 
 he was talking to himself. 
 
 Berry made a quick, eager gesture. "It's got the 
 cotton-fields and the slave days in it. It's got the 
 whip and the stocks in it; it's got the cry of the old 
 man that 'd never see his children ag'in. That's 
 what the fiddle's got in it." 
 
 Suddenly, in an apparent outburst of anger, he 
 swept down on the front door and drove the gathering 
 crowd away. 
 
 "Dis is a barber-shop," he said with an angry 
 wave of his hand; "it ain't a circuse." 
 
 One man protested. "I want a shave," he said. 
 He tried to come inside, but was driven back. 
 
 "I ain't got a razor that 'd cut the bristle off your 
 face," the old barber declared peremptorily; "and, 
 if I had, it wouldn't be busy on you. I got two cus- 
 tomers, and that's all I'm going to take befo' I 
 have my dinner. So you git away. There ain't 
 goin' to be no more music."
 
 The Sultan 
 
 The crowd drew off, for none of them cared to 
 offend this autocrat of the shears and razor. 
 
 Ingolby had listened to the music with a sense of 
 being swayed by a wind which blew from all quarters 
 of the compass at once. He loved music; it acted as 
 a clearing-house to his mind; and he played the 
 piano himself with the enthusiasm of a wilful ama- 
 teur, who took liberties with every piece he essayed. 
 There was something in this fellow's playing which 
 the great masters, such as Paganini, must have had. 
 As the music ceased, he did not speak, but remained 
 leaning against the great red-plush barber's chair 
 looking reflectively at the Romany. Berry, how- 
 ever, said to the still absorbed musician, "Where 
 did you learn to play?" 
 
 The Romany started, and a flush crossed his face. 
 "Everywhere," he answered sullenly. 
 
 "You've got the thing Sarasate had," Ingolby 
 observed. "I only heard him play but once in 
 London years ago : but there's the same something in 
 it. I bought a fiddle of Sarasate. I've got it now." 
 
 "Here in Lebanon?" The eyes of the Romany 
 were burning. An idea had just come into his brain. 
 Was it through his fiddling that he was going to 
 find a way to deal with this Gorgio, who had come 
 between him and his own? 
 
 "Only a week ago it came," Ingolby replied. 
 "They actually charged me Customs duty on it. 
 I'd seen it advertised, and I made an offer and got 
 it at last." 
 
 "You have it here at your house here?" asked 
 old Berry in surprise. 
 
 135
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 "It's the only place I've got. Did you think I'd 
 put it in a museum? I can't play it, but there it is 
 for anyone that can play. How would you like to 
 try it?" he added to Jethro in a friendly tone. "I'd 
 give a good deal to see it under your chin for an 
 hour. Anyhow, I'd like to show it to you. Will 
 you come?" 
 
 It was like him to bring matters to a head so 
 quickly. 
 
 The Romany's eyes glistened. "To play the 
 Sarasate alone to you?" he asked. 
 
 "That's it at nine o'clock to-night, if you can." 
 
 "I will come yes, I will come," Jethro answered, 
 the lids drooping over his eyes in which were the 
 shadows of the first murder of the created world. 
 
 "Here is my address, then." Ingolby wrote 
 something on his visiting-card. "My man '11 let 
 you in, if you show that. Well, good-bye." 
 
 The Romany took the card, and turned to leave. 
 He had been dismissed by the swaggering Gorgio, 
 as though he was a servant, and he had not even 
 been asked his name, of so little account was he! 
 He could come and play on the Sarasate to the 
 masterful Gorgio at the hour which the masterful 
 Gorgio fixed think of that ! He could be a servant 
 to the pleasure of the man who was stealing from 
 him the wife sealed to him in the Roumelian country. 
 But perhaps it was all for the best yes, he would 
 make it all for the best! As he left the shop, how- 
 ever, and passed down the street his mind remained 
 in the barber-shop. He saw in imagination the mas- 
 terful Gorgio in the red-plush chair, and the negro 
 136
 
 The Sultan 
 
 barber bending over him, with black fingers holding 
 the Gorgio's chin, and an open razor in the right 
 hand lightly grasped. A flash of malicious desire 
 came into his eyes as the vision shaped itself in his 
 imagination, and he saw himself, instead of the 
 negro barber, holding the Gorgio chin and looking 
 down at the Gorgio throat with the razor, not lightly, 
 but firmly grasped in his right hand. How was 
 it that more throats were not cut in that way? 
 How was it that while the scissors passed through 
 the beard of a man's face the points did not suddenly 
 slip up and stab the light from helpless eyes! How 
 was it that men did not use their chances? He went 
 lightly down the street, absorbed in a vision which 
 was not like the reality; but it was evidence that 
 his visit to Max Ingolby's house was not the visit of a 
 virtuoso alone, but of an evil spirit. 
 
 As the Romany disappeared, Max Ingolby had 
 his hand on the old barber's shoulder. "I want 
 one of the wigs you made for that theatrical per- 
 formance of the Mounted Police, Berry," he said. 
 "Never mind what it's for. I want it at once 
 one with the long hair of a French-Canadian coureur- 
 de-bois. Have you got one?" 
 
 "Suh, I'll send it round no, I'll bring it round 
 as I come from dinner. Want the clothes, too?' 
 
 "No. I'm arranging for them with Osterhaut. 
 I've sent word by Jowett." 
 
 "You want me to know what's it's for?" 
 
 "You can know anything I know almost, Berry. 
 You're a friend of the right sort, and I can trust 
 you."
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 "Yeth-'ir, I bin some use to you, onct or twict, 
 I guess." 
 
 "You'll have a chance to be of use more than 
 ever presently." 
 
 "Suh, there's goin' to be a bust-up, but I know 
 who's comin' out on the top. That Felix Marchand 
 and his roughs can't down you. I hear and see a 
 lot, and there's two or three things I was goin' to 
 put befo' you; yeth-'ir." 
 
 He unloaded his secret information to his friend, 
 and was rewarded by Ingolby suddenly shaking 
 his hand warmly. 
 
 "That's the line," Ingolby said decisively. "When 
 do you go over to Manitou again to cut old Hector 
 Marchand's hair? Soon?" 
 
 "To-day is his day this evening," was the reply. 
 
 "Good. You wanted to know what the wig and 
 the habitant's clothes are for, Berry well, for me 
 to wear in Manitou. In disguise I'm going there to- 
 night among them all, among the roughs and toughs. 
 I want to find out things for myself. I can speak 
 French as good as most of 'em, and I can chew to- 
 bacco and swear with the best." 
 
 "You suhly are a wonder," said the old man ad- 
 miringly. "How you fin' the time I got no idee." 
 
 "Everything in its place, Berry, and everything 
 in its time. I've got a lot to do to-day, but it's in 
 hand, and I don't have to fuss. You'll not forget 
 the wig you'll bring it round yourself?" 
 
 "Suh. No snoopin' into the parcel then. But 
 if you go to Manitou to-night, how can you have 
 that fiddler?" 
 
 138
 
 The Sultan 
 
 "He comes at nine o'clock. I'll go to Manitou 
 later. Everything in its own time." 
 
 He was about to leave the shop when some one 
 came bustling in. Berry was between Ingolby and 
 the door, and for an instant he did not see who it 
 was. Presently he heard an unctuous voice: "Ah, 
 good day, good day, Mr. Berry. I want to have my 
 hair cut, if you please," it said. 
 
 Ingolby smiled. The luck was with him to-day 
 so far. The voice belonged to the Rev. Reuben 
 Tripple, and he would be saved a journey to the 
 manse. Accidental meetings were better than 
 planned interviews. Old Berry's grizzled beard was 
 bristling with repugnance, and he was about to re- 
 fuse Mr. Tripple the hospitality of the shears when 
 Ingolby said: "You won't mind my having a word 
 with Mr. Tripple first, will you, Berry? May we 
 use your back parlour?" 
 
 A significant look from Ingolby's eyes gave Berry 
 his cue. 
 
 "Suh, Mr. Ingolby. I'm proud." He opened the 
 door of another room. 
 
 Mr. Tripple had not seen Ingolby when he en- 
 tered, and he recognized him now with a little shock 
 of surprise. There was no reason why he should not 
 care to meet the Master Man, but he always had an 
 uncanny feeling when his eye met that of Ingolby. 
 His apprehension had no foundation in any knowl- 
 edge, yet he had felt that Ingolby had no love for 
 him, and this disturbed the egregious vanity of a 
 narrow nature. His slouching, corpulent figure made 
 an effort to resist the gesture with which Ingolby 
 139
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 drew him to the door, but his will succumbed, and 
 he shuffled importantly into the other room. 
 
 Ingolby shut the door quietly behind him, and 
 motioned the minister to a chair beside the table. 
 Tripple sank down, mechanically smiling, placed 
 his hat on the floor, and rested his hands on the table. 
 Ingolby could not help but notice how coarse the 
 hands were with fingers suddenly ending as though 
 they had been cut off, and puffy, yellowish skin that 
 suggested fat foods, or worse. 
 
 Ingolby came to grips at once. "You preached a 
 sermon last night which no doubt was meant to do 
 good, but will only do harm," he said abruptly. 
 
 The flabby minister flushed, and then made an 
 effort to hold his own. 
 
 "I speak as I am moved," he said, puffing out his 
 lips. 
 
 "You spoke on this occasion before you were 
 moved just a little while before," answered In- 
 golby grimly. "The speaking was last night, the 
 moving comes to-day." 
 
 "I don't get your meaning," was the thick re- 
 joinder. The man had a feeling that there was some 
 real danger ahead. 
 
 "You preached a sermon last night which might 
 bring riot and bloodshed between these two towns, 
 though you knew the mess that's brewing." 
 
 "My conscience is my own. I am responsible 
 to my Lord for words which I speak in His name, 
 not to you." 
 
 "Your conscience belongs to yourself, but your 
 acts belong to all of us. If there is trouble at the 
 140
 
 The Sultan 
 
 Orange funeral to-morrow it will be your fault. The 
 blame will lie at your door." 
 
 "The sword of the Spirit " 
 
 "Oh, you want the sword, do you? You want the 
 sword, eh?" Ingolby's jaw was set now like a mill- 
 stone. "Well, you can have it, and have it now. 
 If you had taken what I said in the right way, I 
 would not have done what I'm going to do. I'm 
 going to send you out of Lebanon. You're a bad 
 and dangerous element here. You must go." 
 
 "Who are you to tell me I must go?" 
 
 The fat hands quivered on the table with anger 
 and emotion, but also with fear of something. 
 "You may be a rich man and own railways, 
 but " 
 
 "But I am not rich and I don't own railways. 
 Lately bad feeling has been growing on the Sagalac, 
 and only a spark was needed to fire the ricks. You 
 struck the spark in your sermon last night. I don't 
 see the end of it all. One thing is sure you're not 
 going to take the funeral service to-morrow." 
 
 The slack red lips of the man of God were gone 
 dry with excitement, the loose body swayed with 
 the struggle to fight it out. 
 
 "I'll take no orders from you," the husky voice 
 protested. "My conscience alone will guide me. 
 I'll speak the truth as I feel it, and the people will 
 stand by me." 
 
 "In that case you will take orders from me. I'm 
 
 going to save the town from what hurts it, if I can. 
 
 I've got no legal rights over you, but I have moral 
 
 rights, and I mean to enforce them. You gabble of 
 
 141
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 conscience and truth, but isn't it a new passion with 
 you conscience and truth?" 
 
 He leaned over the table and fastened the min- 
 ister's eyes with his own. "Had you the same love 
 of conscience and truth at Radley?" 
 
 A whiteness passed over the flabby face, and the 
 beady eyes took on a glazed look. Fight suddenly 
 died out of them. 
 
 "You went on a missionary tour on the Ottawa 
 River. At Radley you toiled and rested from your 
 toil and feasted. The girl had no father or brother, 
 but her uncle was a railway-man. He heard where 
 you were, and he hired with my company to come 
 out here as a foreman. He came to drop on you. The 
 day after he came he had a bad accident. I went to 
 see him. He told me all; his nerves were unstrung, 
 you observe. He meant to ruin you, as you ruined 
 the girl. He had proofs enough. The girl herself 
 is in Winnipeg. Well, I know life, and I know man 
 and man's follies and temptations. I thought it a 
 pity that a career and a life like yours should be 
 ruined " 
 
 A groan broke from the twitching lips before him, 
 and a heavy sweat stood out on the round, rolling 
 forehead. 
 
 "If the man spoke, I knew it would be all up with 
 you, for the world is very hard on men of God who 
 fall. I've seen men ruined before this, because of 
 an hour's passion and folly. I said to myself that 
 you were only human, and that maybe you had paid 
 heavy in remorse and fear. Then there was the 
 honour of the town of Lebanon. I couldn't let the 
 142
 
 The Sultan 
 
 thing take its course. I got the doctor to tell the 
 man that he must go for special treatment to a 
 hospital in Montreal, and I well, I bought him off 
 on his promising to keep his mouth shut. He was 
 a bit stiff in terms, because he said the girl needed 
 the money. The child died, luckily for you. Any- 
 how I bought him off, and he went. That was a 
 year ago. I've got all the proofs in my pocket, 
 even to the three silly letters you wrote her when 
 your senses were stronger than your judgment. I 
 was going to see you about them to-day." 
 
 He took from his pocket a small packet, and held 
 them before the other's face. "Have a good look 
 at your own handwriting, and see if you recognize 
 it," Ingolby continued. 
 
 But the glazed, shocked eyes did not see. Reuben 
 Tripple had passed the several stages of horror during 
 Ingolby 's merciless arraignment, and he had nearly 
 collapsed before he heard the end of the matter. 
 When he knew that Ingolby had saved him, his 
 strength gave way, and he trembled violently. 
 Ingolby looked round and saw a jug of water. 
 Pouring out a glassful, he thrust it into the fat, 
 wrinkled fingers. 
 
 "Drink and pull yourself together," he said 
 sternly. 
 
 The shaken figure straightened itself, and the water 
 was gulped down. "I thank you," he said in a 
 husky voice. 
 
 "You see I treated you fairly, and that you've 
 been a fool?" Ingolby asked with no lessened deter- 
 mination. 
 
 143
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 "I have tried to atone, and- 
 
 "No, you haven't had the right spirit to atone. 
 You were fat with vanity and self-conceit. I've 
 watched you." 
 
 "In future I will " 
 
 "Well, that rests with yourself, but your health 
 is bad, and you're not going to take the funeral 
 to-morrow. You've had a sudden breakdown, and 
 you're going to get a call from some church in the 
 East as far East as Yokohama or Bagdad, I hope; 
 and leave here in a few weeks. You understand? 
 I've thought the thing out, and you've got to go. 
 You'll do no good to yourself or others here. Take 
 my advice, and wherever you go, walk six miles a 
 day at least, work in a garden, eat half as much as 
 you do, and be good to your wife. It's bad enough 
 for any woman to be a parson's wife, but to be a 
 parson's wife and your wife, too, wants a lot of 
 fortitude." 
 
 The heavy figure lurched to the upright, and 
 steadied itself with a force which had not yet been 
 apparent. 
 
 "I'll do my best so help me God!" he said and 
 looked Ingolby squarely in the face for the first time. 
 
 "All right, see you keep your word," Ingolby 
 replied, and nodded good-bye. 
 
 The other went to the door, and laid a hand on 
 the knob. 
 
 Suddenly Ingolby stopped him, and thrust a little 
 bundle of bills into his hand. "There's a hundred 
 dollars for your wife. It '11 pay the expense of mov- 
 ing," he said. 
 
 144
 
 The Sultan 
 
 A look of wonder, revelation and gratitude crept 
 into Tripple's face. "I will keep my word, so help 
 me God!" he said again. 
 
 "All right, good-bye," responded Ingolby abrupt- 
 ly, and turned away. 
 
 A moment afterwards the door closed behind the 
 Rev. Reuben Tripple and his influence in Lebanon. 
 
 "I couldn't shake hands with him," said Ingolby 
 to himself, "but I'm glad he didn't sniffle. There's 
 some stuff in him if it only has a chance." 
 
 "I've done a good piece of business, Berry," he 
 said cheerfully as he passed through the barber-shop. 
 
 "Suh, if you say so," said the barber, and they 
 left the shop together.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 MATTER AND MIND AND TWO MEN 
 
 OROMPTLY at nine o'clock Jethro Fawe 
 1 knocked at Ingolby's door, and was admitted 
 by the mulatto man-servant Jim Beadle, who was to 
 Ingolby like his right hand. It was Jim who took 
 command of his house, "bossed" his two female 
 servants, arranged his railway tours, superintended 
 his kitchen with a view to his own individual 
 tastes; valeted him, kept his cigars within a certain 
 prescribed limit by a firm actuarial principle which 
 transferred any surplus to his own use; gave him 
 good advice, weighed up his friends and his enemies 
 with shrewd sense; and protected him from bores 
 and cranks, borrowers and "dead-beats." 
 
 Jim was accustomed to take a good deal of re- 
 sponsibility, and had more than once sent people to 
 the right-about who had designs on his master, 
 even though they came accredited. On such occa- 
 sions he did not lie to protect himself when called to 
 account, but told the truth pertinaciously. He was 
 obstinate in his vanity, and carried off his mistakes 
 with aplomb. When asked by Ingolby what he 
 called the Governor General when he took His 
 146
 
 Matter and Mind and Two Men 
 
 Excellency over the new railway in Ingolby's private 
 car, he said, "I called him what everybody called 
 him. I called him 'Succelency.'" And "Succe- 
 lency" for ever after the Governor General was 
 called in the West. Jim's phonetic mouthful gave 
 the West a roar of laughter and a new word to the 
 language. On another occasion Jim gave the West 
 a new phrase to its vocabulary which remains to 
 this day. Having to take the wife of a high personage 
 of the neighbouring Republic over the line in the 
 private car, he had astounded his master by present- 
 ing a bill for finger-bowls before the journey began. 
 Ingolby said to him, "Jim, what the devil is this 
 finger-bowls in my private car? We've never had 
 finger-bowls before, and we've had everybody as 
 was anybody to travel with us." Jim's reply was 
 final. "Say," he replied, "we got to have 'em. 
 Soon's I set my eyes on that lady I said, 'She's a 
 finger-bowl lady.'" 
 
 "'Finger-bowl lady' be hanged, Jim, we don't " 
 Ingolby protested, but Jim waved him down. 
 
 "Say," he said decisively, "she'll ask for them 
 finger-bowls she'll ask for 'em, and what'd I do 
 if we hadn't got 'em?" 
 
 She did ask for them; and henceforth the West 
 said of any woman who put on airs and wanted 
 what she wasn't born to, "She's a finger-bowl lady." 
 
 It was Jim who opened the door to Jethro Fawe, 
 and his first glance was one of prejudice. His quick 
 perception saw that the Romany wore clothes not 
 natural to him. He felt the artificial element, the 
 quality of disguise. He was prepared to turn the 
 147
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 visitor away, no matter what he wanted, but In- 
 golby's card handed to him by the Romany made 
 him pause. He had never known his master give 
 a card like that more than once or twice in the 
 years they had been together. He fingered the card, 
 scrutinized it carefully, turned it over, looked heaven- 
 ward reflectively, as though the final permission for 
 the visit remained with him, and finally admitted 
 the visitor. 
 
 "Mr. Ingolby ain't in," he said. "He went out 
 a little while back. You got to wait," he added 
 sulkily, as he showed the Romany into Ingolby's 
 working-room. 
 
 As Jim did so, he saw lying on a chair a suit of 
 clothes on top of which were a wig and false beard 
 and moustache. Instantly he got between the visitor 
 and the make-up. The parcel was closed when he 
 was in the room a half-hour before. Ingolby had 
 opened it since, had been called out, and had for- 
 gotten to cover the things up or put them away. 
 
 "Sit down," Jim said to the Romany, still covering 
 the disguise. Then he raised them in his arms, 
 and passed with them into another room, muttering 
 angrily to himself. 
 
 The Romany had seen, however. They were the 
 first things on which his eyes had fallen when he 
 entered the room. A wig, a false beard, and work- 
 man's clothes! What were they for? Were these 
 disguises for the Master Gorgio? Was he to wear 
 them? If so, he Jethro Fawe would watch and 
 follow him wherever he went. Had these disguises 
 to do with Fleda with his Romany lass? 
 148
 
 Matter and Mind and Two Men 
 
 His pulses throbbed; he was in an overwrought 
 mood. He was ready for any illusion, susceptible 
 to any vagary of the imagination. 
 
 He looked round the room. So this was the way 
 the swaggering, masterful Gorgio lived? 
 
 Here were pictures and engravings which did not 
 seem to belong to a new town in a new land, where 
 everything was useful or spectacular. Here was a 
 sense of culture and refinement. Here were finished 
 and unfinished water-colours done by Ingolby's 
 own hand or bought by him from some hard-up 
 artist earning his way mile by mile, as it were. Here 
 were books, not many, but well-bound and impor- 
 tant-looking, covering fields in which Jethro Fawe 
 had never browsed, into which, indeed, he had never 
 entered. If he had opened them he would have 
 seen a profusion of marginal notes in pencil, and 
 slips of paper stuck in the pages to mark important 
 passages. 
 
 He turned from them to the welcome array of 
 weapons on the walls rifles, shotguns, Indian bows, 
 arrows and spears, daggers and great sheath-knives 
 such as are used from the Yukon to Bolivia, and a 
 sabre with a faded ribbon of silk tied to the handle. 
 This was all that Max Ingolby had inherited from 
 his father that artillery sabre which he had worn 
 in the Crimea and in the Indian Mutiny. Jethro's 
 eyes wandered eagerly over the weapons, and, in 
 imagination, he had each one in his hand. From 
 the pained, angry confusion he felt when he looked 
 at the books had emerged a feeling of fanaticism, 
 of feud and war, in which his spirit regained its own 
 149
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 kind of self-respect. In looking at the weapons he 
 was as good a man as any Gorgio. Brains and books 
 were one thing, but the strong arm, the quick eye, 
 and the deft lunge home with the sword or dagger 
 were better; they were of a man's own skill, not the 
 acquired skill of another's brains which books give. 
 He straightened his shoulders till he looked like a 
 modern actor playing the hero in a romantic drama, 
 and with quick vain motions he stroked and twisted 
 his brown moustache, and ran his fingers through 
 his curling hair. In truth he was no coward; and 
 his conceit would not lessen his courage when the 
 test of it came. 
 
 As his eyes brightened from gloom and sullenness 
 to valiant enmity, they suddenly fell on a table in 
 a corner where lay a black coffin-shaped thing of 
 wood. In this case, he knew, was the Sarasate violin. 
 Sarasate once he had paid ten lire to hear Sarasate 
 play the fiddle in Turin, and the memory of it was 
 like the sun on the clouds to him now. In music 
 such of him as was real found a home. It fed every- 
 thing in him his passion, his vanity; his vagabond 
 taste, his emotions, his self-indulgence, his lust. It 
 was the means whereby he raised himself to adven- 
 ture and to pilgrimage, to love and license and loot 
 and spying and secret service here and there in the 
 east of Europe. It was the flagellation of these senses 
 which excited him to do all that man may do and 
 more. 
 
 He was going to play to the masterful Gorgio, 
 and he would play as he had never played before. 
 He would pour the soul of his purpose into the music 
 150
 
 Matter and Mind and Two Men 
 
 to win back, or steal back, the lass sealed to him 
 by the Starzke River. 
 
 "Kismet!" he said aloud, and he rose from the 
 chair to go to the violin, but as he did so the door 
 opened and Ingolby entered. 
 
 "Oh, you're here, and longing to get at it," he said 
 pleasantly. 
 
 He had seen the look in the eyes of the Romany 
 as he entered, and noted which way his footsteps 
 were tending. "Well, we needn't lose any time, but 
 will you have a drink and a smoke first?" he added. 
 
 He threw his hat in a corner, and opened a spirit- 
 table where shone a half-dozen cut-glass tumblers 
 and several well-filled bottles, while boxes of cigars 
 and cigarettes, flanked them. It was the height of 
 modern luxury imported from New York, and Jethro 
 eyed it with envious inward comment. The Gorgio 
 had the world on his key-chain! Every door would 
 open to him that was written on his face unless 
 Fate stepped in and closed all doors ! 
 
 The door of Fleda's heart had already been opened, 
 but he had not yet made his bed in it, and there 
 was still time to help Fate, if her mystic finger beck- 
 oned. 
 
 Jethro nodded in response to Ingolby's invitation 
 to drink. "But I do not drink much when I play," 
 he remarked. "There's enough liquor in the head 
 when the fiddle's in the hand. Dadia, I do not need 
 the spirit to make the pulses go!" 
 
 "As little as you like then, if you'll only play as 
 well as you did this afternoon," Ingolby said cheerily. 
 
 "I will play better," was the reply.
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 "On Sarasate's violin well, of course." 
 
 "Not only because it is Sarasate's violin, kowadji!" 
 
 "Kowadji! Oh, come now, you may be a Gipsy, 
 that doesn't mean that you're an Egyptian or an 
 Arab. Why Arabic why kowadji?" 
 
 The other shrugged his shoulders. "Who can 
 tell! I speak many languages. I do not like the 
 Mister. It is ugly in the ear. Monsieur, signor, 
 effendi, kowadji, they have some respect in them." 
 
 "You wanted to pay me respect, eh?" 
 
 "You have Sarasate's violin!" 
 
 "I have a lot of things I could do without." 
 
 "Could you do without the Sarasate?" 
 
 "Long enough to hear you play it, Mr. what is 
 your name, may I ask?" 
 
 "My name is Jethro Fawe." 
 
 "Well, Jethro Fawe, my Romany chal, you shall 
 show me what a violin can do." 
 
 "You know the Romany lingo?" Jethro asked, as 
 Ingolby went over to the violin-case. 
 
 "A little just a little." 
 
 "When did you learn it?" There was a sudden 
 savage rage in Jethro's heart, for he imagined Fleda 
 had taught Ingolby. 
 
 "Many a year ago when I could learn anything 
 and remember anything and forget anything." In- 
 golby sighed. "But that doesn't matter, for I 
 know only a dozen words or so, and they won't 
 carry me far." 
 
 He turned the violin over in his hands. "This 
 ought to do a bit more than the cotton-field fiddle," 
 he said dryly. 
 
 152
 
 Matter and Mind and Two Men 
 
 He snapped the strings, looking at it with the love 
 of the natural connoisseur. "Finish your drink 
 and your cigarette. I can wait," he added graciously. 
 "If you like the cigarettes, you must take some away 
 with you. You don't drink much, that's clear, there- 
 fore you must smoke. Every man has some vice or 
 other, if it's only hanging on to virtue too tight." 
 
 He laughed eagerly. Strange that he should have 
 a feeling of greater companionship for a vagabond 
 like this than for most people he met. Was it some 
 temperamental thing in him? "Dago," as he called 
 the Romany inwardly, there was still a bond between 
 them. They understood the glory of a little instru- 
 ment like this, and could forget the world in the light 
 on a great picture. There was something in the 
 air they breathed which gave them easier under- 
 standing of each other and of the world. 
 
 Suddenly with a toss Jethro drained the glass of 
 spirit, though he had not meant to do so. He 
 puffed the cigarette an instant longer, then threw it 
 on the floor, and was about to put his foot on it, 
 when Ingolby stopped him. 
 
 "I'm a slave," he said. "I've got a master. It's 
 Jim. Jim's a hard master, too. He'd give me fits 
 if we ground our cigarette ashes into the carpet." 
 
 He threw the refuse into a flower-pot. 
 
 "That squares Jim. Now let's turn the world 
 inside out," he proceeded. He handed the fiddle 
 over. "Here's the little thing that '11 let you do 
 the trick. Isn't it a beauty, Jethro Fawe?" 
 
 The Romany took it, his eyes glistening with min- 
 gled feelings. Hatred was in his soul, and it showed 
 'S3
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 in the sidelong glance as Ingolby turned to place a 
 chair where he could hear and see comfortably; 
 yet he had the musician's love of the perfect instru- 
 ment, and the woods and the streams and the sounds 
 of night and the whisperings of trees and the ghosts 
 that walked in lonely places and called across the 
 glens all were pouring into his brain memories 
 which made his pulses move far quicker than the 
 liquor he had drunk could do. 
 
 " What do you wish? " he asked as he tuned the 
 fiddle. 
 
 Ingolby laughed good-humouredly. " Something 
 Eastern; something you'd play for yourself if you 
 were out by the Caspian Sea. Something that has 
 life in it." 
 
 Jethro continued to tune the fiddle carefully and 
 abstractedly. His eyes were half -closed, giving them 
 a sulky look, and his head was averted. He made 
 no reply to Ingolby, but his head swayed from side 
 to side in that sensuous state produced by self- 
 hypnotism, so common among the half -Eastern races. 
 By an effort of the will they send through the nerves 
 a flood of feeling which is half-anaesthetic, half-in- 
 toxicant. Carried into its fullest expression it drives 
 a man amok or makes of him a howling dervish, a 
 fanatic, or a Shakir. In lesser intensity it produces 
 the musician of the purely sensuous order, or the 
 dancer that performs prodigies of abandoned grace. 
 Suddenly the sensuous exaltation had come upon 
 Jethro Fawe. It was as though he had discharged 
 into his system from some cells of his brain a flood 
 which coursed like a stream of soft fire.
 
 Matter and Mind and Two Men 
 
 In the pleasurable pain of such a mood he drew 
 his bow across the strings with a sweeping stroke, 
 and then, for an instant, he ran hither and thither 
 on the strings, testing the quality and finding the 
 range and capacity of the instrument. It was a 
 scamper of hieroglyphics which could only mean 
 anything to a musician. 
 
 "Well, what do you think of him?" Ingolby asked 
 as the Romany lowered the bow. 
 
 "Paganini Joachim Sarasate any one, it is 
 good enough," was the half-abstracted reply. 
 
 "It is good enough for you almost, eh?" 
 
 Ingolby meant his question as a compliment, but 
 an evil look shot into the Romany's face, and the 
 bow twitched in his hand. He was not Paganini or 
 Sarasate, but that was no reason why he should be 
 insulted. 
 
 Ingolby 's quick perception saw, however, what his 
 words had done, and he hastened to add : "I believe 
 you can get more out of that fiddle than Sarasate 
 ever could, in your own sort of music anyhow. I've 
 never heard any one play half so well the kind of 
 piece you played this afternoon. I'm glad I didn't 
 make a fool of myself buying the fiddle. I didn't, 
 did I? I gave five thousand dollars for it." 
 
 "It's worth anything to the man that loves it," 
 was the Romany's response. He was mollified by the 
 praise he had received. 
 
 He raised the fiddle slowly to his chin, his eyes 
 wandering round the room, then projecting them- 
 selves into space, from which they only returned to 
 fix themselves on Ingolby with the veiled look which 
 155
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 sees but does not see such a look as an oracle, or a 
 death-god, or a soulless monster of some between- 
 world, half-Pagan god would wear. Just such a 
 look as Watts's "Minotaur" wears in the Tate 
 Gallery in London. 
 
 In an instant he was away in a world which was 
 as far off from this world as Jupiter is from Mars. 
 It was the world of his soul's origin a place of beau- 
 tiful and yet of noisome creations also; of white 
 mountains and green hills, and yet of tarns in which 
 crawled evil things; a place of vagrant hurricanes 
 and tidal-waves and cloud-bursts, of forests alive 
 with quarrelling and affrighted beasts. It was a 
 place where birds sang divinely, yet where obscene 
 fowls of prey hovered in the blue or waited by the 
 dying denizens of the desert or the plain; where 
 dark-eyed women heard, with sidelong triumph, the 
 whispers of passion ; where sweet-faced children fled 
 in fear from terrors undefined; where harpies and 
 witch-women and evil souls waited in ambush; or 
 scurried through the coverts where men brought 
 things to die; or where they fled for futile refuge 
 from armed foes. It was a world of unbridled will, 
 this, where the soul of Jethro Fawe had its origin; 
 and to it his senses fled involuntarily when he put 
 Sarasate's fiddle to his chin this Autumn evening. 
 
 From that well of the First Things the first 
 things of his own life, the fount from which his fore- 
 bears drew, backwards through the centuries, Jethro 
 Fawe quickly drank his fill ; and then into the violin 
 he poured his own story no improvisation, but 
 musical legends and classic fantasies and folk-breath- 
 156
 
 Matter and Mind and Two Men 
 
 ings and histories of anguished or joyous haters or 
 lovers of life; treated by the impressionist who made 
 that which had been in other scenes to other men 
 the thing of the present and for the men who are. 
 That which had happened by the Starzke River was 
 now of the Sagalac River. The passions and wild 
 love and irresponsible deeds of the life he had lived 
 in years gone by were here. 
 
 It was impossible for Ingolby to resist the spell 
 of the music. Such abandonment he had never seen 
 in any musician, such riot of musical meaning he 
 had never heard. He was conscious of the savagery 
 and the bestial soul of vengeance which spoke 
 -through the music, and drowned the joy and radi- 
 ance and almost ghostly and grotesque frivolity of 
 the earlier passages ; but it had no personal meaning 
 to him, though at times it seemed when the Romany 
 came near and bent over him with the ecstatic 
 attack of the music, as though there was a look in 
 the black eyes like that of a man who kills. It had, 
 of course, nothing to do with him; it was the aban- 
 donment of a highly emotional nature, he thought. 
 
 It was only after he .had been playing, practically 
 without ceasing, for three-quarters of an hour, that 
 there came to Ingolby the true interpretation of the 
 Romany mutterings through the man's white, wolf- 
 like teeth. He did not shrink, however, but kept his 
 head and watched. 
 
 Once as the musician flung his body round in a 
 sweep of passion, Ingolby saw the black eyes flash 
 to the weapons on the wall with a malign look which 
 did not belong to the music alone, and he took a
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 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 exalta- 
 tion 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 catastro- 
 phe, 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 
 158
 
 Matter and Mind and Two Men 
 
 TIT 
 
 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 scan- 
 ning 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 almost against the wall. 
 
 "I came to get what belonged to me." 
 
 Ingolby laughed ironically. "Most of us are here 
 for that purpose. We think the world owes us such 
 a lot." 
 
 "I know what is my own." 
 
 Ingolby lit his pipe, his eyes reflectively scanning 
 the other. 
 
 "Have you got it again out here your own?" 
 
 "Not yet, but I will." 
 
 Ingolby took out his watch, and looked at it. "I 
 haven't found it easy getting all that belongs to me." 
 
 "You have found it easier getting what belongs 
 to some one else," was the snarling response.
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 Ingolby's jaw hardened. What did the fellow 
 mean? Did he refer to money, or was it Fleda 
 Druse? 
 
 "See here," he said, "there's no need to say things 
 like that. I never took anything that didn't belong 
 to me, that I didn't win, or earn or pay for market 
 price or 'founder's shares'" he smiled grimly. 
 "You've given me the best treat I've had in many 
 a day. I'd walk fifty miles to hear you play my Sara- 
 sate or even old Berry's cotton-field fiddle. I'm 
 as grateful as I can be, and I'd like to pay you for it; 
 but as you're not a professional, and it's one gentle- 
 man to another as it were, I can only thank you 
 or maybe help you to get what's your own, if you're 
 really trying to get it out here. Meanwhile, have a 
 cigar and a drink." 
 
 He was still between the Romany and the wall, 
 and by a movement forward sought to turn Jethro 
 to the spirit-table. Probably this manoeuvring was 
 all nonsense, that he was wholly misreading the 
 man; but he had always trusted his instincts, and 
 he would not let his reason rule him entirely in such 
 a situation. He could also ring the bell for Jim, or 
 call to him, for while he was in the house Jim was 
 sure to be near by; but he felt he must deal with the 
 business alone. 
 
 The Romany did not move towards the spirit- 
 table, and Ingolby became increasingly vigilant. 
 
 "No, I can't pay you anything, that's clear," he 
 
 said; "but to get your own I've got some influence 
 
 out here what can I do? A stranger is up against 
 
 all kinds of things if he isn't a native, and you're 
 
 1 60
 
 Matter and Mind and Two Men 
 
 not. Your home and country 's a good way from 
 here, eh?" 
 
 Suddenly the Romany faced him. "Yes. I come 
 from places far from here. Where is the Romany's 
 home? It is everywhere in the world, but it is every- 
 where inside his tent. Because his country is every- 
 where and nowhere, his home is more to him than 
 it is to any other. He is alone with his wife, and with 
 his own people. Yes, and by long and by last, he will 
 make the man pay who spoils his home. It is all he 
 has. Good or bad, it is all he has. . It is his own." 
 
 Ingolby had a strange, disturbing premonition 
 that he was about to hear what would startle him, 
 but he persisted. "You said you had come here to 
 get your own is your home here?" 
 
 For a moment the Romany did not answer. He 
 had worked himself into a great passion. He had 
 hypnotized himself, he had acted for a while as 
 though he was one of life's realities; but suddenly 
 there passed through his veins the chilling sense of 
 the unreal, that he was only acting a part, as he had 
 ever done in his life, and that the man before him 
 could, with a wave of the hand, raise the curtain 
 on all his disguises and pretences. It was only 
 for an instant, however, for there swept through him 
 the feeling that Fleda had roused in him the first 
 real passion, the first true love if what such as he 
 felt can be love that he had ever known; and he 
 saw her again as she was in the hut in the wood 
 defying him, ready to defend herself against him. 
 All his erotic anger and melodramatic fervour were 
 alive in him once more. 
 ii 161
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 He was again a man with a wrong, a lover dis- 
 possessed. On the instant his veins rilled with pas- 
 sionate blood. The Roscian strain in him had its 
 own tragic force and reality. 
 
 "My home is where my own is, and you have 
 taken my own from me, as I said," he burst out. 
 "There was all the world for you, but I had only my 
 music and my wife, and you have taken my wife 
 from me. Mi Duvel, you have taken, but you shall 
 give back again, or there will be only one of us in 
 the world! The music I have played for you that 
 has told you all: the thing that was music from the 
 beginning of Time, the will of the First of All. 
 Fleda Druse, she was mine, she is my wife, and you, 
 the Gorgio, come between, and she will not return 
 to me." 
 
 A sudden savage desire came to Ingolby to strike 
 the man in the face this Gipsy vagabond the hus- 
 band of Fleda Druse! It was too monstrous. It 
 was an evil lie, and yet she had said she was a 
 Romany, and had said it with apparent shame or 
 anxiety. She had given him no promise, had pledged 
 no faith, had admitted no love, and yet already in 
 his heart of hearts he thought upon her as his own. 
 Ever since the day he had held her in his arms at 
 the Carillon Rapids her voice had sounded in his 
 ears, and a warmth was in his heart which had never 
 been there in all his days. This waif of barbarism 
 even to talk of Fleda Druse as though he was of the 
 same sphere as herself invited punishment but to 
 claim her as his wife! It was shameless. An ugly 
 mood came on him, the force that had made him 
 162
 
 Matter and Mind and Two Men 
 
 what he was filled all his senses. He straightened 
 himself; contempt of the Ishmael showed at his lips. 
 
 "I think you lie, Jethro Fawe," he said quietly, 
 and his eyes were hard and piercing. "Gabriel 
 Druse's daughter is not never was any wife of 
 yours. She never called you husband. She does 
 not belong to the refuse of the world." 
 
 The Romany made a sudden rush towards the 
 wall where the weapons hung, but two arms of iron 
 were flung out and caught him, and he was hurled 
 across the room. He crashed against a table, swayed, 
 missed a chair where rested the Sarasate violin, then 
 fell to the floor; but he staggered to his feet again, 
 all his senses in chaos. 
 
 "You almost fell on the fiddle. If you had hurt 
 it I'd have hurt you, Mr. Fawe," Ingolby said with 
 a grim smile. "That fiddle's got too much in it to 
 waste it." 
 
 "Mi Duvel! Mi Duvel!" gasped the Romany in 
 his fury. 
 
 "You can say that as much as you like, but if 
 you play any more of your monkey tricks here, my 
 Paganini, I will wring your neck," Ingolby returned, 
 his six feet of solid flesh making a movement of 
 menace. 
 
 "And look," he added, "since you are here, and 
 I said what I meant, that I'd help you to get your 
 own, I'll keep my word. But don't talk in damned 
 riddles. Talk white men's language. You said that 
 Gabriel Druse's daughter was your wife. Explain 
 what you meant, and no nonsense." 
 
 The Romany made a gesture of acquiescence. 
 163
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 "She was made mine according to Romany law by 
 the River Starzke seventeen years ago. I was the 
 son of Lemuel Fawe, rightful King of all the Ro- 
 manys. Gabriel Druse seized the headship, and my 
 father gave him three thousand pounds that we 
 should marry, she and I, and so bring the headship 
 to the Fawes again when Gabriel Druse should die; 
 and so it was done by the River Starzke in the 
 Roumelian country." 
 
 Ingolby winced, for the man's words rang true. 
 A cloud came over his face, but he said nothing. 
 Jethro saw the momentary advantage. "You did 
 not know?" he asked. "She did not tell you she 
 was made my wife those years ago? She did not tell 
 you she was the daughter of the Romany King? 
 So it is, you see, she is afraid to tell the truth." 
 
 Ingolby's knitted bulk heaved with desire to 
 injure. ' ' Your wife you melodious sinner ! Do you 
 think such tomfoolery has any effect in this civilized 
 country? She is about as much your wife as I am 
 your brother. Don't talk your heathenish rot here. 
 I said I'd help you to get your own, because you 
 played the fiddle as few men can play it, and I owe 
 you a lot for that hour's music; but there's nothing 
 belonging to Gabriel Druse that belongs to you, 
 and his daughter least of all. Look out don't sit 
 on the fiddle, damn you!" 
 
 The Romany had made a motion as if to sit down 
 on the chair where the fiddle was, but stopped short 
 at Ingolby's warning. For an instant Jethro had an 
 inclination to seize the fiddle and break it across his 
 knees. It would be an exquisite thing to destroy 
 164
 
 Matter and Mind and Two Men 
 
 five thousand dollars' worth of this man's property 
 at a single wrench and blow. But the spirit of the 
 musician asserted itself before the vengeful lover 
 could carry out his purpose, as Ingolby felt sure it 
 would. Ingolby had purposely given the warning 
 about the fiddle, in the belief that it might break 
 the unwelcome intensity of the scene. He detested 
 melodrama, and the scene came precious near to it. 
 Men had been killed before his eyes more than once, 
 but there had been no rodomontade even when there 
 had been a woman in the case. 
 
 This Romany lover, however, seemed anxious to 
 make a Sicilian drama out of his preposterous claim, 
 and it sickened him. Who was the fellow that he 
 should appear in the guise of a rival to himself! 
 It was humiliating and offensive. Ingolby had his 
 own kind of pride and vanity, and they were both 
 hurt now. He would have been less irritable if this 
 rival had been as good a man as himself or better. 
 He was so much a gamester that he would have 
 said, "Let the best man win," and have taken his 
 chances. 
 
 His involuntary strategy triumphed for the mo- 
 ment. The Romany looked at the fiddle for an in- 
 stant with murderous eyes, but the cool, quiet voice 
 of Ingolby again speaking sprayed his hot virulence. 
 
 "You can make a good musician quite often, but 
 a good fiddle is a prize-packet from the skies," 
 Ingolby said. "When you get a good musician and 
 a good fiddle together it's a day for a salute of a 
 hundred guns." 
 
 Half -dazed with unregulated emotion, Jethro acted 
 165
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 with indecision for a moment, and the fiddle was 
 safe. But he had suffered the indignity of being 
 flung like a bag of bones across the room, and the 
 microbe of insane revenge was in him. It was not 
 to be killed by the cold humour of the man who had 
 worsted him. He returned to the attack. 
 
 "She is mine, and her father knows it is so. I 
 have waited all these years, and the hour has come. 
 I will " 
 
 Ingolby's eyes became hard and merciless again. 
 "Don't talk your Gipsy rhetoric. I've had enough. 
 No hour has come that makes a woman do what 
 she doesn't want to do in a free country. The 
 lady is free to do what she pleases here within British 
 law, and British law takes no heed of Romany law 
 or any other law. You'll do well to go back to your 
 Roumelian country or whatever it is. The lady will 
 marry whom she likes." 
 
 "She will never marry you," the Romany said 
 huskily and menacingly. 
 
 "I have never asked her, but if I do, and she said 
 yes, no one could prevent it." 
 
 "I would prevent it." 
 
 "How?" 
 
 "She is a Romany: she belongs to the Romany 
 people; I will find a way." 
 
 Ingolby had a flash of intuition. 
 
 "You know well that if Gabriel Druse passed the 
 word, your life wouldn't be worth a day's purchase. 
 The Camorra would not be more certain or more 
 deadly. If you do anything to hurt the daughter 
 of Gabriel Druse, you will pay the full price, and 
 166
 
 Matter and Mind and Two Men 
 
 you know it. The Romanys don't love you better 
 than their rightful chief." 
 
 "I am their rightful chief." 
 
 "Maybe, but if they don't say so, too, you might 
 as well be their rightful slave. You are a genius in 
 your way. Take my advice and return to the trail 
 of the Gipsy. Or, there's many an orchestra would 
 give you a good salary as leader. You've got no 
 standing in this country. You can't do anything to 
 hurt me except try to kill me, and I'll take my 
 chance of that. You'd better have a drink now and 
 go quietly home to bed. Try and understand that 
 this is a British town, and we don't settle our affairs 
 by jumping from a violin rhapsody to a knife or a 
 gun." He jerked his head backwards towards the 
 wall. "Those things are for ornament, not for use. 
 Come, Fawe, have a drink and go home like a good 
 citizen for one night only." 
 
 The Romany hesitated, then shook his head and 
 muttered chaotically. 
 
 "Very well," was the decisive reply. Ingolby 
 pressed a bell, and, in an instant, Jim Beadle was in 
 the room. He had evidently been at the keyhole. 
 "Jim," he said, "show the gentleman out." 
 
 But suddenly he caught up a box of cigars from 
 the table and thrust it into the Romany's hands. 
 "They're the best to be got this side of Havana," he 
 said cheerily. "They'll help you put more fancy 
 still into your playing. Good night. You never 
 played better than you've done during the last 
 hour, I'll stake my life on that. Good night. Show 
 Mr. Fawe out, Jim." 
 
 167
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 The Romany had not time to thrust back the 
 cigars upon his host, and dazed by the strategy of 
 the thing, by the superior force and mind of the man 
 who a moment ago he would have killed, he took the 
 box and turned towards the door, taking his hat 
 dazedly from Jim. 
 
 At the door, however, catching sight of the sly 
 grin on the mulatto servant's face, his rage and 
 understanding returned to him, and he faced the 
 masterful Gorgio once again. 
 
 "By God, I'll have none of it!" he exclaimed 
 roughly and threw the box of cigars on the floor of 
 the room. 
 
 Ingolby was not perturbed. "Don't forget there's 
 an east-bound train every day," he said meaningly, 
 and turned his back as the door closed. 
 
 In another minute Jim entered the room. "Get 
 the clothes and the wig and things, Jim. I must 
 be off," he said. 
 
 "The toughs don't get going till about this time 
 over at Manitou," responded Jim. Then he told 
 his master about the clothes having been exposed 
 in the room when the Romany arrived. "But I 
 don't think he seen them," Jim added with approval 
 of his own conduct. "I got 'em out quick as light- 
 ning. I covered 'em like a blanket." 
 
 "All right, Jim; it doesn't matter. That fellow's 
 got other things to think of than that." 
 
 He was wrong, however. The Romany was wait- 
 ing outside in the darkness not far away watching 
 and waiting.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 FOR LUCK 
 
 FELIX MARCHAND was in the highest spirits. 
 His clean-shaven face was wrinkled with smiles 
 and sneers. His black hair was flung in waves of 
 triumph over his heavily lined forehead; one hand 
 was on his hip with brave satisfaction, the other 
 with lighted cigarette was tossed upwards in exulta- 
 tion. 
 
 "I've got him. I've got him like that!" he said, 
 transferring the cigarette to his mouth, and clench- 
 ing his right hand as though it could not be loosed 
 by an earthquake. "For sure, it's a thing finished 
 as the solder of a pannikin like that." 
 
 He caught up a tin quart-pot from the bar-counter 
 and showed the soldered bottom of it. 
 
 He was alone in the bar of Barbazon's Hotel 
 except for one person the youngest of the officials 
 who had been retired from the offices of the railways 
 when Ingolby had merged them. This was a man 
 who had got his position originally by nepotism, 
 and represented the worst elements of a national life 
 where the spoils system is rooted in the popular 
 mind. He had, however, a little residue of that 
 169
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 discipline which, working in a great industrial organi- 
 zation, begets qualms as to extreme courses. 
 
 He looked reflectively at the leaden pot and said 
 in reply: "I'd never believe in anything where that 
 Ingolby is concerned till I had it in the palm of my 
 hand. He's as deep as a well, and when he's quietest 
 it's good to look out. He takes a lot of skinning, 
 that badger." 
 
 "He's skinned this time all right," was Marchand's 
 reply. "To-morrow '11 be the biggest day Manitou's 
 had since the Indian lifted his wigwam and the white 
 man put down his store. Listen hear them! 
 They're coming!" 
 
 He raised a hand for silence, and a rumbling, 
 ragged roar of voices could be heard without. 
 
 "The crowd have gone the rounds," he continued. 
 "They started at Barbazon's and they're winding 
 up at Barbazon's. They're drunk enough to-night 
 to want to do anything, and to-morrow when they've 
 got sore heads they'll do anything. They'll make that 
 funeral look like a squeezed orange; they'll show 
 Lebanon and Master Ingolby that we're to be 
 bosses of our own show. The strike '11 be on after 
 the funeral, and after the strike's begun there'll 
 be eh, biensdr!" 
 
 He paused sharply, as though he had gone too far. 
 
 "There'll be what?" whispered the other; but 
 Marchand made no reply, save to make a warning 
 gesture, for Barbazon, the landlord, had entered 
 behind the bar. 
 
 "They're coming back, Barbazon," Marchand 
 said to the landlord, jerking his head towards the 
 170
 
 For Luck 
 
 front door. The noise of the crowd was increasing, 
 the raucous shouts were so loud that the three had to 
 raise their voices. "You'll do a land-office business 
 to-night," he declared. 
 
 Barbazon had an evil face. There were rumours 
 that he had been in gaol in Quebec for robbery, 
 and that after he had served his time he had dug 
 up the money he had stolen and come West. He had 
 started the first saloon at Manitou, and had grown 
 with the place in more senses than one. He was 
 heavy and thick-set, with huge shoulders, big hands, 
 and beady eyes that looked out of a stolid face 
 where long hours, greed and vices other than drink 
 had left their mark. He never drank spirits, and 
 was therefore ready to take advantage of those who 
 did drink. More than one horse and canoe and cow 
 and ox, and acre of land, in the days when land was 
 cheap, had come to him across the bar-counter. 
 He could be bought, could Barbazon, and he sold 
 more than wine and spirits. He had a wife who had 
 left him twice because of his misdemeanours, but 
 had returned and straightened out his house and 
 affairs once again; and even when she went off with 
 Lick Baldwin, a cattle-dealer, she was welcomed 
 back without reproaches by Barbazon, chiefly be- 
 cause he had no morals, and her abilities were of 
 more value to him than her virtue. On the whole, 
 Gros Barbazon was a bad lot. 
 
 At Marchand's words Barbazon shrugged his 
 shoulders. "The more spent to-night, the less to 
 spend to-morrow," he growled. 
 
 "But there's going to be spending for a long time," 
 171
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 Marchand answered. "There's going to be a riot 
 to-morrow, and there's going to be a strike the next 
 day, and after that there's going to be something 
 else." 
 
 "What else?" Barbazon asked, his beady eyes 
 fastened on Marchand 's face. 
 
 "Something worth while better than all the rest." 
 
 Barbazon's low forehead seemed to disappear al- 
 most, as he drew the grizzled shock of hair down, 
 by wrinkling his forehead with a heavy frown. 
 
 "It's no damn good, m'sieu'," he growled. "Am 
 I a fool? They'll spend money to-night, and to- 
 morrow, and the next day, and when the row is on; 
 and the more they spend then, the less they'll have 
 to spend by-and-bye. It's no good. The steady 
 trade for me all the time. That is my idee. And 
 the something else what ? You think there's some- 
 thing else that '11 be good for me ? Nom de Dieu, 
 there's nothing you're doing, or mean to do, but '11 
 hurt me and everybody." 
 
 "That's your view, is it, Barbazon?" exclaimed 
 Marchand loudly, for the crowd was now almost 
 at the door. "You're a nice Frenchman and patriot. 
 That crowd '11 be glad to hear you think they're 
 fools. Suppose they took it into their heads to wreck 
 the place?" 
 
 Barbazon's muddy face got paler, but his eyes 
 sharpened, and he leaned over the bar-counter, and 
 said with a snarl: "Go to hell, and say what you 
 like; and then I'll have something to say about 
 something else, m'sieu'!" 
 
 Marchand was about to reply angrily, but he 
 172
 
 For Luck 
 
 instantly changed his mind, and before Barbazon 
 could stop him, he sprang over the counter and dis- 
 appeared into the office behind the bar. 
 
 "I won't steal anything, Barbazon," he said over 
 his shoulder as he closed the door behind him. 
 
 "I'll see to that," Barbazon muttered stolidly, 
 but with malicious eyes. 
 
 The front door was flung open now, and the 
 crowd poured into the room, boisterous, reckless, 
 though some were only sullen, watchful and angry. 
 These last were mostly men above middle age, and 
 of a fanatical and racially bitter type. They were 
 not many, but in one sense they were the backbone 
 and force of the crowd, probably the less intelligent 
 but the more tenacious and consistent. They were 
 black spots of gathering storm in an electric atmos- 
 phere. 
 
 All converged upon the bar. Two assistants rushed 
 the drinks along the counter with flourishes, while 
 Barbazon took in the cash and sharply checked the 
 rougher element, who were inclined to treat the bar 
 as a place for looting. Most of them, however, had 
 a wholesome fear of Barbazon, and also most of 
 them wished to stand well with him credit was a 
 good thing, even in a saloon. 
 
 For a little time the room was packed, then some 
 of the more restless spirits, their thirst assuaged, 
 sallied forth to taste the lager and old rye elsewhere, 
 and "raise Cain" in the streets. When they went, 
 it became possible to move about more freely in the 
 big bar-room, at the end of which was a billiard- 
 table. It was notable, however, that the more
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 sullen elements stayed. Some of them were strangers 
 to each other. Manitou was a distributing point 
 for all radiations of the compass, and men were 
 thrown together in its streets who only saw one 
 another once or twice a year when they went to 
 the woods in the Fall or worked the rivers in the 
 Summer. Some were Mennonites, Doukhobors and 
 Finlanders, some Swedes, Norwegians and Icelanders. 
 Others again were birds of passage who would prob- 
 ably never see Manitou in the future, but they were 
 mostly French, and mostly Catholic, and enemies of 
 the Orange Lodges wherever they were, east or west 
 or north or south. They all had a common ground 
 of unity half-savage coureurs-de-bois, river-drivers, 
 railway-men, factory-hands, cattlemen, farmers, 
 labourers; they had a gift for prejudice, and taking 
 sides on something or other was as the breath of 
 the nostrils to them. 
 
 The greater number of the crowd were, however, 
 excitable, good-natured men, who were by instinct 
 friendly, save when their prejudices were excited; 
 and their oaths and exclamations were marvels of 
 droll ingenuity. Most of them were still too good- 
 humoured with drink to be dangerous, but all hoped 
 for trouble at the Orange funeral on principle, and 
 the anticipated strike had elements of "thrill." 
 They were of a class, however, who would swing 
 from what was good-humour to deadly anger in a 
 minute, and turn a wind of mere prejudice into a 
 hurricane of life and death with the tick of a clock. 
 They would all probably go to the Orange funeral 
 to-morrow in a savage spirit. Some of them were
 
 For Luck 
 
 loud in denunciation of Ingolby and "the Lebanon 
 gang"; they joked coarsely over the dead Orange- 
 man, but their cheerful violence had not yet the 
 appearance of reality. 
 
 One man suddenly changed all that. He was a 
 river-driver of stalwart proportions, with a red 
 handkerchief round his neck, and with loose corded 
 trousers tucked into his boots. He had a face of 
 natural ugliness made almost repulsive by marks of 
 smallpox. Red, flabby lips and an overhanging brow 
 made him a figure which men would avoid on a 
 dark night. 
 
 "Let's go over to Lebanon to-night and have it 
 out," he said in French. "That Ingolby let's go 
 break his windows and give him a dip in the river. 
 He's the curse of this city. Holy, once Manitou 
 was a place to live in, now it's a place to die in! 
 The factories, the mills, they're full of Protes'ants 
 and atheists and shysters; the railway office is gone 
 to Lebanon. Ingolby took it there. Manitou was 
 the best town in the West; it's no good now. Who's 
 the cause? Ingolby's the cause. Name of God, if 
 he was here I'd get him by the throat as quick as 
 winkin'." 
 
 He opened and shut his ringers with spasmodic 
 malice, and glared round the room. "He's going to 
 lock us out if we strike," he added. "He's going to 
 take the bread out of our mouths; he's going to 
 put his heel on Manitou, and grind her down till he 
 makes her knuckle to Lebanon to a lot of infidels, 
 Protes'ants, and thieves. Who's going to stand it? 
 I say bagosh, I say, who's going to stand it!"
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 "He's a friend of the Monseigneur, " ventured a 
 factory-hand, who had a wife and children to sup- 
 port, and however partisan, was little ready for that 
 which would stop his supplies. 
 
 "Sacrt bapteme! That's part of his game," roared 
 the big river-driver in reply. "I'll take the word 
 of Felix Marchand about that. Look at him! That 
 Felix Marchand doesn't try to take the bread out 
 of people's mouths. He gives money here, he gives 
 it there. He wants the old town to stay as it is and 
 not be swallowed up." 
 
 "Three cheers for Felix Marchand," cried some 
 one in the throng. All cheered loudly save one old 
 man with grizzled hair and beard, who leaned against 
 the wall half-way down the room, smoking a corn- 
 cob pipe. He was a French Canadian in dress and 
 appearance, and he spat on the floor like a navvy 
 he had filled his pipe with the strongest tobacco that 
 one man ever offered to another. As the crowd 
 cheered for Felix Marchand, he made his way up 
 towards the bar slowly. He must have been tall 
 when he was young; now he was stooped, yet 
 there was still something very sinewy about him. 
 
 "Who's for Lebanon?" cried the big river-driver 
 with an oath. "Who's for giving Lebanon hell, and 
 ducking Ingolby in the river?" 
 
 "I am I am I am all of us!" shouted the 
 crowd. " It's no good waiting for to-morrow. Let's 
 get the Lebs by the scruff to-night. Let's break 
 Ingolby's windows and soak him in the Sagalac. 
 Allans allons gai!" 
 
 Uproar and broken sentences, threats, oaths, and 
 176
 
 For Luck 
 
 objurgations sounded through the room. There 
 was a sudden movement towards the door, but the 
 exit of the crowd was stopped by a slow but clear 
 voice speaking in French. 
 
 "Wait a minute, my friends," it cried. "Wait a 
 minute. Let's ask a few questions first." 
 
 "Who's he?" asked a dozen voices. "What's he 
 going to say?" The mob moved again towards the 
 bar. 
 
 The big river-driver turned on the grizzled old 
 man beside the bar-counter with bent shoulders and 
 lazy, drawling speech. 
 
 "What 've you got to say about it, son?" he asked 
 threateningly. 
 
 "Well, to ask a few questions first that's all," 
 the old man replied. 
 
 "You don't belong here, old cock," the other said 
 roughly. 
 
 "A good many of us don't belong here," the old 
 man replied quietly. "It always is so. This isn't 
 the first time I've been to Manitou. You're a river- 
 driver, and you don't live here either," he con- 
 tinued. 
 
 1 ' What 've you got to say about it ? I've been com- 
 ing and going here for ten years. I belong bagosh, 
 what do you want to ask? Hurry up. We've got 
 work to do. We're going to raise hell in Lebanon." 
 
 "And give hell to Ingolby," shouted some one in 
 the crowd. 
 
 "Suppose Ingolby isn't there?" questioned the 
 old man. 
 
 "Oh, that's one of your questions, is it?" sneered 
 
 12 I 77
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 the big river-driver. "Well, if you knew him as we 
 do, you'd know that it's at night-time he sits studyin' 
 how he'll cut Manitou's throat. He's home, all right. 
 He's in Lebanon anyhow, and we'll find him." 
 
 "Well, but wait a minute be quiet a bit," said 
 the old man, his eyes blinking slowly at the big river- 
 driver. "I've been 'round a good deal, and I've had 
 some experience in the world. Did you ever give 
 that Ingolby a chance to tell you what his plans 
 were? Did you ever get close to him and try to 
 figure what he was driving at? There's no chance of 
 getting at the truth if you don't let a man state 
 his case but no. If he can't make you see his case 
 then is the time to jib, not before." 
 
 "Oh, get out!" cried a rowdy English road- 
 maker in the crowd. "We know all right what In- 
 golby 's after." 
 
 "Eh, well, what is he after?" asked the old man, 
 looking the other in the eye. 
 
 "What's he after? Oof oof oof, that's what 
 he's after. He's for his own pocket, he's for being 
 boss of all the woolly West. He's after keeping us 
 poor and making himself rich. He's after getting 
 the cinch on two towns and three railways, and doing 
 what he likes with it all; and we're after not having 
 him do it, you bet. That's how it is, old hoss." 
 
 The other stroked his beard with hands which, 
 somehow, gave little indication of age, and then, 
 with a sudden jerk forward of his head, he said: 
 
 "Oh, it's like that, eh? Is that what M'sieu' 
 Marchand told you? That's what he said, is it?" 
 
 The big river-driver, eager to maintain his supreme 
 178
 
 For Luck 
 
 place as leader, lunged forward a step, and growled 
 a challenge. 
 
 "Who said it? What does it matter if M'sieu* 
 Marchand said it it's true. If I said it, it's true. 
 All of us in this room say it, and it's true. Young 
 Marchand says what Manitou says." 
 
 The old man's eyes grew brighter they were 
 exceedingly sharp for one so old, and he said quite 
 gently now: 
 
 "M. Marchand said it first, and you all say it 
 afterwards ah, bah! But listen to me; I know 
 Max Ingolby that you think is such a villain; I 
 know him well. I knew him when he was a little 
 boy and " 
 
 "You was his nurse, I suppose," cried the English- 
 man's voice amid a roar of laughter. 
 
 "Taught him his A-B-C was his dear, kind 
 teacher, eh?" hilariously cried another. 
 
 The old man appeared not to hear. ' ' I have known 
 him all the years since. He has only been in the 
 West a few years, but he has lived in the world 
 exactly thirty-three years. He never willingly did 
 anybody harm never. Since he came West, since 
 he came to the Sagalac, he's brought work to Lebanon 
 and to Manitou. There are hundreds more workmen 
 in both the towns than there were when he came. 
 It was he made others come with much money and 
 build the factories and the mills. Work means 
 money, money means bread, bread means life so." 
 
 The big river-driver, seeing the effect of the old 
 man's words upon the crowd, turned to them with 
 an angry gesture and a sneer. 
 179
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 "I s'pose Ingolby has paid this old skeesicks for 
 talking this swash. We know all right what Ingolby 
 is, and what he's done. He's made war between the 
 two towns there's hell to pay now on both sides 
 of the Sagalac. He took away the railway offices 
 from here, and threw men out of work. He's done 
 harm to Manitou he's against Manitou every time." 
 
 Murmurs of approval ran through the crowd, 
 though some were silent, looking curiously at the 
 forceful and confident old man. Even his bent shoul- 
 ders seemed to suggest driving power rather than 
 the weight of years. He suddenly stretched out a 
 hand in command as it were. 
 
 "Comrades, comrades," he said, "every man 
 makes mistakes. Even if it was a mistake for 
 Ingolby to take away the offices from Manitou, he's 
 done a big thing for both cities by combining the 
 three railways." 
 
 "Monopoly," growled a voice from the crowd. 
 
 "Not monopoly," the old man replied with a ring 
 to his voice, which made it younger, fresher. "Not 
 monopoly, but better management of the railways, 
 with more wages, more money to spend on things to 
 eat and drink and wear, more dollars in the pocket 
 of everybody that works in Manitou and Lebanon. 
 Ingolby works, he doesn't loaf." 
 
 "Oh, gosh all hell, he's a dynamo," shouted a 
 voice from the crowd. "He's a dynamo running the 
 whole show eh!" 
 
 The old man seemed to grow shorter, but as he 
 thrust his shoulders forward, it was like a machine 
 gathering energy and power. 
 180
 
 For Luck 
 
 "I'll tell you, friends, what Ingolby is trying to 
 do," he said in a low voice vibrating with that force 
 which belongs neither to age nor youth, but is the 
 permanent activity uniting all ages of a man. "Of 
 course, Ingolby is ambitious and he wants power. 
 He tries to do the big things in the world because 
 there is the big thing to do for sure. Without such 
 men the big things are never done, and other men 
 have less work to do, and less money and poorer 
 homes. They discover and construct and design 
 and invent and organize and give opportunities. 
 I am a working man, but I know what Ingolby 
 thinks. I know what men think who try to do the 
 big things. I have tried to do them." 
 
 The crowd were absolutely still now, but the big 
 river-driver shook himself free of the eloquence, 
 which somehow swayed them all, and said: 
 
 "You you look as if you'd tried to do big things, 
 you do, old skeesicks. I bet you never earned a 
 hunderd dollars in your life." He turned to the 
 crowd with fierce gestures. "Let's go to Lebanon 
 and make the place sing," he roared. "Let's get 
 Ingolby out to talk for himself, if he wants to talk. 
 We know what we want to do, and we're not going 
 to be bossed. He's for Lebanon and we're for Mani- 
 tou. Lebanon means to boss us, Lebanon wants to sit 
 on us because we're Catholics, because we're French, 
 because we're honest." 
 
 Again a wave of revolution swept through the 
 crowd. The big river-driver represented their 
 natural instincts, their native fanaticism, their preju- 
 dices. But the old man spoke once more. 
 181
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 "Ingolby wants Lebanon and Manitou to come 
 together, not to fall apart, ' ' he declared. ' ' He wants 
 peace. If he gets rich here he won't get rich alone. 
 He's working for both towns. If he brings money 
 from outside, that's good for both towns. If he " 
 
 "Shut your mouth, let Ingolby speak for himself," 
 snarled the big river-driver. "Take his dollars out 
 of your pocket and put them on the bar, the dollars 
 Ingolby gives you to say all this. Put them dollars 
 of Ingolby's up for drinks, or we'll give you a jar 
 that '11 shake you, old wart-hog." 
 
 At that instant a figure forced itself through the 
 crowd, and broke into the packed circle which was 
 drawing closer upon the old man. 
 
 It was Jethro Fawe. He flung a hand out towards 
 the old man. 
 
 "You want Ingolby well, that's Ingolby," he 
 shouted. 
 
 Like lightning the old man straightened himself, 
 snatched the wig and beard away from his head and 
 face, and with quiet fearlessness said: 
 
 "Yes, I am Ingolby." 
 
 For an instant there was absolute silence, in which 
 Ingolby weighed his chances. He was among enemies. 
 He had meant only to move among the crowd to 
 discover their attitude, to find things out for himself. 
 He had succeeded, and his belief that Manitou could 
 be swayed in the right direction if properly handled 
 was correct. Beneath the fanaticism and the racial 
 spirit was human nature; and until Jethro Fawe had 
 appeared, he had hoped to prevent violence and the 
 collision at to-morrow's funeral. 
 182
 
 For Luck 
 
 Now the situation was all changed. It was hard 
 to tell what sharp turn things might take. He 
 was about to speak, but suddenly from the crowd 
 there was spat out at him the words, "Spy! Sneak! 
 Spy!" 
 
 Instantly the wave of feeling ran against him. He 
 smiled frankly, however, with that droll twist of his 
 mouth which had won so many, and the raillery of 
 his eyes was more friendly than any appeal. 
 
 "Spy, if you like, my friends," he said firmly and 
 clearly. "Moses sent spies down into the Land of 
 Promise, and they brought back big bunches of 
 grapes. Well, I've come down into a land of promise. 
 I wanted to know just how you all feel without be- 
 ing told it by some one else. I knew if I came here 
 as Max Ingolby I shouldn't hear the whole truth; 
 I wouldn't see exactly how you see, so I came as one 
 of you, and you must admit, my French is as good 
 as yours almost." 
 
 He laughed and nodded at them. 
 
 "There wasn't one of you that knew I wasn't a 
 Frenchman. That's in my favour. If I know the 
 French language as I do, and can talk to you in 
 French as I've done, do you think I don't under- 
 stand the French people, and what you want and 
 how you feel? I'm one of the few men in the West 
 that can talk your language. I learned it when I 
 was a boy, so that I might know my French fellow- 
 countrymen under the same flag, with the same 
 King and the same national hope. As for your re- 
 ligion, God knows, I wish I was as good a Protestant 
 as lots of you are good Catholics. And I tell you this, 
 183
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 I'd be glad to have a minister that I could follow 
 and respect and love as I respect and love Mon- 
 seigneur Lourde of Manitou. I want to bring these 
 two towns together, to make them a sign of what this 
 country is, and what it can do; to make hundreds 
 like ourselves in Manitou and Lebanon work to- 
 gether towards health, wealth, comfort and happi- 
 ness. Can't you see, my friends, what I'm driving 
 at ? I'm for peace and work and wealth and power 
 not power for myself alone, but power that belongs 
 to all of us. If I can show I'm a good man at my 
 job, maybe better than others, then I have a right 
 to ask you to follow me. If I can't, then throw me 
 out. I tell you I'm your friend Max Ingolby is 
 your friend." 
 
 ' ' Spy ! Spy ! Spy !' ' cried a new voice. 
 
 It came from behind the bar. An instant after, 
 the owner of the voice leaped up on the counter. It 
 was Felix Marchand. He had entered by the door 
 behind the bar into Barbazon's office. 
 
 "When I was in India," Marchand cried, "I 
 found a snake in the bed. I killed it before it stung 
 me. There's a snake in the bed of Manitou what 
 are you going to do with it?" 
 
 The men swayed, murmured, and shrill shouts of 
 "Marchand! Marchand! Marchand!" went up. 
 
 The crowd heaved upon Ingolby. "One minute!" 
 he called with outstretched arm and commanding 
 voice. They paused. Something in him made him 
 master of them even then. 
 
 At that moment two men were fiercely fighting 
 their way through the crowd towards where Ingolby 
 184
 
 For Luck 
 
 was. They were Jowett and Osterhaut. Ingolby 
 saw them coming. 
 
 "Go back go back!" he called to them. 
 
 Suddenly a drunken navvy standing on a table 
 in front of and to the left of Ingolby seized a horse- 
 shoe hanging on the wall, and flung it with an oath. 
 
 It caught Ingolby in the forehead, and he fell to 
 the floor without a sound. 
 
 A minute afterwards the bar was empty, save for 
 Osterhaut, Jowett, old Barbazon, and his assistants. 
 Barbazon and Jowett lifted the motionless figure in 
 their arms, and carried it into a little room. 
 
 Then Osterhaut picked up the horseshoe tied with 
 its gay blue ribbons, now stained with blood, and 
 put it in his pocket. 
 
 "For luck," he said.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE SENTENCE OF THE PATRIN 
 
 FLED A waked suddenly, but without motion; 
 just a wide opening of the eyes upon the 
 darkness, and a swift beating of the heart, but not 
 the movement of a muscle. It was as though some 
 inward monitor, some gnome of the hidden life, had 
 whispered of danger to her slumbering spirit. The 
 waking was a complete emergence, a vigilant and 
 searching attention. 
 
 There was something on her breast weighing it 
 down, yet with a pressure which was not weight 
 alone, and maybe was not weight at all as weight is 
 understood. Instantly there flashed through her 
 mind the primitive belief that a cat will lie upon the 
 breasts of children and suck their breath away. 
 Strange and even absurd as it was, it seemed to her 
 that a cat was pressing and pressing down upon 
 her breast. There could be no mistaking the feline 
 presence. Now with a sudden energy of the body, 
 she threw the Thing from her, and heard it drop, 
 with the softness of feline feet, on the Indian rug 
 upon the floor. 
 
 Then she sprang out of bed, and, feeling for the 
 186
 
 The Sentence of the Patrin 
 
 matches, lit a candle on the small table beside her 
 bed, and moved it round, searching for what she 
 thought to be a cat. It was not to be seen. She 
 looked under the bed; it was not there: under the 
 washstand, under the chest of drawers, under the 
 improvised dressing- table ; and no cat was to be 
 found. She looked under the chair over which hung 
 her clothes, even behind the dresses and the Indian 
 deerskin cape hanging on the door. 
 
 There was no life of any kind save her own in the 
 room, so far as she could see. She laughed ner- 
 vously, though her heart was still beating hard. 
 That it should beat hard was absurd, for what had 
 she to fear she who had lived the wild open-air life 
 of many lands, had slept among hills infested by 
 animals the enemy of man, and who when a little 
 girl had faced beasts of prey alone. Yet here in 
 her own safe room on the Sagalac, with its four 
 walls, but its unlocked doors for Gabriel Druse 
 said that he could not bear that last sign of his 
 exile here in the fortress of the town-dweller there 
 was a strange trembling of her pulses in the presence 
 of a mere hallucination or nightmare the first she 
 had had ever. Her dreams in the past had always 
 been happy and without the black fancies of night- 
 mare. On the night that Jethro Fawe had first 
 confronted her father and herself, and he had been 
 carried to the Hut in the Wood, her sleep had been 
 disturbed and restless, but dreamless ; in her sleep on 
 the night of the day of his release, she had been tossed 
 upon vague clouds of mental unrest ; but that was the 
 first really disordered sleep she had ever known. 
 187
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 Holding the candle above her head, she looked 
 in the mirror on her dressing-table, and laughed ner- 
 vously, at the shocked look in her eyes, at the hand 
 pressed upon the bosom whose agitations troubled 
 the delicate linen at her breast. The pale light of 
 the candle, the reflection from the white muslin of 
 her dressing-table and her night-wear, the strange, 
 deep darkness of her eyes, the ungathered tawny hair 
 falling to her shoulders, gave an unusual paleness to 
 her face. 
 
 "What a ninny I am!" she said aloud as she looked 
 at herself, her tongue chiding her apprehensive eyes, 
 her laugh contemptuously adding its comment on 
 her tremulousness. "It was a real nightmare a 
 waking nightmare, that's what it was." 
 
 She searched the room once more, however 
 every corner, under the bed, the chest of drawers 
 and the dressing-table, before she got into bed 
 again, her feet icily cold. And yet again before 
 settling down she looked round, perplexed and in- 
 quiring. Placing the matches beside the candle- 
 stick, she blew out the light. Then, half-turning on 
 her side with her face to the wall, she composed 
 herself to sleep. 
 
 Resolutely putting from her mind any sense of 
 the supernatural, she shut her eyes with confidence 
 of coming sleep. While she was, however, still within 
 the borders of wakefulness, and wholly conscious, 
 she felt the Thing jump from the floor upon her 
 legs, and crouch there with that deadening pressure 
 which was not weight. Now with a start of anger 
 she raised herself, and shot out a determined hand 
 iSS
 
 The Sentence of the Patrin 
 
 to seize the Thing, whatever it was. Her hand 
 grasped nothing, and again she distinctly heard a 
 soft thud as of something jumping on the floor. 
 Exasperated, she drew herself out of bed, lit the can- 
 dle again, and began another search. Nothing was 
 to be seen ; but she had now the curious sense of an 
 unseen presence. She went to the door, opened 
 it, and looked out into the narrow hall. Nothing 
 was to be seen there. Then she closed the door again, 
 and stood looking at it meditatively for a moment. 
 It had a lock and key; yet it had never been locked 
 in the years they had lived on the Sagalac. She did 
 not know whether the key would turn in the lock. 
 After a moment's hesitation, she shrugged her shoul- 
 ders and turned the key. It rasped, proved stub- 
 born, but at last came home with a click. Then she 
 turned to the window. It was open about three 
 inches at the bottom. She closed it tight, and fas- 
 tened it, then stood for a moment in the middle of 
 the room looking at both door and window. 
 
 She was conscious of a sense of suffocation. Never 
 in her life had she slept with door or window or 
 tent-flap entirely closed. Never before had she been 
 shut in all night behind closed doors and sealed 
 windows. Now, as the sense of imprisonment was 
 felt, her body protested; her spirit resented the 
 funereal embrace of security. It panted for the 
 freedom which gives the challenge to danger and the 
 courage to face it. 
 
 She went to the window and opened it slightly 
 at the top, and then sought her bed again ; but even 
 as she lay down, something whispered to her mind 
 189
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 that it was folly to lock the door and yet leave the 
 window open, if it was but an inch. With an exclama- 
 tion of self-reproach, and a vague indignation at some- 
 thing, she got up and closed the window once more. 
 
 Again she composed herself to sleep, lying now 
 with her face turned to the window and the door. 
 She was still sure that she had been the victim of a 
 hallucination which, emerging from her sleep, had 
 invaded the borders of wakefulness, and then had 
 reproduced itself in a waking illusion an imitation 
 of its original existence. 
 
 Resolved to conquer any superstitious feeling, she 
 invoked sleep, and was on its borders once more 
 when she was startled more violently than before. 
 The Thing had sprung again upon her feet and was 
 crouched there. Wide awake, she waited for a 
 moment to make sure that she was not mad, or that 
 she was not asleep or in a half -dream. In the pause, 
 she felt the Thing draw up towards her knees, 
 dragging its body along with tiger-like closeness, and 
 with that strange pressure which was not weight but 
 power. 
 
 With a cry which was no longer doubt, but agon- 
 ized apprehension, she threw the Thing from her 
 with a motion of both hands and feet; and, as she 
 did so, she felt a horrible cold air breathing from a 
 bloodless body, chill her hand. 
 
 In another instant she was on her feet again. 
 With shaking fingers she lighted the candle yet once 
 more, after which she lighted a lamp standing upon 
 the chest of drawers. The room was almost bril- 
 liantly bright now. With a gesture of incredulity 
 190
 
 The Sentence of the Patrin 
 
 she looked round. The doors and windows were 
 sealed tight, and there was nothing to be seen; 
 yet she was more than ever conscious of a presence 
 grown more manifest. For a moment she stood 
 staring straight before her at the place where it 
 seemed to be. She realized its malice and its hatred, 
 and an intense anger and hatred took possession of 
 her. She had always laughed at such things even 
 when thrilled by wonder and manufactured ter- 
 rors. But now there was a sense of conflict, of evil, 
 of the indefinable things in which so many believed. 
 
 Suddenly she remembered an ancient Sage of her 
 tribe, who, proficient in mysteries and secret rites 
 gathered from nations as old as Phoenicia and Egypt 
 and as modern as Switzerland, held the Romanys of 
 the world in awe, for his fame had travelled where he 
 could not follow. To Fleda in her earliest days he 
 had been like one inspired, and as she now stood 
 facing the intangible Thing, she recalled an exorcism 
 which the Sage had recited to her, when he had 
 sufficiently startled her senses by tales of the Between 
 World. This exorcism was, as he had told her, 
 more powerful than that which the Christian exor- 
 cists used, and the symbol of exorcism was not un- 
 like the sign of the Cross, to which was added genu- 
 flection of Assyrian origin. 
 
 At any other time Fleda would have laughed at 
 the idea of using the exorcism; but all the ancient 
 superstition of the Romany people latent in her now 
 broke forth and held her captive. Standing with 
 candle raised above her head, her eyes piercing the 
 space before her, she recalled every word of the 
 191
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 exorcism which had caught the drippings from the 
 fountains of Chaldean, Phoenician, and Egyptian 
 mystery. 
 
 Solemnly and slowly the exorcism came from her 
 lips, and at the end her right hand made the cabalistic 
 sign; then she stood like one transfixed with her 
 arm extended towards the Thing she could not see. 
 
 Presently there passed from her a sense of op- 
 pression. The air seemed to grow lighter, restored 
 self-possession came; there was a gentle breathing 
 in the room like that of a sleeping child. It was a 
 moment before she realized that the breathing was 
 her own, and she looked round her like one who 
 had come out of a trance. 
 
 "It is gone," she said aloud. "It is gone." A 
 great sigh came from her. 
 
 Mechanically she put down the candle, smoothed 
 the pillows of her bed, adjusted the coverings, and 
 prepared to lie down; but, with a sudden impulse, 
 she turned to the window and the door. 
 
 "It is gone," she said again. With a little laugh 
 of hushed triumph, she turned and made again the 
 cabalistic sign at the bed, where the Thing had first 
 assaulted her, and then at that point in the room near 
 the door where she had felt it crouching. 
 
 "Oh, Ewie Gal," she added, speaking to that 
 Romany Sage long since laid to rest in the Rou- 
 melian country, "you did not talk to me for nothing. 
 You were right yes, you were right, old Ewie Gal. 
 It was there," she looked again at the place where 
 the Thing had been ' ' and your curse drove it away." 
 
 With confidence she went to the door and un- 
 192
 
 The Sentence of the Patrin 
 
 locked it. Going to the window, she opened it also, 
 but she compromised sufficiently to open it at the 
 top instead of at the bottom. Presently she laid her 
 head on her pillow with a sigh of content. 
 
 Once again she composed herself to sleep in the 
 darkness. But now there came other invasions, 
 other disturbers of the night. In her imagination a 
 man came who had held her in his arms one day on 
 the Sagalac River, who had looked into her eyes 
 with a masterful but respectful tenderness. As she 
 neared the confines of sleep, he was somehow min- 
 gled with visions of things which her childhood had 
 known moonlit passes in the Bosnian, Roumelian, 
 and Roumanian hills, green fields by the Danube, 
 with peasant voices drowsing in song before the 
 lights went out; a gallop after dun deer far away 
 up the Caspian mountains, over waste places, car- 
 peted with flowers after a benevolent rain; morn- 
 ings in Egypt, when the camels thudded and slid 
 with melancholy ease through the sands of the 
 desert, while the Arab drivers called shrilly for Allah 
 to curse or bless; a tender sunset in England seen 
 from the top of a castle when all the western sky 
 was lightly draped with saffron, gold and mauve 
 and delicate green and purple. 
 
 Now she slept again, with the murmur of the 
 Sagalac in her ears, and there was a smile at her lips. 
 If one could have seen her through the darkness, one 
 would have said that she was like some wild creature 
 of a virgin world, whom sleep had captured and 
 tamed; for behind the refinement which education 
 and the vigilant influence with which Madame 
 13 193
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 Bulteel had surrounded her, there was in her the 
 spirit of primitive things: of the open road and the 
 wilderness, of the undisciplined and vagrant life, 
 however marked by such luxury as the ruler of all 
 the Romany s could buy and use in pilgrimage. 
 There was that in her which would drag at her foot- 
 steps in this new life. 
 
 For a full hour or more she slept, then there 
 crept through the fantasies of sleep something that 
 did not belong to sleep again something from the 
 wakeful world, strange, alien, troubling. At first it 
 was only as though a wind stirred the air of dreams, 
 then it was like the sounds that gather behind the 
 coming rage of a storm, and again it was as though 
 a night-prowler plucked at the sleeve of a home- 
 goer. Presently, with a stir of fright and a smothered 
 cry, she waked to a sound which was not of the super- 
 natural or of the mind's illusions, but no less dreadful 
 to her because of that. In some cryptic way it was 
 associated with the direful experience through which 
 she had just passed. 
 
 What she heard in the darkness was a voice which 
 sang there by her window at it or beneath it 
 the words of a Romany song. 
 
 It was a song of violence, which she had heard but 
 a short time before in the trees behind her father's 
 house, when a Romany claimed her as his wife: 
 
 "Time was I went to my true love, 
 Time was she came to me " 
 
 Only one man would sing that song at her window, 
 or anywhere in this Western world. This was no 
 194
 
 The Sentence of the Patrin 
 
 illusion of her overwrought senses. There, outside 
 her window, was Jethro Fawe. 
 
 She sat up. and listened, leaning on one arm, and 
 staring into the half-darkness beyond the window, 
 the blind of which she had not drawn down. There 
 was no moon, but the stars were shining brightly, 
 relieving the intensity of the dark. Through the 
 whispering of the trees, and hushing the melancholy 
 of a night-bird's song, came the wild low note of the 
 Romany epic of vengeance. It had a thrill of exulta- 
 tion. Something in the voice, insistent, vibrating, 
 personal, made every note a thrust of victory. 
 In spite of her indignation at the insolent serenade, 
 she thrilled; for the strain of the Past was in 
 her, and it had been fighting with her all night, 
 breaking in upon the Present, tugging at the cords 
 of youth. 
 
 The man's daring roused her admiration, even as 
 her anger mounted. If her father heard the singing, 
 there could be no doubt that Jethro Fawe's doom 
 would be sealed. Gabriel Druse would resent this 
 insolence to the daughter of the Ry of Rys. Word 
 would be passed as silently as the electric spark 
 flies, and one day Jethro Fawe would be found dead, 
 with no clue to his slayer, and maybe no sign of 
 violence upon him; for while the Romany people 
 had remedies as old as Buddha, they had poisons as 
 old as Sekhet. 
 
 Suddenly the song ceased, and for a moment there 
 was silence save for the whispering trees and the 
 night-bird's song. Fleda rose from her bed, and was 
 about to put on her dressing-gown, when she was
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 startled by a voice loudly whispering her name at 
 her window, as it seemed. 
 
 "Daughter of the Ry of Rys!" it called. 
 
 In anger she started forward to the window, then, 
 realizing that she was in her nightgown, caught up 
 her red dressing-gown and put it on. As she did so 
 she understood why the voice had sounded so near. 
 Not thirty feet from her window there was a solitary 
 oak-tree among the pines, in which was a seat among 
 the branches, and, looking out, she could see a 
 figure that blackened the starlit duskiness. 
 
 "Fleda daughter of the Ry of Rys," the voice 
 called again. 
 
 She gathered her dressing-gown tight about her, 
 and, going to the window, raised it high and leaned 
 out. 
 
 "What do you want?" she asked sharply. 
 
 "Wife of Jethro Fawe, I bring you news," the 
 voice said, and she saw a hat waved with mock 
 courtesy. 
 
 In spite of herself, Fleda felt a shiver of premoni- 
 tion pass through her. The Thing which had 
 threatened her in the night seemed to her now like 
 the soul of this dark spirit in the trees. 
 
 Resentment seized her. "I have news for you, 
 Jethro Fawe," she replied. "I set you free, and I 
 gave my word that no harm should come to you, if 
 you went your ways and did not come again. You 
 have come, and I shall do nothing now to save you 
 from the Ry's anger. Go at once, or I will wake him." 
 
 "Will a wife betray her husband?" he asked in 
 soft derision. 
 
 196
 
 The Sentence of the Patrin 
 
 Stung by his insolence, ' ' I would not throw a rope 
 to you, if you were drowning," she declared. "I 
 am a Gorgio, and the thing that was done by the 
 Starzke River is nothing to me. Now, go." 
 
 "You have forgotten my news," he said. "It is 
 bad news for the Gorgio daughter of the Romany 
 
 Ry." 
 
 She was silent in apprehension. He waited, but 
 she did not speak. 
 
 "The Gorgio of Gorgios of the Sagalac has had a 
 fall," he said. 
 
 Her heart beat fast for an instant, and then the 
 presentiment came to her that the man spoke the 
 truth. In the presence of the accomplished thing, 
 she became calm. 
 
 "What has happened?" she asked quietly. 
 
 "He went prowling in Manitou, and in Barbazon's 
 Tavern they struck him down." 
 
 "Who struck him down?" she asked. It seemed 
 to her that the night-bird sang so loud that she could 
 scarcely hear her own voice. 
 
 "A drunken Gorgio," he replied. "The horseshoe 
 is for luck all the world over, and it brought its luck 
 to Manitou to-night. It struck down a young Master 
 Gorgio who in white beard and long grey hair went 
 spying." 
 
 She knew in her heart that he spoke the truth. 
 
 "He is dead?" she asked in a voice that had a 
 strange quietness. 
 
 "Not yet," he answered. "There is time to wish 
 him luck." 
 
 She heard the ribald laugh with a sense of horror 
 197
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 and loathing. "The hand that brought him down 
 may have been the hand of a Gorgio, but behind 
 the hand was Jethro Fawe," she said in a voice grown 
 passionate again. "Where is he?" she added. 
 
 "At his own house. I watched them take him 
 there. It is a nice house good enough for a Gorgio 
 house-dweller. I know it well. Last night I played 
 his Sarasate fiddle for him there, and I told him all 
 about you and me, and what happened at Starzke, 
 and then " 
 
 "You told him I was a Romany, that I was mar- 
 ried to you?" she asked in a low voice. 
 
 "I told him that, and asked him why he thought 
 you had deceived him, had held from him the 
 truth. He was angry and tried to kill me." 
 
 "That is a lie," she answered. "If he had tried 
 to kill you he would have done so." 
 
 Suddenly she realized the situation as it was 
 that she was standing at her window in the night, 
 scantily robed, talking to a man in a tree opposite 
 her window; and that the man had done a thing 
 which belonged to the wild places which she had 
 left so far behind. 
 
 It flashed into her mind what would Max In- 
 golby think of such a thing? She flushed. The 
 new Gorgio self of her flushed, and yet the old Ro- 
 many self, the child of race and heredity, had taken 
 no exact account of the strangeness of this situation. 
 It had not seemed unnatural. Even if he had been 
 in her room itself, she would have felt no tithe of 
 the shame that she felt now in asking herself what 
 the Master Gorgio would think, if he knew. It was 
 198
 
 The Sentence of the Patrin 
 
 not that she had less modesty, that any stir of sex 
 was in her veins where the Romany dial was con- 
 cerned; but in the life she had once lived less deli- 
 cate cognizance was taken of such things, and some- 
 thing of it stayed. 
 
 "Listen," Jethro said with sudden lowering of the 
 voice, and imparting into his tones an emotion 
 which was in part an actor's gift, but also in large 
 degree a passion now eating at his heart, "you are 
 my wife by all the laws of our people. Nothing can 
 change it. I have waited for you, and I will wait, 
 but you shall be mine in the end. You see to-night 
 Mi Duvel, you see that fate is with me ! The Gorgio 
 has bewitched you. He goes down to-night in that 
 tavern there by the hand of a Gorgio, and the Ro- 
 many has his revenge. Fate is always with me, and 
 I will be the gift of the gods to the woman that 
 takes me. The luck is mine always. It will be 
 always with me. I am poor to-day, I shall be rich 
 to-morrow. I was rich, and I lost it all; and I was 
 poor, and became rich again. Ah, yes, there are 
 ways! Sometimes it is a Government, sometimes a 
 prince that wants to know, and Jethro Fawe, the 
 Romany, finds it out, and money fills his pockets. I 
 am here, poor, because last year when I lost all, 
 I said, 'It is because my Romany lass is not with 
 me. I have not brought her to my tan, but when she 
 comes then the gold will be here as before, and 
 more when it is wanted.' So, I came, and I hear 
 the road calling, and all the camping places over all 
 the world, and I see^the patrins in every lane, and 
 my heart is lifted up. I am glad. I rejoice. My 
 199
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 heart burns with love. I will forget everything, 
 and be true to the queen of my soul. Men die, and 
 Gabriel Druse, he will die one day, and when the 
 time comes, then it would be that you and I would 
 beckon, and all the world would come to us." 
 
 He stretched out a hand to her in th half-darkness. 
 "I send the blood of my heart to you," he continued. 
 "I am a son of kings. Fleda, daughter of the Ry 
 of Rys, come to me. I have been bad, but I can 
 be good. I have killed, but I will live at peace. 
 I have cursed, but I will speak the word of blessing. 
 I have trespassed, but I will keep to my own, if you 
 will come to me." 
 
 Suddenly he dropped to the ground, lighting on his 
 feet like an animal with a soft rebound. Stretching 
 up his arms, he made soft murmuring of endearment. 
 
 She had listened, fascinated in spite of herself by 
 the fire and meaning of his words. She felt that in 
 most part it was true, that it was meant ; and, what- 
 ever he was, he was yet a man offering his heart 
 and life, offering a love that she despised, and yet 
 which was love and passion of a kind. It was a 
 passion natural to the people from whom she came, 
 and to such as Jethro Fawe it was something more 
 than sensual longing and the aboriginal desire of 
 possession. She realized it, and was not wholly 
 revolted by it, even while her mind was fleeing to 
 where the Master Gorgio lay wounded, it might be 
 unto death; even while she knew that this man 
 before her, by some means, had laid Ingolby low. 
 She was all at once a human being torn by contending 
 forces. 
 
 200
 
 The Sentence of the Patrin 
 
 Jethro's drop to the ground broke the sudden 
 trance into which his words had thrown her. She 
 shook herself as with an effort of control. Then lean- 
 ing over the window-sill, and, looking down at him, 
 now grown so distinct that she could see his features, 
 her eyes having become used to the half-light of 
 the approaching dawn, she said with something 
 almost like gentleness : 
 
 "Once more I say, you must go and come no more. 
 You are too far off from me. You belong to that 
 which is for the ignorant, or the low, the vicious and 
 the bad. Behind the free life of the Romany is only 
 the thing that the beasts of the field have. I have 
 done with it for ever. Find a Romany who will 
 marry you. As for me, I would rather die than do 
 so, and I should die before it could come to pass. 
 If you stay here longer I will call the Ry." 
 
 Presently the feeling that he had been responsible 
 for the disaster to Ingolby came upon her with great 
 force, and as suddenly as she had softened towards 
 this man she hardened again. 
 
 "Go, before there comes to you the death you 
 deserve," she added and turned away. 
 
 At that moment footsteps sounded near, and al- 
 most instantly there emerged from a pathway which 
 made a short cut to the house, the figure of old 
 Gabriel Druse. They had not heard him till he was 
 within a few feet of where Jethro Fawe stood. His 
 walking had been muffled in the dust of the pathway. 
 
 The Ry started when he saw Jethro Fawe; then 
 he made a motion as though he would seize the 
 intruder, who was too dumbfounded to flee; but he 
 201
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 recovered himself, and gazed up at the open window. 
 
 "Fleda!" he called. 
 
 She came to the window again. 
 
 "Has this man come here against your will?" 
 he asked, not as though seeking information, but 
 confirmation of his own understanding. 
 
 "He is not here by my will," she answered. "He 
 came to sing the Song of Hate under my window, 
 to tell me that he had " 
 
 "That I had brought the Master Gorgio to the 
 ground," said Jethro, who now stood with sullen 
 passiveness looking at Gabriel Druse. 
 
 "From the Master Gorgio, as you call him, I 
 have just come," returned the old man. "When I 
 heard the news, I went to him. It was you who 
 betrayed him to the mob, and " 
 
 "Wait, wait," Fleda cried in agitation. "Is is 
 he dead?" 
 
 "He is alive, but terribly hurt; and he may die," 
 was the reply. 
 
 Then the old man turned to the Romany with a 
 great anger and determination in his face. He 
 stretched out an arm, making a sign as cabalistic 
 as that which Fleda had used against her invisible 
 foe in the bedroom. 
 
 "Go, Jethro Fawe of all the Fawes," he said. 
 "Go, and may no patrins mark your road!" 
 
 Jethro Fawe shrank back, and half raised his arm, 
 as though to fend himself from a blow. 
 
 The patrin is the clue which Gipsies leave behind 
 them on the road they go, that other Gipsies who 
 travel in it may know they have gone before. It
 
 The Sentence of the Patrin 
 
 may be a piece of string, a thread of wool, a twig, 
 or in the dust the ancient cross of the Romany, 
 which preceded the Christian cross and belonged to 
 the Assyrian or Phoenician world. The invocation 
 that no patrins shall mark the road of a Romany 
 is to make him an outcast, and for the Ry of Rys 
 to utter the curse is sentence of death upon a Ro- 
 many, for thenceforward every hand of his race 
 is against him, free to do him harm. 
 
 It was that which made Jethro Fawe shrink and 
 cower for a moment. Fleda raised her hand sud- 
 denly in protest to Gabriel Druse. 
 
 "No, no, not that," Fleda murmured brokenly 
 to her father, with eyes that looked the pain and 
 horror she felt. Though she repudiated the bond by 
 which the barbarian had dared to call her wife, she 
 heard an inner voice that said to her: "What was 
 done by the Starzke River was the seal of blood and 
 race, and this man must be nearer than the stranger, 
 dearer than the kinsman, forgiven of his crimes 
 like a brother, saved from shame, danger or death 
 when she who was sealed to him can save him." 
 
 She shuddered as she heard the inner voice. She 
 felt that this Other Self of her, the inner-seeing soul 
 which had the secret of the far paths, had spoken 
 truly. Even as she begged her father to withdraw 
 the sentence, it flashed into her mind that the grim 
 Thing of the night was the dark spirit of hatred 
 between Jethro Fawe and the Master Gorgio seeking 
 embodiment, as though Jethro's evil soul detached 
 itself from his body to persecute her. 
 
 At her appeal, Jethro raised his head. His courage 
 203
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 came back, the old insolent self-possession took 
 hold of him again. The sentence which the Ry had 
 passed was worse than death (and it meant death; 
 too), for it made him an outcast from his people, 
 and to be outcast was to be thrown into the abyss. 
 It was as though a man without race or country 
 was banished into desolate space. In a vague way 
 he felt its full significance, and the shadow of it fell 
 on him. 
 
 "No, no, no," Fleda repeated hoarsely, with that 
 new sense of responsibility where Jethro was con- 
 cerned. 
 
 Jethro's eyes were turned upon her now. In the 
 starlit night, just yielding to the dawn, she could 
 faintly see his burning look, could feel, as it were, 
 his hands reach out to claim her; and she felt that 
 while he lived she was not wholly free. She realized 
 that the hand of nomad, disorderly barbarism was 
 dragging her with a force which was inhuman, or, 
 maybe, superhuman. 
 
 Gabriel Druse could know nothing of the ele- 
 ments fighting in his daughter's soul; he only knew 
 that her interest in the Master Gorgio was one he 
 had never seen before, and that she abhorred the 
 Romany who had brought Ingolby low. He had 
 shut his eyes to the man's unruliness and his daugh- 
 ter's intervention to free him; but now he was with- 
 out pity. He had come from Ingolby's bedside, 
 and had been told a thing which shook his rugged 
 nature to its centre a thing sad as death itself, 
 which he must tell his daughter. 
 
 To Fleda's appeal he turned a stony face. There 
 204
 
 The Sentence of the Patrin 
 
 was none of that rage in his words which had marked 
 the scene when Jethro Fawe first came to claim what 
 he could not have. There was something in him 
 now more deadly and inevitable. It made him like 
 some figure of mythology, implacable, fateful. His 
 great height, his bushy beard and stormy forehead, 
 the eyes over which shaggy eyebrows hung like the 
 shrubs on a cliff -edge, his face lined and set like a 
 thing in bronze all were signs of a power which, in 
 passion, would be like that of OEdipus : in the moment 
 of justice or doom would, with unblinking eyes, 
 slay and cast aside as debris is tossed upon the dust- 
 heap. 
 
 As he spoke now his voice was toneless. His mind 
 was flint, and his tongue was but the flash of the 
 flint. He looked at his daughter for a moment with 
 no light of fatherhood in his face, then turned from 
 her to Jethro Fawe with slow decision and a gesture 
 of authority. His eyes fastened on the face of the 
 son of Lemuel Fawe, as though it was that old enemy 
 himself. 
 
 "I have said what I have said, and there is no more 
 to be spoken. The rule of the Ry will be as water 
 for ever after if these things may be done to him 
 and his. For generations have the Rys of all the Rys 
 been like the trees that bend only to the whirlwind; 
 and when they speak there is no more to be said. 
 When it ceases to be so, then the Rys will vanish 
 from the world, and be as stubble of the field ready 
 for the burning. I have spoken. Go! And no 
 pair ins shall lie upon your road." 
 
 A look of savage obedience and sullen acquiescence 
 205
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 came into Jethro Fawe's face, and he took off his 
 hat as one who stands in the presence of his master. 
 The strain of generations, the tradition of the race 
 without a country was stronger than the revolt in 
 his soul. He was young, his blood was hot and brawl- 
 ing in his veins, he was all carnal, with the superior 
 intelligence of the trained animal, but custom was 
 stronger than all. He knew now that whatever 
 he might do, some time, not far, his doom would 
 fall upon him suddenly, as a wind shoots up a 
 ravine from the desert, or a night-bird rises from 
 the dark. 
 
 He set his feet stubbornly, and raised his sullen 
 face and fanatical eyes. The light of morning was 
 creeping through the starshine, and his features 
 showed plainly. 
 
 1 ' I am your daughter's husband, ' ' he said. ' ' Noth- 
 ing can change that. It was done by the River 
 Starzke, and it was the word of the Ry of Rys. 
 It stands for ever. There is no divorce except death 
 for the Romany." 
 
 "The patrins cease to mark the way," returned 
 the old man with a swift gesture. "The divorce 
 of death will come." 
 
 Jethro's face grew still paler, and he opened his 
 lips to speak, but paused, seeing Fleda, with a back- 
 ward look of pity and of horror, draw back into the 
 darkness of her room. 
 
 He made a motion of passion and despair. His 
 
 voice was almost shrill when he spoke. "Till that 
 
 divorce comes, the daughter of the Ry of Rys is 
 
 mine," he cried sharply. "I will not give my wife 
 
 206
 
 The Sentence of the Patrin 
 
 to a Gorgio thief. His hands shall not caress her, his 
 eyes shall not feed upon her 
 
 "His eyes will not feed upon her," interrupted the 
 old man: "so cease the prattle which can alter 
 nothing. Begone." 
 
 For a moment Jethro Fawe stood like one who did 
 not understand what was said to him, but suddenly 
 a look of triumph and malice came into his face, 
 and his eyes lighted with a reckless fire. He threw 
 back his head, and laughed with a strange, offensive 
 softness. Then, waving a hand to the window from 
 which Fleda had gone, he swung his cap on his head 
 and plunged into the trees. 
 
 A moment afterwards his voice came back exult- 
 ingly, through the morning air: 
 
 "But a Gorgio sleeps 'neath the greenwood tree 
 
 He'll broach my tan no more: 
 And my love, she sleeps afar from me 
 But near to the churchyard door." 
 
 As the old man turned heavily towards the house, 
 and opened the outer door, Fleda met him. 
 
 "What did you mean when you said that Ingolby's 
 eyes would not feed upon me?" she asked in a low 
 tone of fear. 
 
 A look of compassion came into the old man's 
 face. He took her hand. 
 
 "Come and I will tell you," he said.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 "LET THERE BE LIGHT" 
 
 IN Ingolby's bedroom, on the night of the business 
 at Barbazon's Tavern, Dr. Rockwell received a 
 shock. His face, naturally colourless, was almost 
 white, and his eyes were moist. He had what the 
 West call nerve. That the crisis through which he 
 had passed was that of a friend's life did not lessen 
 the poignancy of the experience. He had a singularly 
 reserved manner and a rare economy of words; 
 also, he had the refinement and distinction of one 
 who had, aforetime, moved on the higher ranges 
 of social life. He was always simply and comfortably 
 and in a sense fashionably dressed, yet there was 
 nothing of the dude about him, and his black satin 
 tie gave him an air of old-worldishness which some- 
 how compelled an extra amount of respect. This, 
 in spite of the fact that he had been known as one 
 who had left the East and come into the wilds be- 
 cause of a woman not his wife. 
 
 It was not, however, strictly true to say that he 
 
 had come West because of a woman, for it was on 
 
 account of three women, who by sudden coincidence 
 
 or collusion sprang a situation from which the -only 
 
 208
 
 "Let There Be Light" 
 
 relief was flight. In that he took refuge, not because 
 he was a coward, but because it was folly to fight a 
 woman, or three women, and because it was the 
 only real solution of an ungovernable situation. 
 At first he had drifted from one town to another, 
 dissolute and reckless, apparently unable to settle 
 down, or to forget the unwholesome three. But 
 one day there was a terrible railway accident on the 
 construction train, and Lebanon and Manitou made 
 a call upon his skill, and held him in bondage to his 
 profession for one whole month. During this time 
 he performed two operations which the surgeons 
 who had been sent out by the Railway Directors at 
 Montreal declared were masterpieces. 
 
 When that month was up he was a changed man, 
 and he opened an office in Lebanon. Men trusted 
 him despite his past, and women learned that there 
 was never a moment when his pulses beat unevenly 
 in their presence. Nathan Rockwell had had his 
 lesson and it was not necessary to learn it again. 
 To him, woman, save as a subject of his skill, was a 
 closed book. He regarded them as he regarded 
 himself, with a kindly cynicism. He never forgot 
 that his own trouble could and would have been 
 avoided had it not been for woman's vanity and con- 
 sequent cruelty. The unwholesome three had shared 
 his moral lapse with wide-open eyes, and were in 
 no sense victims of his; but, disregarding their re- 
 sponsibility, they had, from sheer jealousy, wrecked 
 his past, and, to their own surprise, had wrecked 
 themselves as well. They were of those who act 
 first and then think too late. 
 
 14 20Q
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 Thus it was that both men and women called 
 Rockwell a handsome man, but thought of him as 
 having only a crater of exhausted fires in place of a 
 heart. They came to him with their troubles even 
 the women of Manitou who ought to have gone to 
 the priest. 
 
 He moved about Lebanon as one who had author- 
 ity, and desired not to use it; as one to whom life 
 was like a case in surgery to be treated with scientific 
 coolness, with humanity, but not with undue sym- 
 pathy; yet the early morning of the day after In- 
 golby had had his accident at Barbazon's Hotel 
 found him the slave of an emotion which shook him 
 from head to foot. He had saved his friend's life 
 by a most skilful operation, but he had been shocked 
 beyond control when, an hour after the operation 
 was over, and consciousness returned to the patient 
 in a brilliantly lighted room, Ingolby said: 
 
 "Why don't you turn on the light?" 
 
 It was thus Rockwell knew that the Master Man, 
 the friend of Lebanon and Manitou, was stone 
 blind. 
 
 When Ingolby's voice ceased, a horrified silence 
 filled the room for a moment. Even Jim Beadle, his 
 servant, standing at the foot of the bed, clapped a 
 hand to his mouth to stop a cry, and the nurse turned 
 as white as the apron she wore. 
 
 Dumbfounded as Rockwell was, with instant pro- 
 fessional presence of mind he said: 
 
 "No, Ingolby, you must be kept in darkness a 
 while yet." Then he whipped out a silk handker- 
 chief from his pocket. "We will have light," he
 
 "Let There Be Light" 
 
 continued, "but we must bandage you first to keep 
 out the glare and prevent pain. The nerves of the 
 eyes have been injured." 
 
 Hastily and tenderly he bound the handkerchief 
 round the sightless eyes. Having done so, he said to 
 the nurse with unintentional quotation from the 
 gospel of St. John, and a sad irony, "Let there be 
 light." 
 
 It all gave him time to pull himself together and 
 prepare for the moment when he must tell Ingolby 
 the truth. In one sense the sooner it was told the 
 better, lest Ingolby should suddenly discover it for 
 himself. Surprise and shock must be avoided. So 
 now he talked in his low, soothing voice, telling 
 Ingolby that the operation had put him out of dan- 
 ger, that the pain now felt came chiefly from the 
 nerves of the eye, and that quiet and darkness 
 were necessary. He insisted on Ingolby keeping 
 silent, and he gave .a mild opiate which induced 
 several hours' sleep. 
 
 During this time Rockwell prepared himself for 
 the ordeal which must be passed as soon as possible; 
 gave all needed directions, and had a conference 
 with the assistant Chief Constable to whom he 
 confided the truth. He suggested plans for preserv- 
 ing order in excited Lebanon, which was determined 
 to revenge itself on Manitou; and he gave some 
 careful and specific instructions to Jowett the horse- 
 dealer. Also, he had conferred with Gabriel Druse, 
 who had helped bear the injured man to his own 
 home. He had noted with admiration the strange 
 gentleness of the giant Romany as he, alone, carried 
 
 211
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 Ingolby in his arms, and laid him on the bed from 
 which he was to rise with all that he had fought for 
 overthrown, himself the blind victim of a hard fate. 
 He had noticed the old man straighten himself with 
 a spring and stand as though petrified when Ingolby 
 said, "Why don't you turn on the light?" As he 
 looked round in that instant of ghastly silence he had 
 observed almost mechanically that the old man's 
 lips were murmuring something. Then the thought 
 of Fleda Druse shot into Rockwell's mind, and it 
 harassed him during the hours Ingolby slept, and 
 after the giant Gipsy had taken his departure just 
 before the dawn. 
 
 "I'm afraid it will mean more there than anywhere 
 else," he said sadly to himself. "There was evidently 
 something between those two; and she isn't the 
 kind to take it philosophically. Poor girl! Poor 
 girl! It's a bitter dose, if there was anything in it," 
 he added. 
 
 He watched beside the sick-bed till the dawn stared 
 in and his patient stirred and waked, then he took 
 Ingolby's hand, grown a little cooler, in both his 
 own. "How are you feeling, old man?" he asked 
 cheerfully. "You've had a good sleep nearly three 
 and a half hours. Is the pain in the head less?" 
 
 "Better, Sawbones, better," Ingolby replied cheer- 
 fully. "They've loosened the tie that binds begad, 
 it did stretch the nerves. I had gripes of colic once, 
 but the pain I had in my head was twenty times 
 worse, till you gave the opiate." 
 
 "That's the eyes," said Rockwell. "I had to lift 
 a bit of bone, and the eyes saw it and felt it, and 
 
 212
 
 "Let There Be Light" 
 
 cried out shrieked, you might say. They've got a 
 sensitiveness all their own, have the eyes." 
 
 "It's odd there aren't more accidents to them," 
 answered Ingolby "just a little ball of iridescent 
 pulp with strings tied to the brain." 
 
 "And what hurts the head may destroy the eyes 
 sometimes," Rockwell answered cautiously. "We 
 know so little of the 'delicate union between them, 
 that we can't be sure we can put the eyes right again 
 when, because of some blow to the head, the ricochet 
 puts the eyes out of commission." 
 
 "That's what's the matter with me, then?" asked 
 Ingolby, feeling the bandage on his eyes feverishly, 
 and stirring in his bed with a sense of weariness. 
 
 "Yes, the ricochet got them, and has put them 
 out of commission," replied Rockwell, carefully 
 dwelling upon each word, and giving a note of mean- 
 ing to his tone. 
 
 Ingolby raised himself in bed, but Rockwell gently 
 forced him down again. "Will my eyes have to be 
 kept bandaged long? Shall I have to give up work 
 for any length of time?" Ingolby asked. 
 
 "Longer than you'll like," was the enigmatical 
 reply. 
 
 "It's the devil's own business," was the weary 
 answer. "Every minute's valuable to me now. I 
 ought to be on deck morning, noon, and night. 
 There's all the trouble between the two towns; 
 there's the strike on hand; there's that business of 
 the Orange funeral, and more than all a thousand 
 times, there's " he paused. 
 
 He was going to say, "There's that devil Mar- 
 213
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 chand's designs on my bridge," but he thought better 
 of it and stopped. It had been his intention to deal 
 with Marchand directly, to get a settlement of their 
 differences without resort to the law, to prevent the 
 criminal act without deepening a feud which might 
 keep the two towns apart for years. Bad as Mar- 
 chand was, to prevent his crime was far better than 
 punishing him for it afterwards. To have Marchand 
 arrested for conspiracy to commit a crime was a 
 business which would gravely interfere with his free- 
 dom of motion in the near future, would create 
 complications which might cripple his own purposes 
 in indirect ways. That was why he had declared 
 to Osterhaut that even Felix Marchand had his price, 
 and that he would try negotiations first. 
 
 But what troubled him now, as he lay with eyes 
 bandaged and a knowledge that to-morrow was the 
 day fixed for the destruction of the bridge, was his 
 own incapacity. It was unlikely that his head or his 
 eyes would be right by to-morrow, or that Rockwell 
 would allow him to get up. He felt in his own mind 
 that the injury he had received was a serious one, 
 and that the lucky horseshoe had done Marchand's 
 work for him all too well. This thought shook 
 him. Rockwell could see his chest heave with an 
 excitement gravely injurious to his condition; yet 
 he must be told the worst, or the shock of discovery 
 by himself that he was blind might give him brain 
 fever. Rockwell felt that he must hasten the crisis. 
 
 "Rockwell," Ingolby suddenly asked, "is there 
 any chance of my discarding this and getting out 
 to-morrow?" He touched the handkerchief round 
 214
 
 "Let There Be Light" 
 
 his eyes. "It doesn't matter about the head ban- 
 dages, but the eyes can't I slough the wraps to-mor- 
 row? I feel scarcely any pain now." 
 
 "Yes, you can get rid of the bandages to-mor- 
 row you can get rid of them to-day, if you really 
 wish," Rockwell answered, closing in on the last 
 defence. 
 
 "But I don't mind being in the dark to-day if it '11 
 make me fitter for to-morrow and get me right 
 sooner. I'm not a fool. There's too much carelessness 
 about such things. People often don't give them- 
 selves a chance to get right by being in too big a 
 hurry. So, keep me in darkness to-day, if you want 
 to, old man. For a hustler I'm not in too big a 
 hurry, you see. I'm for holding back to get a bigger 
 jump." 
 
 "You can't be in a big hurry, even if you want to, 
 Ingolby," rejoined Rockwell, gripping the wrist of 
 the sick man, and leaning over him. 
 
 Ingolby grew suddenly very still. It was as though 
 vague fear had seized him and held him in a vice. 
 
 "What is it? What do you want to say to me?" 
 he asked in a low, nerveless tone. 
 
 "You've been hit hard, Chief. The ricochet has 
 done you up for some time. The head will soon get 
 well, but I'm far from sure about your eyes. You've 
 got to have a specialist about them. You're in the 
 dark, and as for making you see, so am I. Your 
 eyes and you are out of commission for some time, 
 anyhow." 
 
 He leaned over hastily, but softly and deftly 
 undid the bandages over the eyes and took them 
 215
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 off. "It's seven in the morning, and the sun's up, 
 Chief, but it doesn't do you much good, you see." 
 
 The last two words were the purest accident, but 
 it was a strange, mournful irony, and Rockwell 
 flushed at the thought of it. He saw Ingolby's face 
 turn grey, and then become white as death itself. 
 
 "I see," came from the bluish-white lips, as the 
 stricken man made call on all the will and vital 
 strength in him. 
 
 For a long minute Rockwell held the cold hand 
 in the grasp of one who loves and grieves, but even 
 so the physician and surgeon in him were uppermost, 
 as they should be, in the hour when his friend was 
 standing on the brink of despair, maybe of catastro- 
 phe irremediable. He did not say a word yet, how- 
 ever. In such moments the vocal are dumb and the 
 blind see. 
 
 Ingolby heaved himself in the bed and threw up 
 his arms, wresting them from Rockwell's grasp. 
 
 "My God oh, my God blind!" he cried in 
 agony. 
 
 Rockwell drew the head with the sightless eyes 
 to his shoulder. 
 
 For a moment he laid one hand on the heart, that, 
 suddenly still, now went leaping under his fingers. 
 
 "Steady," he said firmly. "Steady. It may be 
 only temporary. Keep your head up to the storm. 
 We'll have a specialist, and you must not get mired 
 till then. Steady, Chief." 
 
 "Chief! Chief!" murmured Ingolby, "Dear God. 
 what a chief! I risked everything, and I've lost 
 everything by my own vanity. Barbazon's the 
 216
 
 Let There Be Light" 
 
 horseshoe among the wolves, just to show I could 
 do things better than anyone else as if I had the 
 patent for setting the world right. And now 
 
 now- 
 
 The thought of the bridge, of Marchand's devilish 
 design, shot into his mind, and once more he was 
 shaken. "The bridge! Blind! Mother!" he called 
 in a voice twisted in an agony which only those can 
 feel to whom life's purposes are even more than 
 life itself. Then, with a moan, he became uncon- 
 scious, and his head rolled over against Rockwell's 
 cheek. The damp of his brow was as the damp of 
 death as Rockwell's lips touched it. 
 
 "Old boy, old boy!" Rockwell said tenderly, 
 "I wish it had been me instead. Life means so much 
 to you and so little to me. I've seen too much, and 
 you've only just begun to see." 
 
 Laying him gently down, Rockwell summoned the 
 nurse and Jim Beadle and spoke to them in low tones. 
 "He knows now, and it has hit him hard, but not 
 so hard that he won't stiffen to it. It might have 
 been worse." 
 
 He gave instructions as to the care that should 
 be taken, and replaced the bandages on the eyes. 
 It was, however, long before Ingolby was restored to 
 consciousness, and when it came, Rockwell put to his 
 lips a cooling drink containing a powerful opiate. 
 Ingolby drank it without protest and in silence. 
 He was like one whose sense of life was automatic 
 and of an inner rather than an outer understanding. 
 But when he lay back on the pillow again, he said 
 slowly; 
 
 217
 
 The World For "Sale 
 
 "I want the Chief Constable to come here to- 
 night at eight o'clock. It will be dark then. He must 
 come. It is important. Will you see to it, Rockwell?" 
 
 He thrust out a hand as though to find Rockwell's, 
 and there was a gratitude and an appeal in the 
 pressure of his fingers which went to Rockwell's 
 heart. 
 
 "All right, Chief. I'll have him here," Rockwell 
 answered briskly, but with tears standing in his eyes. 
 
 Ingolby had, as it were, been stricken out of the 
 active, sentient, companionable world into a world 
 where he was alone, detached, solitary. His being 
 seemed suspended in an atmosphere of misery and 
 helplessness. 
 
 "Blind! I am blind!" That was the phrase which 
 kept beating with the pulses in Ingolby's veins, that 
 throbbed, and throbbed, and throbbed like engines 
 in a creaking ship which the storm was shaking and 
 pounding in the vast seas between the worlds. Here 
 was the one incomprehensible, stupefying fact: 
 nothing else mattered. Every plan he had ever had, 
 every design which he had made his own by an 
 originality that even his foes acknowledged, were 
 passing before his brain in swift procession, shining, 
 magnified and magnificent, and in that sudden clear- 
 seeing of his soul, he beheld their full value, their 
 exact concrete force and ultimate effect. Yet he 
 knew himself detached from them, inactive, inca- 
 pable, because he could not see with the eyes of the 
 body. The great essential thing to him was that one 
 thing he had lost. A man might be a cripple and 
 still direct the great concerns of life and the business 
 218
 
 "Let There Be Light" 
 
 of life. He might be shorn of limb and scarred of 
 body, but with eyesight still direct the courses of 
 great schemes, in whatever sphere of life his purposes 
 were at work. He might be deaf to every sound 
 and for ever dumb, but seeing enabled him still to 
 carry forward every enterprise. In darkness, how- 
 ever, those things were naught, because judgment 
 must depend on the eyes and senses of others. The 
 report might be true or false, the deputy might 
 deceive, and his blind chief might never know the 
 truth unless some other spectator of his schemes 
 should report it; and the truth could not surely be 
 checked, save by someone, perhaps, whose life was 
 joined to his, by one that truly loved him, whose 
 fate was his. 
 
 His brain was afire. By one that truly loved him! 
 Who was there that loved him? Who was there at 
 one with him in all his deep designs, in all he had 
 done and meant to do? Neither brother, nor sister, 
 nor friend, nor any other. None of his blood was there 
 who could share with him the constructive work he 
 had set out to do. There was no friend whose fate 
 was part of his own. There was the Boss Doctor: 
 but Rockwell was tied to his own responsibilities, 
 and he could not give up, of course, would not give 
 up his life to the schemes of another. There were a 
 dozen men whom he had helped to forge ahead by 
 his own schemes, but their destinies were not linked 
 with his. Only one whose life was linked with his 
 could be trusted to be his eyes, to be the true re- 
 porter of all he did, had done, or planned to do. 
 Only one who loved him. 
 
 219
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 But even one who loved him could not cany 
 through his incompleted work against the assaults 
 of his enemies, who were powerful, watchful, astute 
 and merciless; who had a greed which set money 
 higher than all else in the world. They were of the 
 new order of things in the New World. The business 
 of life was to them not a system of barter and ex- 
 change, a giving something of value to get something 
 of value, with a margin of profit for each, and a 
 sense of human equity behind; it was a cockpit 
 where one man sought to get what another man had 
 and get it almost anyhow. 
 
 It was the work of the faro-bank man, whose 
 sleight-of-hand deceived the man that carried the 
 gun. 
 
 All the old humanity and good-fellowship of the 
 trader, the man who exchanged, as it was in the 
 olden days of the world and continued in greater or 
 less degree till the present generation all that was 
 gone. It was held in contempt. It had prevailed 
 when men were open robbers and filibusters and 
 warriors, giving their lives, if need be to get what 
 they wanted, making force their god. It had tri- 
 umphed over the violence and robbery of the open 
 road until the dying years of one century and the 
 young years of a new century. Then the day of the 
 trickster came and men laughed at the idea of fair 
 exchange and strove to give an illusive value for a 
 thing of real value the remorseless sleight-of-hand 
 which the law could not reach. The desire to get 
 profit by honest toiling was dying down to ashes. 
 
 Against such men had Ingolby worked the trick- 
 
 220
 
 "Let There Be Light" 
 
 sters, the manipulators. At the basis of his schemes 
 was organization and the economy which concen- 
 trated and conserved energy begets, together with 
 its profit. He had been the enemy of waste, the 
 apostle of frugality and thrift ; and it was that which 
 had enabled him, in his short career, to win the con- 
 fidence of the big men behind him in Montreal, to 
 make good every step of the way. He had worked 
 for profit out of legitimate product and industry and 
 enterprise, out of the elimination of waste. It was 
 his theory (and his practice) that no bit of old iron, 
 no bolt or screw, no scrap of paper should be thrown 
 away; that the cinders of the engines could and should 
 be utilized for that which they would make; and that 
 was why there was a paper-mill and foundry on 
 the Sagalac at Manitou. That was why and how, 
 so far, he had beaten the tricksters. 
 
 But while his schemes flashed before his mind, as 
 the opiate suspended him in the middle heaven be- 
 tween sleep and waking, the tricksters and manipu- 
 lators came hurrying after him like marauders that 
 waited for the moment when they could rush the 
 camp in the watches of the night. His disordered 
 imagination saw the ruin and wreck of his work, 
 the seizure of what was his own the place of control 
 on his railways, the place of the Master Man who 
 cared infinitely more to see his designs accomplished, 
 than for the profit they would bring to himself. 
 Yesterday he had been just at the top of the hill. 
 The key in his fingers was turning in the lock which 
 would make safe the securities of his life and career, 
 when it snapped, and the world grew dark as the 
 
 221
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 black curtain fell and shut out the lighted room from 
 the wayfarer in the gloom. Then, it was, came the 
 opaque blackness which could be felt, and his voice 
 calling in despair: ''Blind! I am blind!" 
 
 He did not know that he had taken an opiace, 
 that his friend had mercifully atrophied his rebellious 
 nerves. These visions he was seeing were terribly 
 true, but they somehow gave him no physical tor- 
 ture. It was as though one saw an operation per- 
 formed upon one's body with the nerves stilled and 
 deadened by ether. Yet he was cruelly conscious 
 of the disaster which had come to him. For a time 
 at least. Then his mind seemed less acute, the 
 visions came, then without seeing them go, they 
 went. And others came in broken patches, shreds, 
 and dreams, phantasmagoria of the brain, and at 
 last all were mingled and confused; but as they 
 passed they seemed to burn his sight. How he longed 
 for a cool bandage over his eyes, for a soft linen 
 which would shut out the cumuli of broken hopes 
 and designs, life's goals obliterated! He had had 
 enough of the black procession of futile things. 
 
 His longing was not denied, for even as he roused 
 himself from the oblivion coming on him, as though 
 by a last effort to remember his dire misfortune, 
 maybe his everlasting tragedy, something soothing 
 and soft like linen dipped in dew was laid upon his 
 forehead. A cool, delicious hand covered his eyes 
 caressingly; a voice from spheres so far away that 
 worlds were the echoing points of the sound, came 
 whispering to him like a stir of wings in a singing 
 grove. With a last effort to remain in the waHng 
 
 222
 
 "Let There Be Light" 
 
 world, he raised his head so very little, but fell gently 
 back again with one sighing word on his lips: 
 
 "Fleda!" 
 
 It was no illusion. Fleda had come from her own 
 night of trouble to his motherless, wifeless home, 
 and would not be denied admittance by the nurse. 
 It was Jim Beadle who admitted her. 
 
 "He'd be mad if he knew we wouldn't let her 
 come," Jim had said to the nurse. 
 
 It was Fleda who had warned Ingolby of the dan- 
 gers that surrounded him the physical as well as 
 business dangers. She came now to serve the blind 
 victim of that Fate which she had seen hovering 
 over him. 
 
 The renegade daughter of the Romanys, as Jethro 
 Fawe had called her, was, for the first time, in the 
 house of her master Gorgio.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE CHAIN OF THE PAST 
 
 FOR once in its career, Lebanon was absolutely 
 united. The blow that had brought down the 
 Master Man had also struck the town between the 
 eyes, and there was no one friend or foe of Ingolby 
 who did not regard it as an insult and a challenge. 
 It was now known that the roughs of Manitou, led 
 by the big river-driver, were about to start on a raid 
 upon Lebanon and upon Ingolby at the very mo- 
 ment the horseshoe did its work. All night there 
 were groups of men waiting outside Ingolby's house. 
 They were of all classes carters, railway workers, 
 bartenders, lawyers, engineers, bankers, accountants, 
 merchants, ranchmen, carpenters, insurance agents, 
 manufacturers, millers, horse-dealers, and so on. 
 
 Some prayed for Ingolby's life, others swore vi- 
 ciously; and those who swore had no contempt for 
 those who prayed, while those who prayed were 
 tolerant of those who swore. It was a union of in- 
 congruous elements. Men who had nothing in com- 
 mon were one in the spirit of faction; and all were 
 determined that the Orangeman, whose funeral was 
 fixed for this memorable Saturday, should be carried 
 224
 
 The Chain of the Past 
 
 safely to his grave. Civic pride had almost become 
 civic fanaticism in Lebanon. One of the men beaten 
 by Ingolby in the recent struggle for control of the 
 railways said to the others shivering in the grey 
 dawn: "They were bound to get him in the back. 
 They're dagos, the lot of 'em. Skunks are skunks, 
 even when you skin 'em." 
 
 When, just before dawn, old Gabriel Druse issued 
 from the house into which he had carried Ingolby 
 the night before, they questioned him eagerly. He 
 had been a figure apart from both Lebanon and 
 Manitou, and they did not regard him as a dago, 
 particularly as it was more than whispered that 
 Ingolby "had a lien" on his daughter. In the grey 
 light, with his long grizzled beard and iron-grey, 
 shaggy hair, Druse looked like a mystic figure of 
 the days when the gods moved among men like 
 mortals. His great height, vast proportions, and 
 silent ways gave him a place apart, and added to 
 the superstitious feeling by which he was sur- 
 rounded. 
 
 "How is he?" they asked whisperingly, as they 
 crowded round him. 
 
 "The danger is over," was the slow, heavy reply. 
 "He will live, but he has bad days to face." 
 
 "What was the danger?" they asked. 
 
 "Fever maybe brain-fever," he replied. 
 
 "We'll see him through," someone said. 
 
 "Well, he cannot see himself through," rejoined 
 the old man solemnly. The enigmatical words made 
 them feel there was something behind. 
 
 "Why can't he see himself through?" asked Oster- 
 15 225
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 haut the universal, who had just arrived from the 
 City Hall. 
 
 "He can't see himself through because he is blind," 
 was the heavy answer. 
 
 There was a moment of shock, of hushed surprise, 
 and then a voice burst forth: "Blind they've 
 blinded him, boys ! The dagos have killed his sight. 
 He's blind, boys!" 
 
 A profane and angry muttering ran through the 
 crowd, who were thirsty, hungry, and weary with 
 watching. 
 
 Osterhaut held up the horseshoe which had brought 
 Ingolby down. "Here it is, the thing that done it. 
 It's tied with a blue ribbon for luck," he added 
 ironically. "It's got his blood on it. I'm keeping 
 it till Manitou's paid the price of it. Then I'll 
 give it to Lebanon for keeps." 
 
 "That's the thing that did it, but where's the 
 man behind the thing?" snarled a voice. 
 
 Again there was a moment's silence, and then 
 Billy Kyle, the veteran stage-driver, said: "He's in 
 the jug, but a gaol has doors, and doors 11 open 
 with or without keys. I'm for opening the door, 
 boys." 
 
 "What for?" asked a man who knew the answer, 
 but who wanted the thing said. 
 
 "I spent four years in Arizona, same as Jowett," 
 Billy Kyle answered, "and I got in the way of think- 
 ing as they do there, and acting just as quick as you 
 think. I drove stage down in the Verde Valley. 
 Sometimes there wasn't time to bring a prisoner all 
 the way to a judge and jury, and people was busy, 
 226
 
 The Chain of the Past 
 
 and hadn't time to wait for the wagon; so they 
 done what was right, and there was always a tree 
 that would carry that kind o' fruit for the sake of 
 humanity. It's the best way, boys." 
 
 "This isn't Arizona or any other lyncher's coun- 
 try," said Halliday, the lawyer, making his way to 
 the front. "It isn't the law, and in this country it's 
 the law that counts. It's the Gover'ment's right to 
 attend to that drunken dago that threw the horse- 
 shoe, and we've got to let the Gover'ment do it. 
 No lynching on my plate, thank you. If Ingolby 
 could speak to us, you can bet your boots it s what 
 he'd say." 
 
 "What's your opinion, boss?" asked Billy Kyle 
 of Gabriel Druse, who had stood listening, his chin 
 on his breast, his sombre eyes fixed on them ab- 
 stractedly. 
 
 At Kyle's question his eyes lighted up with a fire 
 that was struck from a flint in other spheres, and he 
 answered: "It is for the ruler to take life, not the 
 subject. If it is a man that rules, it is for him; 
 if it is the law that rules, it is for the law. Here, it 
 is the law. Then it is not for the subject, and it is 
 not for you." 
 
 "If he was your son?" asked Billy Kyle. 
 
 "If he was my son, I should be the ruler, not the 
 law," was the grim, enigmatic reply, and the old 
 man stalked away from them towards the bridge. 
 
 "I'd bet he'd settle the dago's hash that done to 
 his son what the Manitou dagos done to Ingolby 
 and settle it quick," remarked Lick Farrelly, the tin- 
 smith. 
 
 227
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 "I bet he's been a ruler or something somewhere," 
 remarked Billy Kyle. 
 
 "I bet I'm going home to breakfast," interposed 
 Halliday, the lawyer. "There's a straight day's 
 work before us, gentlemen," he added, "and we 
 can't do anything here. Orangemen, let's hoof it." 
 
 Twenty Orangemen stepped out from the crowd. 
 Halliday was a past master of their lodge, and they 
 all meant what he meant. They marched away in 
 procession to breakfast and to a meeting of the 
 lodge. Others straggled after, but a few waited for 
 the appearance of the doctor. When the sun came 
 up and Rockwell, pale and downcast, issued forth, 
 they gathered round him, and walked with him 
 through the town, questioning, listening, and threat- 
 ening. 
 
 A few still remained behind at Ingolby's house. 
 They were of the devoted slaves of Ingolby who 
 would follow him to the gates of Hades and back 
 again, or not back if need be. 
 
 The nigger barber, Berry, was one; another was 
 the Jack-of -all-trades, Osterhaut, a kind of municipal 
 odd-man, with the well-known red hair, the face 
 that constantly needed shaving, the blue serge shirt 
 with a scarf for a collar, the suit of canvas in the 
 summer and of Irish frieze in the winter; the pair 
 of hands which were always in his own pocket, 
 never in anyone else's; the grey eye, doglike in its 
 mildness, and the long nose which gave him the 
 name of Snorty. Of the same devoted class also was 
 Jowett, who, on a higher plane, was as wise and dis- 
 cerning a scout as any leader ever had. 
 228
 
 The Chain of the Past 
 
 While old Berry and Osterhaut and all the others 
 were waiting at Ingolby's house, Jowett was scouting 
 among the Manitou roughs for the Chief Constable 
 of Lebanon, to find out what was forward. What 
 he had found was not reassuring, because Manitou, 
 conscious of being in the wrong, realized that Leba- 
 non would try to make her understand her wrong- 
 doing; and that was intolerable. It was clear to 
 Jowett that, in spite of all, there would be trouble 
 at the Orange funeral, and that the threatened strike 
 would take place at the same time in spite of Ingol- 
 by's catastrophe. Already in the early morning 
 revengeful spirits from Lebanon had invaded the 
 outer portions of Manitou and had taken satisfac- 
 tion out of an equal number of "Dogans," as they 
 called the Roman Catholic labourers, one of whom 
 was carried to the hospital with an elbow out of 
 joint and a badly injured back. 
 
 With as much information as he needed, Jowett 
 made his way back to Lebanon, when, at the ap- 
 proach to the bridge, he met Fleda hurrying with 
 bent head and pale, distressed face in his own direc- 
 tion. Of all Western men none had a better apprecia- 
 tion of the sex that takes its toll of every traveller 
 after his kind than Aaron Jowett. He had been a real 
 buck in his day among those of his own class, and 
 though the storm of his romances had become but 
 a faint stirring of leaves which had tinges of days 
 that are sear, he still had an eye unmatched for 
 female beauty. The sun which makes that northern 
 land a paradise in summer caught the gold-brown 
 hair of Gabriel Druse's daughter, and made it glint 
 229
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 and shine. It coquetted with the umber of her 
 eyes and they grew luminous as a jewel; it struck 
 lightly across the pale russet of her cheek and made 
 it like an apple that one's lips touch lovingly, when 
 one calls it "too good to eat." It made an atmos- 
 phere of half-silver and half-gold with a touch of 
 sunrise crimson for her to walk in, translating her 
 form into melting lines of grace. 
 
 Jowett knew that Druse's daughter was on her 
 way to the man who had looked once, looked twice, 
 looked thrice into her eyes and had seen there his 
 own image; and that she had done the same; and 
 that the man, it might be, would never look into 
 their dark depths again. He might speak once, 
 he might speak twice, he might speak thrice, but 
 would it ever be the same as the look that needed 
 no words? 
 
 When he crossed Fleda Druse's pathway she 
 stopped short. She knew that Jowett was Ingolby's 
 true friend. She had seen him often, and he was inti- 
 mately associated with that day when she had run 
 the Carillon Rapids and had lain (for how long she 
 never dared to think) in Ingolby's arms in the sight 
 of all the world. First among those who crowded 
 round her at Carillon that day were Jowett and 
 Osterhaut, who had tried to warn her. 
 
 "You are going to him?" she said now with 
 confidence in her eyes, and by the intimacy of the 
 phrase (as though she could speak of Ingolby only 
 as him) their own understanding was complete. 
 
 "To see how he is and then to do other things," 
 Jowett answered. 
 
 230
 
 The Chain of the Past 
 
 There was silence for a moment in which they 
 moved slowly forward, and then she said: "You 
 were at Barbazon's last night?" 
 
 "When that Gipsy son of a dog gave him away!" 
 he assented. "I never heard anything like the 
 speech Ingolby made. He had them in the throat. 
 The Gipsy would have had nothing out of it, if it 
 hadn't been for the horseshoe. But in spite of the 
 give-away, Ingolby was getting them where they 
 were soft fairly drugging them with good news. 
 You never heard such dope. My, he was smooth! 
 The golden, velvet truth it was, too. That's the only 
 kind he has in stock; and they were sort of stupefied 
 and locoed as they chewed his word-plant. Cicero 
 must have been a saucy singer of the dictionary, 
 and Paul the Apostle had a dope of his own you 
 couldn't buy, but the gay gamut that Ingolby run 
 gives them all the cold good-bye." 
 
 She held herself very still as he spoke. There 
 was, however, a strange, lonely look in her eyes. 
 The man lying asleep in the darkness of body and 
 mind yonder was not really her lover, for he had said 
 no word direct of love to her, and she knew him so 
 little, how could she love him ? Yet there was some- 
 thing between them which had its authority over 
 their lives, overcoming even that maiden modesty 
 which was in contrast to the bold, physical thing 
 she had done in running the Carillon Rapids those 
 centuries ago when she was young and glad wist- 
 fully glad. So much had come since that day, she 
 had travelled so far on the highway of Fate, that she 
 looked back from peak to peak of happening to an 
 231
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 almost invisible horizon. So much had occurred 
 and she felt so old this morning; and yet there was 
 in her heart the undefined feeling that she must keep 
 her radiant Spring of life for the blind Gorgio if he 
 needed it if he needed it. Would he need it, robbed 
 of sight and with his life-work murdered? 
 
 She shuddered as she thought of what it meant to 
 him. If a man is to work, he must have eyes to see. 
 Yet what had she to do with it, after all? She had 
 no right to go to him even as she was going. Yet 
 had she not the right of common humanity? This 
 Gorgio was her friend. Did not the world know that 
 he had saved her life? 
 
 As they came to the Lebanon end of the bridge, 
 Fleda turned to Jowett and, commenting on his 
 description of the scene at Barbazon's, said: "He 
 is a great man, but he trusts too much and risks 
 too much. That was no place for him." 
 
 "Big men like him think they can do anything," 
 Jowett replied, a little ironically, subtly trying to 
 force a confession of her preference for Ingolby. 
 
 He succeeded. Her eye lighted with indignation. 
 She herself might challenge him, but she would not 
 allow another to do so. 
 
 "It is not the truth," she rejoined sharply. "He 
 does not measure himself against the world so. He 
 is like like a child," she added. 
 
 "It seems to me all big men are like that," Jowett 
 rejoined; "and he's the biggest man the West has 
 seen. He knows about every man's business as 
 though it was his own. I can get a margin off 'most 
 any man in the West on a horse-trade, but I'd look 
 232
 
 The Chain of the Past 
 
 shy about doing a trade with him. You can't dope 
 a horse so he won't know. He's on to it, sees it 
 sees it like as if it was in glass. Sees anything and 
 everything, and " 
 
 He stopped short. The Master Gorgio could no 
 longer see, and his henchman flushed like a girl at 
 his "break"; though, as a horse-dealer, he had in 
 his time listened without shame to wilder, angrier 
 reproaches than most men living. 
 
 She glanced at him, saw his confusion, forgave and 
 understood him. 
 
 "It was not the horseshoe, it was not the Gipsy," 
 she returned. "They did not set it going. It would 
 not have happened but for one man." 
 
 "Yes, it's Marchand, right enough," answered 
 Jowett, "but we'll get him yet. We'll get him with 
 the branding-iron hot." 
 
 "That will not put things right if " she paused, 
 then with a great effort she added: "Does the doc- 
 tor think he will get it back and that 
 
 She stopped suddenly in an agitation he did not 
 care to see and he turned away his head. 
 
 "Doctor doesn't know," he answered. "There's 
 got to be an expert. It '11 take time before he gets 
 here, but " he could not help but say it, seeing 
 how great her distress was "but it's going to come 
 back. I've seen cases I saw one down on the 
 Border" how easily he lied! "just like his. It 
 was blasting that done it the shock. But the sight 
 come back all right, and quick too like as I've 
 seen a paralizite get up all at once and walk as though 
 he'd never been locoed. Why, God A'mighty don't 
 233
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 let men like Ingolby be done like that by reptiles 
 same's Marchand." 
 
 "You believe in God Almighty?" she said half- 
 wonderingly, yet with gratitude in her tone. "You 
 understand about God?" 
 
 "I've seen too many things not to try and deal 
 fair with Him and not try to cheat Him," he an- 
 swered. "I see things lots of times that wasn't 
 ever born on the prairie or in any house. I've 
 seen I've seen enough," he said abruptly, and 
 stopped. 
 
 "What have you seen?" she asked eagerly. "Was 
 it good or bad?" 
 
 "Both," he answered quickly. "I was stalked 
 once stalked I was by night and often in the open 
 day, by some sickly loathsome thing, that even 
 made me fight it with my hands a thing I couldn't 
 see. I used to fire buckshot at it, enough to kill an 
 army, till I near went mad. I was really and truly 
 getting loony. Then I took to prayin' to the best 
 woman I ever knowed. I never had a mother, but 
 she looked after me my sister, Sara, it was. She 
 brought me up, and then died and left me without 
 anything to hang on to. I didn't know all I'd lost 
 till she was gone. But I guess she knew what I 
 thought of her; for she come back after I'd prayed 
 till I couldn't see. She come back into my room 
 one night when the cursed 'haunt' was prowling 
 round me, and as plain as I see you, I saw her. 
 'Be at peace,' she said, and I spoke to her, and said, 
 'Sara why, Sara!' and she smiled, and went away 
 into nothing like a bit o' cloud in the sun." 
 234
 
 The Chain of the Past 
 
 He stopped, and was looking straight before him 
 as though he saw a vision. 
 
 "It went?" she asked breathlessly. 
 
 "It went like that " He made a swift, outward 
 gesture. " It went and it never came back ; and she 
 didn't either not ever. My idee is," he added, 
 "that there's evil things that mebbe are the ghost- 
 shapes of living men that want to do us harm; 
 though, mebbe, too, they're the ghost-shapes of men 
 that's dead, but that can't get on Over There. So 
 they try to get back to us here ; and they can make 
 life Hell while they're stalking us." 
 
 "I am sure you are right," she said. 
 
 She was thinking of the loathsome thing which 
 haunted her room last night. Was it the embodied 
 second self of Jethro Fawe, doing the evil that Jethro 
 Fawe, the visible corporeal man, wished to do? 
 She shuddered, then bent her head and fixed her 
 mind on Ingolby, whose house was not far away. 
 She felt strangely, miserably alone this morning. 
 She was in that fluttering state which follows a 
 girl's discovery that she is a woman, and the feeling 
 dawns that she must complete herself by joining 
 her own life with the life of another. 
 
 She showed no agitation, but her repression gave 
 an almost statuesque character to her face and figure. 
 The adventurous nature of her early life had given 
 her a power to meet shock and danger with coolness, 
 and though the news of Ingolby's tragedy had seemed 
 to freeze the vital forces in her, and all the world be- 
 came blank for a moment, she had controlled herself 
 and had set forth to go to him, come what might. 
 235
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 As she entered the street where Ingolby lived, 
 she suddenly realized the difficulty before her. She 
 might go to him, but by only one right could she 
 stay and nurse him, and that right she did not pos- 
 sess. He would, she knew, understand her, no 
 matter how the world babbled. Why should the 
 world babble? What woman could have designs upon 
 a blind man? Was not humanity alone sufficient 
 warrant for staying by his side? Yet would he 
 wish it? Suddenly her heart sank; but again she 
 remembered their last parting, and once more she 
 was sure he would be glad to have her with him. 
 
 It flashed upon her how different it would have 
 been, if he and she had been Romanys, and this 
 thing had happened over there in the far lands she 
 knew so well. Who would have hinted at shame, 
 if she had taken him to her father's tan or gone to his 
 tan and tended him as a man might tend a man? 
 Humanity would have been the only convention; 
 there would have been no sex, no false modesty, no 
 babble, no reproach. If it had been a man as old as 
 the oldest or as young as Jethro Fawe it would have 
 made no difference. 
 
 As young as Jethro Fawe ! Why was it that now 
 she could never think of the lost and abandoned 
 Romany life without thinking also of Jethro Fawe? 
 Why should she hate him, despise him, revolt against 
 him, and yet feel that, as it were by invisible cords, 
 he drew her back to that which she had forsworn, 
 to the Past which dragged at her feet. The Romany 
 was not dead in her; her real struggle was yet to 
 come ; and in a vague but prophetic way she realized 
 236
 
 The Chain of the Past 
 
 it. She was not yet one with the settled Western 
 world. 
 
 As they came close to Ingolby's house she heard 
 marching footsteps, and in the near distance she saw 
 fourscore or more men tramping in military order. 
 
 "Who are they?" she asked of Jowett. 
 
 "Men that are going to see law and order kept 
 in Lebanon," he answered.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 SUCH THINGS MAY NOT BE 
 
 A FEW hours later Fleda slowly made her way 
 homeward through the woods on the Manitou 
 side of the Sagalac. Leaving Ingolby's house, she 
 had seen men from the ranches and farms and mines 
 beyond Lebanon driving or riding into the town, 
 as though to a fair or fete-day. Word of antici- 
 pated troubles had sped through the countryside, 
 and the innate curiosity of a race who greatly love a 
 row brought in sensation-lovers. Some were skim- 
 ming along in one-horse gigs, a small bag of oats 
 dangling beneath like the pendulum of a great clock. 
 Others were in double or triple seated light wagons 
 "democrats" they were called. Women had a 
 bit of colour in their hats or at their throats, and 
 the men had on clean white collars and suits of 
 "store-clothes" a sign of being on pleasure bent. 
 Young men and girls on rough but serviceable 
 mounts cantered past, laughing and joking, and their 
 loud talking grated on the ear of the girl who had 
 seen a Napoleon in the streets of his Moscow. 
 
 Presently there crossed her path a gruesomely 
 ugly hearse, with glass sides and cheap imitation 
 238
 
 Such Things May Not Be 
 
 ostrich plumes drawn by gorged ravens of horses 
 with egregiously long tails, and driven by an under- 
 taker's assistant, who, with a natural gaiety of soul, 
 displayed an idiotic solemnity by dragging down the 
 corners of the mouth. She turned away in loathing. 
 
 Her mind fled to a scene far away in the land of 
 the Volga when she was a child, where she had seen 
 buried two men, who had fought for their insulted 
 honour till both had died of their wounds. She re- 
 membered the white and red sashes and the gay 
 scarfs worn by the women at the burial, the jackets 
 with great silver buttons worn by the men, and the 
 silver-mounted pistols and bright steel knives in 
 the garish belts. She saw again the bodies of the 
 two gladiators, covered with crimson robes, carried 
 shoulder-high on a soft bed of interlaced branches 
 to the graves beneath the trees. There, covered 
 with flowers and sprigs and evergreens, ribbons and 
 favours, the kindly earth hid them, cloaked for their 
 long sleep, while women wept, and men praised the 
 dead, and went back to the open road again cheerily, 
 as the dead would have them do. 
 
 If he had died the man she had just left behind 
 in that torpid sleep which opiates bring his body 
 would have been carried to his last home in just 
 such a hideous equipage as this hearse. A shiver 
 of revolt went through her frame, and her mind 
 went to him as she had seen him lying between the 
 white sheets of his bed, his hands, as they had lain 
 upon the coverlet, compact of power and grace, 
 knit and muscular and vital not the hand for a 
 violin but the hand for a sword. 
 239
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 As she had laid her hand upon his hot forehead 
 and over his eyes, he had unconsciously spoken 
 her name. That had told her more of what really 
 was between them than she had ever known. In 
 the presence of the catastrophe that must endanger, 
 if not destroy the work he had done, the career he 
 had made, he thought of her, spoke her name. 
 
 What could she do to prevent his ruin? She 
 must do something, else she had no right to think 
 of him. 
 
 As though her thoughts had summoned him, she 
 came suddenly upon Felix Marchand at a point 
 where her path resolved itself into two, one leading 
 to Manitou, the other to her own home. 
 
 There was a mr.licious glint in the greenish eyes 
 of the dissolute demagogue as he saw her. His 
 hat made a half-circle before it found his head again. 
 
 "You pay early visits, mademoiselle," he said, 
 his teeth showing rat-like. 
 
 "And you late ones?" she asked meaningly. 
 
 "Not so late that I can't get up early to see what's 
 going on," he rejoined in a sour voice. 
 
 "Is it that those who beat you have to get up 
 early?" she asked ironically. 
 
 "No one has got up earlier than me lately," he 
 sneered. 
 
 "All the days are not begun," she remarked 
 calmly. 
 
 "You have picked up quite an education since 
 you left the road and the tan," he said with the look 
 of one who delivers a smashing blow. 
 
 "I am not yet educated enough to know how you 
 240
 
 Such Things May Not Be 
 
 get other people to commit your crimes for you," 
 she retorted. 
 
 "Who commits my crimes for me?" His voice 
 was sharp and even anxious. 
 
 "The man who told you I was once a Gipsy 
 Jethro Fawe." 
 
 Her instinct had told her this was so. But had 
 Jethro told all? She thought not. It would need 
 some catastrophe which threw him off his balance 
 to make him speak to a Gorgio of the inner things 
 of Romany life; and child-marriage was one of them. 
 
 He scoffed. "Once a Gipsy always a Gipsy. 
 Race is race, and you can't put it off and on like 
 your stocking." 
 
 He was going to say chemise, but race was race, 
 and vestiges of native French chivalry stayed the 
 gross simile on the lips of the degenerate. Fleda's 
 eyes, however, took on a dark and brooding look 
 which, more than anything else, showed the Ro- 
 many in her. With a murky flood of resentment 
 rising in her veins, she strove to fight back the half- 
 savage instincts of a bygone life. She felt as though 
 she could willingly sentence this man to death as 
 her father had done Jethro Fawe that very morning. 
 Another thought, however, was working and fighting 
 in her that Marchand was better as a friend than 
 an enemy; and that while Ingolby's fate was in the 
 balance, while yet the Orange funeral had not taken 
 place and the strikes had not yet come, it might be 
 that he could be won over to Ingolby. Her mind 
 was thus involuntarily reproducing Ingolby's policy, 
 as he had declared it to Jowett and Rockwell. It 
 
 16 241
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 was to find Felix Marchand's price, and to buy off 
 his enmity not by money, for Marchand did not 
 need that, but by those other coins of value which 
 are individual to each man's desires, passions and 
 needs. 
 
 "Once a Frenchman isn't always a Frenchman," 
 she replied coolly, disregarding the coarse insolence 
 of his last utterance. "You yourself do not now 
 swear faith to the tricolour or the fleur-de-lis." 
 
 He flushed. She had touched a tender nerve. 
 
 "I am a Frenchman always," he rejoined angrily. 
 "I hate the English. I spit on the English flag." 
 
 "Yes, I've heard you are an anarchist," she 
 rejoined. "A man with no country and with a flag 
 that belongs to no country quelle affaire et quelle 
 drdlerie!" 
 
 She laughed. Taken aback in spite of his anger, 
 he stared at her. How good her French accent was ! 
 If she would only speak altogether in that beloved 
 language, he could smother much malice. She was 
 beautiful and well, who could tell? Ingolby was 
 wounded and blind, maybe for ever, and women 
 are always with the top dog that was his theory. 
 Perhaps her apparent dislike of him was only a 
 mood. Many women that he had conquered had 
 been just like that. They had begun by disliking 
 him from Lil Sarnia down and had ended by 
 being his. This girl would never be his in the- way 
 that the others had been, but who could tell? 
 perhaps he would think enough of her to marry her? 
 Anyway, it was worth while making such a beauty 
 care for him. The other kind of women were easy 
 242
 
 Such Things May Not Be 
 
 enough to get, and it would be a piquant thing to 
 have one irreproachable affaire. He had never had 
 one; he was not sure that any girl or woman he had 
 ever known had ever loved him, and he was certain 
 that he had never loved any girl or woman. To be 
 in love would be a new and piquant experience for 
 him. He did not know love, but he knew what 
 passion was. He had ever been the hunter. This 
 trail might be dangerous, too, but he would take 
 his chances. He had seen her dislike of him when- 
 ever they had met in the past, and he had never 
 tried to soften her attitude towards him. He had 
 certainly whistled, but she had not come. Well, 
 he would whistle again a different tune. 
 
 "You speak French much?" he asked almost 
 eagerly, the insolence gone from his tone. "Why 
 didn't I know that?" 
 
 "I speak French in Manitou," she replied, "but 
 nearly all the French speak English there, and so I 
 speak more English than French." 
 
 "Yes, that's it," he rejoined almost angrily again. 
 "The English will not learn French, will not speak 
 French. They make us learn English, and 
 
 "If you don't like the flag and the country, why 
 don't you leave it?" she interrupted, hardening, 
 though she had meant to try and win him over to 
 Ingolby's side. 
 
 His eyes blazed. There was something almost 
 real in the man after all. 
 
 "The English can kill us, they can grind us to the 
 dust," he rejoined in French, "but we will not leave 
 the lend which has always been ours. We settled 
 243
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 it; our fathers gave their lives for it in a thousand 
 places. The Indians killed them, the rivers and the 
 storms, the plague and the fire, the sickness and the 
 cold wiped them out. They were burned alive at the 
 stake, they were flayed; their bones were broken 
 to pieces by stones but they blazed trails with their 
 blood in the wilderness from New Orleans to Hud- 
 son's Bay. They paid for the land with their lives. 
 Then the English came and took it, and since that 
 time one hundred and fifty years we have been 
 slaves." 
 
 "You do not look like a slave," she answered, 
 "and you have not acted like a slave. If you were 
 to do the things in France that you've done here, 
 you wouldn't be free as you are to-day." 
 
 "What have I done?" he asked darkly. 
 
 "You were the cause of what happened at Bar- 
 bazon's last night," he smiled evilly "you are 
 egging on the roughs to break up the Orange funeral 
 to-day; and there is all the rest you know so well." 
 
 "What is the rest I know so well?" He looked 
 closely at her, his long, mongrel eyes half-closing 
 with covert scrutiny. 
 
 "Whatever it is, it is all bad and it is all yours." 
 
 "Not all," he retorted coolly. "You forget your 
 Gipsy friend. He did his part last night, and he's 
 still free." 
 
 They had entered the last little stretch of wood in 
 which her home lay, and she slackened her foot- 
 steps slightly. She felt that she had been unwise in 
 challenging him; that she ought to try persistently 
 to win him over. It was repugnant to her, still it 
 244
 
 Such Things May Not Be 
 
 must be done even yet. She mastered herself for 
 Ingolby's sake and changed her tactics. 
 
 "As you glory in what you have done, you won't 
 mind being responsible for all that's happened," 
 she replied in a more friendly tone. 
 
 She made an impulsive gesture towards him. 
 
 "You have shown what power you have isn't 
 that enough?" she asked. "You have made the 
 crowd shout, 'Vive Marchand!' You can make 
 everything as peaceful as it is now upset. If you 
 don't do so, there will be much misery. If peace 
 must be got by force, then the force of government 
 will get it in the end. You have the gift of getting 
 hold of the worst men here, and you have done 
 it; but won't you now master them again in the 
 other way? You have money and brains; why 
 not use them to become a leader of those who will 
 win at last, no matter what the game may be?" 
 
 He came close to her. She shrank inwardly, but 
 she did not move. His greenish eyes were wide 
 open in the fulness of eloquence and desire. 
 
 "You have a tongue like none I ever heard," 
 he said impulsively. "You've got a mind that thinks, 
 you've got dash and can take risks. You took risks 
 that day on the Carillon Rapids. It was only the 
 day before that I'd met you by the old ford of the 
 Sagalac, and made up to you. You choked me off 
 as though I was a wolf or a devil on the loose. The 
 next day when I saw Ingolby hand you out to the 
 crowd from his arms, I got nasty I have fits like 
 that sometimes, when I've had a little too much 
 liquor. I felt it more because you're the only kind 
 245
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 of woman that could ever get a real hold on me. 
 It was you made me get the boys rampaging and 
 set the toughs moving. As you say, I can get hold 
 of a crowd. It's not hard with money and drink. 
 You can buy human nature cheap. Every man has 
 his price they say and every woman too bien stir! 
 The thing is to find out what is the price, and then 
 how to buy. You can't buy everyone in the same 
 way, even if you use a different price. You've got 
 to find out how they want the price whether it's 
 to be handed over the counter, so to speak, or to be 
 kept on the window-sill, or left in a pocket, or 
 dropped in a path, or dug up like a potato, with a 
 funny make-believe that fools nobody, but just 
 plays to the hypocrite in everyone everywhere. I'm 
 saying this to you because you've seen more of the 
 world, I bet, than one in a million, even though you're 
 so young. I don't see why we can't come together. 
 I'm to be bought. I don't say that my price isn't 
 high. You've got your price, too. You wouldn't 
 fuss yourself about things here in Manitou and 
 Lebanon, if there wasn't something you wanted to 
 get. Tout ga! Well, isn't it worth while making the 
 bargain? You've got such gift of speech that I'm 
 just as if I'd been drugged, and all round, face, fig- 
 ure, eyes, hair, foot, and girdle, you're worth giving 
 up a lot for. I've seen plenty of your sex, and I've 
 heard crowds of them talk, but they never had any- 
 thing for me beyond the minute. You've got the 
 real thing. You're my fancy. You've been thinking 
 and dreaming of Ingolby. He's done. He's a back 
 number. There's nothing he's done that isn't on the 
 246
 
 Such Things May Not Be 
 
 tumble since last night. The financial gang that he 
 downed are out already against him. They'll have 
 his economic blood. He made a splash while he 
 was at it, but the alligator's got him. It's 'Exit 
 Ingolby,' now." 
 
 She made a passionate gesture, and seemed about 
 to speak, but he went on: "No, don't say anything. 
 I know how you feel. You've had your face turned 
 his way, and you can't look elsewhere all at once. 
 But Time cures quick, if you're a good healthy 
 human being. Ingolby was the kind likely to draw 
 a girl. He's a six-footer and over; he spangled a 
 lot, and he smiled pretty comme le printemps, and 
 was sharp enough to keep clear of women that could 
 hurt him. That was his strongest point, after all, for 
 a little, sly sprat of a woman that's made eyes at 
 you and led you on, till you sent her a note in a hurry 
 some time with some loose hot words in it, and she 
 got what she'd wanted, will make you pay a hundred 
 times for the goods you get. Ingolby was sharp 
 enough to walk shy, until you came his way, and 
 then he lost his underpinning. But last night got 
 him in the vitals hit him between the -eyes; and 
 his stock's not worth ten cents in the dollar to-day. 
 But though the pumas are out, and he's done, and '11 
 never see his way out of the hole he's in" he 
 laughed at his grisly joke "it's natural to let him 
 down easy. You've looked his way; he did you a 
 good turn at the Carillon Rapids, and you'd do one 
 for him if you could. I'm the only one can stop the 
 worst from happening. You want to pay your debt 
 to him. Good. I can help you do it. I can stop 
 247
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 the strikes on the railways and in the mills. I 
 can stop the row at the Orange funeral. I can stop 
 the run on his bank and the drop in his stock. I 
 can fight the gang that's against him I know how. 
 I'm the man that can bring things to pass." 
 
 He paused with a sly, mean smile of self-approval 
 and conceit, and his tongue licked the corners of his 
 mouth in a way that drunkards have in the early 
 morning when the effect of last night's drinking has 
 worn off. He spread out his hands with the air of a 
 man who had unpacked his soul, but the chief 
 characteristic of his manner was egregious belief in 
 himself. 
 
 At first, in her desire to find a way to meet the 
 needs of Ingolby, Fleda had listened to him with 
 fortitude and even without revolt. But as he began 
 to speak of women, and to refer to herself with a 
 look of gloating which men of his breed cannot hide, 
 her angry pulses beat hard. She did not quite know 
 where he was leading, but she was sure he meant 
 to say something which would vex her beyond 
 bearing. At one moment she meant to cut short his 
 narrative, but he prevented her, and when at last 
 he ended, she was almost choking with agitation. 
 It had been borne in upon her, as his monologue 
 proceeded, that she would rather die than accept 
 anything from this man anything of any kind. To 
 fight him was the only thing. Nothing else could pre- 
 vail in the end. His was the service of the unpenitent 
 thief. 
 
 "And what is it you want to buy from me?" she 
 asked evenly. 
 
 248
 
 Such Things May Not Be 
 
 He did not notice, and he could not realize that 
 ominous thing in her voice and face. "I want to be 
 friends with you. I want to see you here in the 
 woods, to meet you as you met Ingolby. I want to 
 talk with you, to hear you talk; to learn things 
 from you I never learned before; to " 
 
 She interrupted him with a swift gesture. "And 
 then after that? What do you want at the end 
 of it all? One cannot spend one's time talking and 
 wandering in the woods and teaching and learning. 
 After that, what?" 
 
 "I have a house in Montreal," he said evasively. 
 "I don't want to live there alone." He laughed. 
 "It's big enough for two, and at the end it might be 
 us two, if " 
 
 With sharp anger, yet with coolness and dignity, 
 she broke in on his words. "Might be us two!" 
 she exclaimed. "I have never thought of making 
 my home in a sewer. Do you think but, no, 
 it isn't any use talking ! You don't know how to deal 
 with man or woman. You are perverted." 
 
 "I did not mean what you mean; I meant that 
 I should want to marry you," he protested. "You 
 think the worst of me. Someone has poisoned your 
 mind against me." 
 
 "Everyone has poisoned my mind against you," 
 she returned, "and yourself most of all. I know 
 you will try to injure Mr. Ingolby; and I know 
 that you will try to injure me; but you will not 
 succeed." 
 
 She turned and moved away from him quickly, 
 taking the path towards her own front door. He 
 249
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 called something after her, but she did not or would 
 not hear. 
 
 As she entered the open space in front of the 
 house, she heard footsteps behind her and turned 
 quickly, not without apprehension. A woman came 
 hurrying towards her. She was pale, agitated, hag- 
 gard with fatigue. 
 
 "May. I speak with you?" she asked in French. 
 
 "Surely," replied Fleda.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE WOMAN FROM WIND RIVER 
 
 " \\ 7 HAT is it?" asked Fleda, opening the door of 
 
 V V the house. 
 
 "I want to speak to you about M'sieu'," replied 
 the sad-faced woman. She made a motion of her 
 head backwards towards the wood. "About M'sieu' 
 Marchand." 
 
 Fleda's face hardened; she had had more than 
 enough of "M'sieu' Marchand." She was bitterly 
 ashamed that she had, even for a moment, thought 
 of using diplomacy with him. But this woman's 
 face was so forlorn, apart, and lonely, that the old 
 spirit of the Open Road worked its will. In far-off 
 days she had never seen a human being turned 
 away from a Romany tent, or driven from a Romany 
 camp. She opened the door and stood aside to 
 admit the wayfarer. 
 
 A few moments later, the woman, tidied and fresh- 
 ened, sat at the ample breakfast which was character- 
 istic of Romany home-life. The woman's plate was 
 bountifully supplied by Fleda, and her cup filled 
 more than once by Madame Bulteel, while old 
 Gabriel Druse bulked friendly over all. His face 
 251
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 now showed none of the passion and sternness which 
 had been present when he passed the Sentence of 
 the Patrin upon Jethro Fawe; nothing of the gloom 
 filhng his eyes as he left Ingolby's house. The 
 gracious, bountiful look of the patriarch, of the head 
 of the clan, was upon him. 
 
 The husband of one wife, the father of one child, 
 yet the Ry of Rys had still the overlooking, protec- 
 tive sense of one who had the care of great numbers 
 of people. His keen eyes foresaw more of the story 
 the woman was to tell presently than either of the 
 women of his household. He had seen many such 
 women as this, and had inflexibly judged between 
 them and those who had wronged them. 
 
 "Where have you come from?" he asked, as the 
 meal drew to a close. 
 
 "From Wind River and under Elk Mountain," 
 the woman answered with a look of relief. Her face 
 was of those who no longer can bear the soul's secrets. 
 
 There was silence while the breakfast things were 
 cleared away, and the window was thrown wide to 
 the full morning sun. It broke through the branches 
 of pine and cedar and juniper; it made translucent 
 the leaves of the maples; it shimmered on Fleda's 
 brown hair as she pulled a rose from the bush at 
 the window, and gave it to the forlorn creature in 
 the grey "linsey-woolsey" dress and the loose 
 blue flannel jacket, whose skin was coarsened by 
 outdoor life, but who had something of real beauty 
 in the intense blue of her eyes. She had been a very 
 comely figure in her best days, for her waist was 
 small, her bosom gently and firmly rounded, and her 
 252
 
 The Woman From Wind River 
 
 hands were finer than those of most who live and 
 work much in the open air. 
 
 "You said there was something you wished to 
 tell me," said Fleda at last. 
 
 The woman gazed slowly round at the three, as 
 though with puzzled appeal. There was the look 
 of the Outlander in her face; of one who had been 
 exiled from familiar things and places. In manner 
 she was like a child. Her glance wandered over the 
 faces of the two women, then her eyes met those of 
 the Ry, and stayed there. 
 
 "I am old and I have seen many sorrows," said 
 Gabriel Druse, divining what was in her mind. 
 "I will try to understand." 
 
 "I have known all the bitterness of life," interposed 
 the low, soft voice of Madame Bulteel. 
 
 "All ears are the same here," Fleda added, looking 
 the woman in the eyes. 
 
 "I will tell everything," was the instant reply. 
 Her fingers twined and untwined in her lap with a 
 nervousness shown by neither face nor body. Her 
 face was almost apathetic in its despair, but her body 
 had an upright courage. 
 
 She sighed heavily and began. 
 
 "My name is Arabella Stone. I was married from 
 my home over against Wind River by the Jumping 
 Sandhills. 
 
 "My father was a lumberman. He was always 
 captain of the gang in the woods, and captain of the 
 river in the summer. My mother was deaf and dumb. 
 It was very lonely at times when my father was away. 
 I loved a boy a good boy, and he was killed break- 
 253
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 ing horses. When I was twenty-one years old my 
 mother died. It was not good for me to be alone, 
 my father said, so he must either give up the woods 
 and the river, or he or I must marry. Well, I saw 
 he would not marry, for my mother's face was one a 
 man could not forget." 
 
 The old man stirred in his seat. "I have seen 
 such," he said in his deep voice. 
 
 "So it was I said to myself I would marry," she 
 continued, "though I had loved the Boy that died 
 under the hoofs of the black stallion. There weren't 
 many girls at the Jumping Sandhills, and so there 
 were men, now one, now another, to say things to 
 me which did not touch my heart; but I did not 
 laugh, because I understood that they were lonely. 
 Yet I liked one of them more than all the others. 
 
 "So, for my father's sake, I came nearer to Dennis, 
 and at last it seemed I could bear to look at him 
 any time of the day or night he came to me. He was 
 built like a pine-tree, and had a playful tongue, 
 and also he was a ranchman like the Boy that was 
 gone. It all came about on the day he rode in from 
 the range the wild wicked black stallion which all 
 range-riders had tried for years to capture. It 
 was like a brother of the horse which had killed 
 my Boy, only bigger. When Dennis mastered him 
 and rode him to my door I made up my mind, and 
 when he whispered to me over the dipper of butter- 
 milk I gave him, I said, 'Yes.' I was proud of him. 
 He did things that a woman likes, and said the things 
 a woman loves to hear, though they be the same 
 thing said over and over again." 
 254
 
 The Woman From Wind River 
 
 Madame Bulteel nodded her head as though in a 
 dream, and the Ry of Rys sat with his two great 
 hands on the chair-arm and his chin dropped on his 
 chest. Fleda's hands were clasped in her lap, and 
 her big eyes never left the woman's face. 
 
 "Before a month was gone I had married him," 
 the low, tired voice went on. "It was a gay wedding ; 
 and my father was very happy, for he thought I had 
 got the desire of a woman's life a home of her own. 
 For a time all went well. Dennis was gay and careless 
 and wilful, but he was easy to live with, too, except 
 when he came back from the town where he sold his 
 horses. Then he was different, because of the drink, 
 and he was quarrelsome with me and cruel, too. 
 
 "At last when he came home with the drink upon 
 him, he would sleep on the floor and not beside me. 
 This wore upon my heart. I thought that if I 
 could only put my hand on his shoulder and whisper 
 in his ear, he would get better of his bad feeling; 
 but he was sulky, and he would not bear with me. 
 Though I never loved him as I loved my Boy, still 
 I tried to be a good wife to him, and never turned 
 my eyes to any other man." 
 
 Suddenly she stopped as though the pain of speak- 
 ing was too great. Madame Bulteel murmured 
 something, but the only word that reached the ears 
 of the others was the Arabic word mafish. Her 
 pale face was suffused as she said it. 
 
 Two or three times the woman essayed to speak 
 again, but could not. At last, however, she over- 
 came her emotion and said: "So it was when M'sieu* 
 Felix Marchand came up from the Sagalac." 
 255
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 The old man started and muttered harshly, but 
 Fleda had foreseen the entrance of the dissolute 
 Frenchman into the tale, and gave no sign of sur- 
 prise. 
 
 "M'sieu' Marchand bought horses," the sad voice 
 trailed on. "One day he bought the mining-claims 
 Dennis had been holding till he could develop them 
 or sell them for good money. When Dennis went to 
 town again he brought me back a present of a belt 
 with silver clasps; but yet again that night he slept 
 upon the floor alone. So it went on. M. Marchand, 
 he goes on to the mountains and comes back; and 
 he buys more horses, and Dennis takes them to 
 Yargo, and M. Marchand goes with him, but comes 
 back before Dennis does. It was then M'sieu' 
 begun to talk to me; to say things that soothe a 
 woman when she is hurt. I knew now Dennis did not 
 want me as when he first married me. He was 
 that kind of man quick to care and quicker to 
 forget. He was weak, he could not fasten where he 
 stood. It pleased him to be gay and friendly with me 
 when he was sober, but there was nothing behind it 
 nothing, nothing at all. At last I began to cry 
 when I thought of it, for it went on and on, and I 
 was too much" alone. I looked at myself in the 
 glass, and I saw I was not old or lean. I sang in 
 the trees beside the brook, and my voice was even 
 a little better than in the days when Dennis first 
 came to my father's house. I looked to my cooking, 
 and I knew that it was as good as ever. I thought 
 of my clothes, and how I did my hair, and asked 
 myself if I was as fresh to see as when Dennis first 
 256
 
 The Woman From Wind River 
 
 came to me. I could see no difference. There was 
 a clear pool not far away under the little hills where 
 the springs came together. I used to bathe in it 
 every morning and dry myself in the sun; and my 
 body was like a child's. That being so, should my 
 own man turn his head away from me day or night? 
 What had I done to be used so, less than two years 
 after I had married!" 
 
 She paused and hung her head, weeping gently. 
 
 "Shame stings a woman like nothing else," 
 Madame Bulteel said with a sigh. 
 
 "It was so with me," continued Dennis's wife. 
 "Then at last the thought came that there was 
 another woman. And all the time M. Marchand 
 kept coming and going, at first when Dennis was 
 there, and always with some good reason for com- 
 ing horses, cattle, shooting, or furs bought of the 
 Indians. When Dennis was not there, he came 
 at first for an hour or two, as if by chance, then for 
 a whole day, because he said he knew I was lonely. 
 One day, I was sitting by the pool it was in the 
 evening. I was crying because of the thought that 
 followed me of another woman somewhere, who 
 made Dennis turn from me. Then it was M'sieu'. 
 came and put a hand on my shoulder he came so 
 quietly that I did not hear him till he touched me. He 
 said he knew why I cried, and it saddened his soul." 
 
 "His soul the jackal!" growled the old man in 
 his beard. 
 
 The woman nodded wearily and went on. "For 
 all of ten days I had been alone, except for the cattle- 
 men camping a mile away and an old Indian helper 
 17 257
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 who slept in his tepee within call. Loneliness makes 
 you weak when there's something tearing at the 
 heart. So I let M'sieu' Marchand talk to me. At 
 last he told me that there was a woman at Yargo 
 that Dennis did not go there for business, but to 
 her. Everyone knew it except me, he said. He 
 told me to ask old Throw Hard the Indian helper, 
 if he had spoken the truth. I was shamed, and 
 angry and crazy, too, I think, so I went to old 
 .Throw Hard and asked him. He said he could 
 not tell the truth, and that he would not lie to me. 
 So I knew it was all true. 
 
 "How do I know what was in my mind? Is a 
 woman not mad at such a time ! There I was, tossed 
 aside for a flyaway, who was for any man that 
 would come her way. Yes, I think I was mad. 
 The pride in me was hurt as only a woman can 
 understand." 
 
 She paused and looked at the two women who 
 listened to her. Fleda's eyes were on the world be- 
 yond the window of the room." 
 
 "Surely we understand," whispered Madame Bul- 
 teel. 
 
 The woman's courage returned, and she continued : 
 "I could not go to my father, for he was riding the 
 river scores of miles away. I was terribly alone. 
 It was then that M'sieu' Marchand, who had bribed 
 the woman to draw Dennis away, begged me to go 
 away with him. He swore I should marry him as 
 soon as I could be free of Dennis. I scarcely knew 
 what I said or thought; but the place I had loved 
 'was hateful to me, so I went away with him." 
 258
 
 The Woman From Wind River 
 
 A sharp, pained exclamation broke from the lips 
 of Madame Bulteel, but presently she reached out 
 and laid a hand upon the woman's arm. "Of course 
 you went with him," she said. "You could not stay 
 where you were and face the return of Dennis. 
 There was no child to keep you, and the man that 
 tempted you said he adored you?" 
 
 The woman looked gratefully at her. "That was 
 what he said," she answered. "He said he was tired 
 of wandering, and that he wanted a home and 
 there was a big house in Montreal." 
 
 She stopped suddenly upon an angry, smothered 
 word from Fleda's lips. A big house in Montreal! 
 Fleda's first impulse was to break in upon the 
 woman's story, and tell her father what had happened 
 just now outside their own house; but she waited. 
 
 "Yes, there was a big house in Montreal?" said 
 Fleda, her eyes now resting sadly upon the woman. 
 
 "He said it should be mine. But that did not 
 count. To be far away from all that had been was 
 more than all else. I was not thinking of the man, 
 or caring for him, I was flying from my shame. I did 
 not see then the shame to which I was going. I was 
 a fool, and I was mad and bad also. When I waked 
 and it was soon there was quick understanding 
 between us. The big house in Montreal that was 
 never meant for me. He was already married." 
 
 The old man stretched heavily to his feet, leaned 
 both hands on the table, and looked at the woman 
 with glowering eyes, while Fleda's heart seemed to 
 stop beating. 
 
 "Married!" growled Gabriel Druse, with a blur 
 259
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 of passion in his voice. He knew that Felix Mar- 
 chand had followed his daughter as though he were 
 a single man. 
 
 Fleda saw what was working in his mind. Since 
 her father suspected, he should know all. 
 
 "He almost offered me the big house in Montreal 
 this morning," she said evenly and coldly. 
 
 A malediction broke from the old man's lips. 
 
 "He almost thought he wanted me to marry him," 
 Fleda added scornfully. 
 
 "And what did you say?" Druse asked. 
 
 "There could only be one thing to say. I told 
 him I had never thought of making my home in 
 a sewer." 
 
 A grim smile broke over the old man's face, and 
 he sat down again. 
 
 "Because I saw him with you I wanted to warn 
 you," the woman continued. "Yesterday, I came 
 to warn him of his danger, and he laughed at me. 
 From Madame Thibadeau I heard he had said he 
 would make you sing his song. When I came to 
 tell you, there he was with you. But when he left 
 you I was sure there was no need to speak. Still 
 I felt I must tell you perhaps because you are 
 rich and strong, and will stop him from doing more 
 harm." 
 
 "How do you know we are rich?" asked Druse in 
 a rough tone. 
 
 "It is what the world says," was the reply. "Is 
 there harm in that? In any case it was right to tell 
 you all; so that one who had herded with a woman 
 like me should not be friends with you." 
 260
 
 The Woman From Wind River 
 
 "I have seen worse women than you," murmured 
 the old man. 
 
 "What danger did you come to warn M. Marchand 
 about?" asked Fleda. 
 
 "To his life," answered the woman. 
 
 "Do you want to save his life?" asked the old 
 man. 
 
 "Ah, is it not always so?" intervened Madame 
 Bulteel in a low, sad voice. "To be wronged like 
 that does not make a woman just." 
 
 "I am just," answered the woman. "He deserves 
 to die, but I want to save the man that will kill 
 him when they meet." 
 
 "Who will kill him?" asked Fleda. 
 
 "Dennis he will kill Marchand if he can." 
 
 The old man leaned forward with puzzled, gloomy 
 interest. "Why? Dennis left you for another. 
 You say he had grown cold. Was that not what 
 he wanted that you should leave him?" 
 
 The woman looked at him with tearful eyes. 
 " If I had known Dennis better, I should have waited. 
 What he did is of the moment only. A man may fall 
 and rise again, but it is not so with a woman. She 
 thinks and thinks upon the scar that shows where 
 she wounded herself; and she never forgets, and so 
 her life becomes nothing nothing." 
 
 No one saw that Madame Bulteel held herself 
 rigidly, and was so white that even the sunlight 
 was gold beside her look. Yet the strangest, saddest 
 smile played about her lips; and presently, as the 
 eyes of the others fastened on the woman and did 
 not leave her, she regained her usual composure. 
 261
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 The woman kept looking at Gabriel Druse. 
 "When Dennis found that I had gone, and knew 
 why for I left word on a sheet of paper he went 
 mad like me. Trailing to the south, to find M'sieu' 
 Marchand, he had an accident, and was laid up in a 
 shack for weeks on the Tanguishene River, and they 
 could not move him. But at last a ranchman wrote 
 to me, and the letter found me on the very day I 
 left M'sieu'. When I got that letter begging me to 
 go to the Tanguishene River, to nurse Dennis who 
 loved me still, my heart sank. I said to myself I 
 could not go; and Dennis and I must be apart al- 
 ways to the end of time. But then I thought again. 
 He was ill, and his body was as broken as his mind. 
 Well, since I could do his mind no good, I would 
 try to help his body. I could do that much for him. 
 So I went. But the letter to me had been long on 
 the way, and when I got to the Tanguishene River 
 he was almost well." 
 
 She paused and rocked her body to and fro for 
 a moment as though in pain. 
 
 "He wanted me to go back to him then. He 
 said he had never cared for the woman at Yargo, 
 and that what he felt for me now was different from 
 what it had ever been. When he had settled accounts 
 we could go back to the ranch and be at peace. 
 I knew what he meant by settling accounts, and it 
 frightened me. That is why I am here. I came 
 to warn the man, Marchand, for if Dennis kills him, 
 then they will hang Dennis. Do you not see? This 
 is a country of law. I saw that Dennis had the mad- 
 ness in his brain, and so I left him again in the 
 262
 
 The Woman From Wind River 
 
 evening of the day I found him, and came here 
 it is a long way. Yesterday, M'sieu' Marchand 
 laughed at me when I warned him. He said he could 
 take care of himself. But such men as Dennis stop 
 at nothing; there will be killing, if M'sieu' stays 
 here." 
 
 "You will go back to Dennis?" asked Fleda 
 gently. 
 
 "Some other woman will make him happy when 
 he forgets me," was the cheerless, grey reply. 
 
 The old man got up and, coming over, laid a 
 hand upon her shoulder. 
 
 "Where did you think of going from here?" he 
 asked. 
 
 "Anywhere I don't know," was the reply. 
 
 "Is there no work here for her?" he asked, turning 
 to Madame Bulteel. 
 
 "Yes, plenty," was the reply. 
 
 "And room also?" he asked again. 
 
 "Was ever a tent too full, when the lost traveller 
 stumbled into camp in the old days?" rejoined 
 Fleda. 
 
 The woman trembled to her feet, a glad look in 
 her eyes. "I ought to go, but I am tired and I 
 will gladly stay," she said, and swayed against the 
 table. 
 
 Madame Bulteel and Fleda put their arms round 
 her, steadying her. 
 
 "This is not the way to act," said Fleda with a 
 touch of sharp reproof. Had she not her own trou- 
 ble to face? 
 
 The stricken woman drew herself up and looked 
 263
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 Fleda in the eyes. "I will find the right way, if I 
 can," she said with courage. 
 
 A half -hour later, as the old man sat alone in the 
 room where he had breakfasted, a rifle-shot rang 
 out in the distance. 
 
 "The trouble begins," he said, as he rose and 
 hastened into the hallway. 
 
 Another shot rang out. He caught up his wide, 
 felt hat, reached for a great walking-stick in the 
 corner, and left the house hurriedly,
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE MAYOR FILLS AN OFFICE 
 
 IT was a false alarm which had startled Gabriel 
 Druse, but it had significance. The Orange 
 funeral was not to take place until eleven o'clock, 
 and it was only eight o'clock when the Ry left his 
 home. A rifle-shot had, however, been fired across 
 the Sagalac from the Manitou side, and it had been 
 promptly acknowledged from Lebanon. There was 
 a short pause, and then came another from the 
 Lebanon side. It was merely a warning and a chal- 
 lenge. The only man who could have controlled the 
 position was blind and helpless. 
 
 As Druse walked rapidly towards the bridge, he 
 met Jowett. Jowett was one of the few men in either 
 town for whom the Ry had regard, and the friend- 
 liness had had its origin in Jowett's knowledge of 
 horse-flesh. This was a field in which the Ry was 
 himself a master. He had ever been too high-placed 
 among his own people to trade and barter horses 
 except when, sending a score of Romanys on a hunt 
 for wild ponies on the hills of Eastern Europe, he 
 had afterwards sold the tamed herd to the highest 
 bidders in some Balkan town; but he had an infalli- 
 ble eye for a horse. 
 
 265
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 It was a curious anomaly also that the one man 
 in Lebanon who would not have been expected to 
 love and pursue horse-flesh was the Reverend Reuben 
 Tripple to whom Ingolby had given his conge, but 
 who loved a horse as he loved himself. 
 
 He was indeed a greater expert in horses than in 
 souls. One of the sights of Lebanon had been the 
 appearance in the field of the "Reverend Tripple," 
 who owned a great, raw-boned bay mare of lank 
 proportions, the winner of a certain great trotting- 
 race which had delighted the mockers. 
 
 For two years Jowett had eyed Mr. Tripple's 
 rawbone with a piratical eye. 
 
 Though it had won only a single great race, that, 
 in Jowett's view, was its master's fault. As the Arabs 
 say, however, Allah is with the patient; and so it 
 was that on the evening of the day in which Ingolby 
 met disaster, Mr. Tripple informed Jowett that he 
 was willing to sell his rawbone. 
 
 He was mounted on the gawky roadster when he 
 met Gabriel Druse making for the bridge. Their 
 greeting was as cordial as hasty. Anxious as was the 
 Ry to learn what was going on in the towns, Jowett's 
 mount caught his eye. It was but a little time 
 since they had met at Ingolby's house, and they were 
 both full of the grave events afoot, but here was a 
 horse-deal of consequence, and the bridle-rein was 
 loose-flung. 
 
 "Yes, I got it," said Jowett, with a chuckle, in- 
 terpreting the old man's look. "I got it for good 
 a wonder from Wonderville. Damned queer-looking 
 critter, but there, I guess we know what I've got 
 266
 
 The Mayor Fills an Office 
 
 Outside like a crinoline, inside like a pair of ankles 
 of the Lady Jane Plantagenet. Yes, I got it, Mr. 
 Druse, got it dead-on!" 
 
 "How?" asked the Ry, feeling the clean fetlocks 
 with affectionate approval. 
 
 "He's off East, so he says," was the joyous re- 
 ply; "sudden but sure, and I dunno why. Any- 
 way, he's got the door-handle offered, and he's off 
 without his camel." He stroked the neck of the 
 bay lovingly. 
 
 "How much?" 
 
 Jowett held up his fingers. The old man lifted 
 his eyebrows quizzically. "That h'm! Does he 
 preach as well as that?" he asked. 
 
 Jowett chuckled. "He knows the horse country 
 better than the New Jerusalem, I guess; and I 
 wasn't off my feed, nor hadn't lost my head neither. 
 I wanted that dust-hawk, and he knew it; but I 
 got in on him with the harness and the sulky. The 
 bridle he got from a Mexican that come up here a 
 year ago, and went broke and thrn went dead; 
 and there being no padre, Tripple cLd the burying, 
 and he took the bridle as his fee, I s'pose. It had 
 twenty dollars' worth of silver on it look at these 
 conchs." 
 
 He trifled with the big beautiful buttons on the 
 head-stall. ' ' The sulky's as good as new, and so's the 
 harness almost; and there's the nose-bag and the 
 blankets, and a saddle and a monkey-wrench and 
 two bottles of horse-liniment, and odds and ends. 
 I only paid that" and he held up his fingers again 
 as though it was a sacred rite "for the lot. Not 
 267
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 bad, I want to say. Isn't he good for all day, this 
 one?" 
 
 The old man nodded, then turned towards the 
 bridge. "The gun-shots what?" he asked, setting 
 forward at a walk which taxed the rawbone's stride. 
 
 "An invite come to the wedding; that's all. 
 Only it's a funeral this time, and, if something good 
 doesn't happen, there'll be more than one funeral on 
 the Sagalac to-morrow. I've had my try, but I 
 dunno how it '11 come out. He's not a man of much 
 dictionary is the Monseenoor." 
 
 "The Monseigneur Lourde? What does he say?" 
 
 "He says what we all say, that he is sorry. 'But 
 why have the Orange funeral while things are as 
 they are?' he says, and he asks for the red flag not 
 to be shook in the face of the bull." 
 
 "That is not the talk of a fool, as most priests 
 are," growled the other. 
 
 ' ' Sure. But it wants a real wind-warbler to make 
 them see it In Lebanon. They've got the needle. 
 They'll pray to-day with the taste of blood in their 
 mouths. It's one too far. Only a miracle can keep 
 things right. 1 he Mayor has wired for the Mounted 
 Police our own battalion of militia wouldn't serve, 
 and there'd be no use ordering them out but the 
 Riders can't get here in time. The train's due the 
 very time the funeral's to start, but that train's 
 always late, though they say the ingine-driver is an 
 Orangeman! And the funeral will start at the time 
 fixed, or I don't know the boys that belong to the 
 lodge. So it's up to We, Us & Co. to see the thing 
 through, or go bust. It don't suit me, It wouldn't 
 268
 
 The Mayor Fills an Office 
 
 have been like this, if it hadn't been for what hap- 
 pened to the Chief last night. There's no holding the 
 boys in. One thing's sure, the Gipsy that give 
 Ingolby away has got to lie low if he hasn't got away, 
 or there'll be one less of his tribe to eat the juicy 
 hedgehog. Yes, sir-ee!" 
 
 To the last words of Jowett the Ry seemed to 
 pay no attention, though his lips shut tight and a 
 menacing look came into his eyes. They were now 
 upon the bridge, and could see what was forward 
 on both sides of the Sagalac. There was unusual 
 bustle and activity in the streets and on the river- 
 bank of both towns. It was noticeable also that 
 though the mills were running in Manitou, there 
 were fewer chimneys smoking, and far more men in 
 the streets than usual. Tied up to the Manitou shore 
 were a half-dozen cribs or rafts of timber which 
 should be floating eastward down the Sagalac. 
 
 "If the Monseenoor can't, or don't, step in, we're 
 bound for a shindy over a corpse," continued Jowett 
 after a moment. 
 
 "Can the Monseigneur cast a spell over them all?" 
 remarked the Ry ironically, for he had little faith 
 in priests, though he had for this particular one 
 great respect. 
 
 "He's a big man, that preelate," answered Jowett 
 quickly and forcibly. "He kept the Crees quiet 
 when they was going to rise. If they'd got up, there'd 
 have been hundreds of settlers massacreed. He 
 risked his life to do that went right into the camp 
 in face of levelled rifles, and sat down and begun to 
 talk. A minute afterwards all the chiefs was squat- 
 269
 
 World For Sale 
 
 ting, too. Then the tussle begun between a man with 
 a soul and a heathen gang that eat dog, kill their 
 old folks, their cripples and their deformed children, 
 and runs sticks of wood through their bleeding chests, 
 just to show that they're heathens. But he won 
 out, this Jesueete friend o' man. That's why I'm 
 putting my horses and my land and my pants and 
 my shirt and the buff that's underneath on the 
 little preelate." 
 
 Gabriel Druse's face did not indicate the same 
 confidence. "It is not an age of miracles; the priest 
 is not enough," he said sceptically. 
 
 By twos, by threes, by tens, men from Manitou 
 came sauntering across the bridge into Lebanon, 
 until a goodly number were scattered at different 
 points through the town. They seemed to distribute 
 themselves by a preconceived plan, and they were 
 all habitants. There were no Russians, Finns, Swedes, 
 Norwegians, or Germans among them. They were 
 low-browed, sturdy men, dressed in red or blue serge 
 shirts, some with sashes around their waists, some 
 with ear-rings in their ears, some in knee-boots, 
 and some with the heavy spiked boots of the river- 
 driver. None appeared to carry any weapon that 
 would shoot, yet in their belts was the sheath-knife, 
 the invariable equipment of their class. It would 
 have seemed more suspicious if they had not carried 
 them. The railway-men, miners, carters, mill-hands, 
 however, appeared to carry nothing save their 
 strong arms and hairy hands, and some were as 
 hairy as animals, These backwoodsmen also could, 
 270
 
 The Mayor Fills an Office 
 
 without weapons, turn a town into a general hospital. 
 In battle they fought not only with hands, but also 
 with teeth and hoofs like wild stallions. Teeth 
 tore off an ear or sliced away a nose, hands smote 
 like hammers or gouged out eyes, and their nailed 
 boots were weapons of as savage a kind as could be 
 invented. They could spring and strike an opponent 
 with one foot in the chest or in the face, and spoil 
 the face for many a day, or for ever. It was a gift 
 of the backwoods and the lumber-camps, practised in 
 hours of stark monotony when the devils which haunt 
 places of isolation devoid of family life, where men 
 herd together like dogs in a kennel, break loose. 
 There the man that dips his fingers "friendly-like" 
 in the dish of his neighbour one minute wants the 
 eye of that neighbour the next : not so much in in- 
 nate or momentary hatred, as in innate savagery 
 and the primeval sense of combat, the war which was 
 in the blood of the first man. 
 
 The unarmed appearance of these men did not 
 deceive the pioneer folk of Lebanon. To them the 
 time had come when the reactionary forces of Mani- 
 tou must receive a check. Even those who thought 
 the funeral fanatical and provocative were ready 
 to defend it. 
 
 The person who liked the whole business least 
 was Rockwell. He was subject to the same weari- 
 ness of the flesh and fatigue of the spirit as all men; 
 yet it was expected of him that at any hour he should 
 be at the disposal of suffering humanity of criminal 
 or idiotic humanity patient, devoted, calm, nerve- 
 strung, complete. He was the one person in the 
 271
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 community who was the universal necessity, and 
 yet for whom the community had no mercy in its 
 troubles or out of them. There were three doctors 
 in Lebanon, but none was an institution, none had 
 prestige save Rockwell, and he often wished that he 
 had less prestige, since he cared nothing for popu- 
 larity. 
 
 He had made his preparations for possible "acci- 
 dents" in no happy mood. Fresh from the bedside 
 of Ingolby, having had no sleep, and with many 
 sick people on his list, he inwardly damned the 
 foolishness of both towns. He even sharply rebuked 
 the Mayor, who urged surgical preparations upon 
 him, for not sending sooner to the Government for 
 a force which could preserve order or prevent the 
 procession. 
 
 It was while he was doing so that Jowett appeared 
 with Gabriel Druse to interview the Mayor. 
 
 "It's like this," said Jowett. "In another hour 
 the funeral will start. There's a lot of Manitou 
 huskies in Lebanon now, and their feet is loaded, 
 if their guns ain't. They're comin' by driblets, and 
 by -and -bye, when they've all distributed them- 
 selves there'll be a marching column of them from 
 Manitou. It's all arranged to make trouble and 
 break the law. It's the first real organized set-to 
 we've had between the towns, and it '11 be nasty. 
 If the preelate doesn't dope them, there'll be per- 
 tikler hell to pay." 
 
 He then gave the story of his visit to Monseigneur 
 Lourde, and the details of what was going forward 
 in Manitou so far as he had learned. Also the 
 272
 
 The Mayor Fills an Office 
 
 ubiquitous Osterhaut had not been idle, and his 
 bulletin had just been handed to Jowett. 
 
 "There's one thing ought to be done and has got 
 to be done," Jowett added, "if the Monseenoor don't 
 pull it off. The leaders have to be arrested, and it 
 had better be done by one that, in a way, don't 
 belong to either Lebanon or Manitou." 
 
 The Mayor shook his head. "I don't see how I 
 can authorize Marchand's arrest not till he breaks 
 the law, in any case." 
 
 "It's against the law to conspire to break the law," 
 replied Jowett. ' ' You've been making a lot of special 
 constables. Make Mr. Gabriel Druse here a special 
 constable, then if the law's broke, he can have a 
 right to take a hand in." 
 
 The giant Ry had stood apart, watchful and rumi- 
 nant, but he now stepped forward, as the Mayor 
 turned to him and stretched out a hand. 
 
 "I am for peace," the old man said. "To keep 
 the peace the law must be strong." 
 
 In spite of the gravity of the situation the Mayor 
 smiled. "You wouldn't need much disguise to stand 
 for the law, Mr. Druse," he remarked. "When 
 the law is seven feet high, it stands well up." 
 
 The Ry did not smile. "Make me the head of 
 the constables, and I will keep the peace," he said. 
 
 There was a sudden silence. The proposal had 
 come so quietly, and it was so startling, that even 
 the calm Rockwell was taken aback. But his eye 
 and the eye of the Mayor met, and the look in both 
 their faces was the same. 
 
 "That's bold play," the Mayor said, "but I 
 18 273
 
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 guess it goes. Yesterday it couldn't be done. To- 
 day it can. The Chief Constable's down with small- 
 pox. Got it from an Injun prisoner days ago. 
 He's been bad for three days, but hung on. Now 
 he's down, and there's no Chief. I was going to 
 act myself, but the trouble was, if anything happened 
 to me, there'd be no head of anything. It's better 
 to have two strings to your bow. It's a go it's 
 a straight go, Mr. Druse. Seven foot of Chief 
 Constable ought to have its weight with the rough- 
 necks." 
 
 A look of hopefulness came into his face. This 
 sage, huge, commanding figure would have a good 
 moral effect on the rude elements of disorder. 
 
 "I'll have you read the Riot Act instead of doing 
 it myself," added the Mayor. "It '11 be a good 
 introduction for you, and as you live in Manitou, 
 it '11 be a knock-out blow to the toughs. Sometimes 
 one man is as good as a hundred. Come on to the 
 Court-house with me," he continued cheerfully. 
 "We'll fix the whole thing. All the special constables 
 are waiting there with the regular police. An extra 
 foot on a captain's shoulders is as good as a battery 
 of guns." 
 
 "You're sure it's according to Hoyle?" asked 
 Jowett quizzically. 
 
 He was so delighted that he felt he must "make 
 the Mayor show off self," as he put it afterwards. 
 He did not miscalculate; the Mayor rose to his chal- 
 lenge. 
 
 "I'm boss of this show," he said, "and I can go 
 it alone if necessary when the town's in danger and 
 274
 
 The Mayor Fills an Office 
 
 the law's being hustled. I've had a meeting of the 
 Council and I've got the sailing-orders I want. 
 I'm boss of the place, and Mr. Druse is my " he 
 stopped, because there was a look in the eyes of 
 the Ry which demanded consideration "And Mr. 
 Druse is law-boss," he added. 
 
 The old ineradicable look of command shone in 
 the eyes of Gabriel Druse. Leadership was written 
 all over him. Power spoke in every motion. The 
 square, unbowed shoulders, the heavily lined face, 
 with the patriarchal beard, the gnarled hands, the 
 rough-hewn limbs, the eye of bright, brooding force 
 proclaimed authority. 
 
 Indeed in that moment there came into the face 
 of the old Nomad the look it had not worn for 
 many a day. The self -exiled ruler had paid a heavy 
 price for his daughter's vow, though he had never 
 acknowledged it to himself. His self-ordained im- 
 potency, in a camp that was never moved, within 
 walls which never rose with the sunset and fell with 
 the morning; where his feet trod the same road- 
 way day after day; where no man asked for justice 
 or sought his counsel or fell back on his protection; 
 where he drank from the same spring and tethered 
 his horse in the same paddock from morn to morn: 
 all these things had eaten at his heart and bowed 
 his spirit in spite of himself. 
 
 He was not now of the Romany world, and he was 
 not of the Gorgio world; but here at last was the 
 old thing come back to him in a new way, and his 
 bones rejoiced. He would entitle his daughter to 
 her place among the Gorgios. Perhaps also it would 
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 be given him, in the name of the law, to deal with a 
 man he hated. 
 
 "We've got Mister Marchand now," said Jowett 
 softly to the old chieftain. 
 
 The Ry's eyes lighted and his jaw set. He did 
 not speak, but his hands clenched, opened and 
 clenched again. Jowett saw and grinned. 
 
 "The Mayor and the law-boss '11 win out, I guess," 
 he said to himself,
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE MONSEIGNEUR AND THE NOMAD 
 
 EVEN more than Dr. Rockwell, Berry, the bar- 
 ber, was the most troubled man in Lebanon 
 on the day of the Orange funeral. Berry was a good 
 example of an unreasoning infatuation. The acci- 
 dent which had come to his idol, with the certain 
 fall of his fortunes, hit him so hard, that, for the 
 first time since he became a barber, his razor nipped 
 the flesh of more than one who sat in his red-uphol- 
 stered chair. 
 
 In his position, Berry was likely to hear whatever 
 gossip was going. Who shall have perfect self-control 
 with a giant bib under the chin, tipped back on a 
 chair that cannot be regulated, with a face covered 
 by lather, and two plantation fingers holding the 
 nose ? In these circumstances, with much diplomacy, 
 Berry corkscrewed his way into confidence, and when 
 he dipped a white cloth in bay-rum and eau-de- 
 cologne, and laid it over the face of the victim, 
 with the finality of a satisfied inquisitor, it was like 
 giving the last smother to human individuality. 
 An artist after his kind, he no sooner got what he 
 wanted than he carefully coaxed his victim away 
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 from thoughts of the disclosures into the vague 
 distance of casual gossip once more. 
 
 Gradually and slowly he shepherded his patient 
 back to the realms of self-respect and individual 
 personality. The border-line was at the point where 
 the fingers of his customer fluttered at a collar-but- 
 ton; for Berry, who realized the power that lies in 
 making a man look ridiculous, never allowed a cus- 
 tomer to be shaved or have his hair cut with a collar 
 on. When his customers had corns, off came the 
 boots also, and then Berry's triumph over the white 
 man was complete. To call attention to an exag- 
 gerated bunion when the odorous towel lay upon the 
 hidden features of what once was a "human," was 
 the last act in the drama of the Unmaking of Man. 
 
 Only when the client had felt in his pocket for 
 the price of the flaying, and laid it, with a ten-cent 
 fee, on the ledge beneath the mirror, where all the 
 implements of the inquisition and the restoration 
 were assembled, did he feel manhood restored. If, 
 however, he tried to keep a vow of silence in the chair 
 of execution, he paid a heavy price; for Berry had 
 his own methods of punishment. A little tighter 
 grasp of the nose ; a little rougher scrape of the razor, 
 and some sharp, stinging liquid suddenly slapped 
 with a cold palm on the excoriated spot, with the 
 devilish hypocrisy of healing it ; a longer smothering- 
 period under the towel, when the corners of it were 
 tucked behind the ears and a crease of it in the mouth 
 all these soon induced vocal expression again, and 
 Berry started on his inquisition with gentle certainty. 
 When at last he dusted the face with a little fine 
 278
 
 The Monseigneur and the Nomad 
 
 flour of oatmeal, "to heal the cuticle and 'manoor' 
 the roots, * and smelled with content the hands 
 which had embalmed the hair in verbena-scented 
 oil, a man left his presence feeling that he was 
 ready for the wrath to come. 
 
 Such was Berry when he had under his razor one 
 of Ingolby's business foes of Manitou, who had of 
 late been in touch with Felix Marchand. Both were 
 working for the same end, but with different inten- 
 tions. Marchand worked with that inherent devil- 
 ishness which sometimes takes possession of low 
 minds; but the other worked as he would have done 
 against his own brother, for his own business success; 
 and it was his view that one man could only suc- 
 ceed by taking the place of another, as though the 
 Age of Expansion had ceased and the Age of Smother 
 had begun. 
 
 From this client while in a state of abject sub- 
 jection, Berry, whose heart was hard that day, 
 but whose diplomacy was impeccable, discovered a 
 thing of moment. There was to be a procession of 
 strikers from two factories in Manitou, who would 
 throw down their tools or leave their machines at 
 a certain moment. Falling into, line these strikers 
 would march across the bridge between the towns 
 at such time as would bring them into touch with 
 the line of the Orange funeral two processions meet- 
 ing at right angles. If neither procession gave way, 
 the Orange funeral could be broken up, ostensibly 
 not from religious fanaticism, but from the "un- 
 happy accident" of two straight lines colliding. It 
 was a juicy plot; and in a few minutes the Mayor 
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 and Gabriel Druse knew of it from the faithful 
 Berry. 
 
 The bell of the meeting-house began to toll as 
 the Orangeman whose death had caused such com- 
 motion was carried to the waiting carriage where 
 he would ride alone. Almost simultaneously with 
 the starting of the gaudy yet sombre Orange cor- 
 tege, with its yellow scarfs, glaring banners, char- 
 coal plumes and black clothes, the labour procession 
 approached the Manitou end of the Sagalac bridge. 
 The strikers carried only three or four banners, 
 but they had a band of seven pieces, with a drum 
 and a pair of cymbals. With frequent discord, but 
 with much spirit, the Bleaters, as these musicians 
 were called in Lebanon, inspired the steps of the 
 Manitou fanatics and toughs. As they came upon 
 the bridge they were playing a gross paraphrase of 
 The Marseillaise. At the head of the Orange proces- 
 sion was a silver-cornet band which the enterprise 
 of Lebanon had made possible. Its leader was a 
 ne'er-do-well young Welshman, who had been dis- 
 missed from leadership after leadership of bands 
 in the East till at last he had drifted into Lebanon. 
 Here, strange to say, he had never been drunk but 
 once; and that was the night before he married 
 the widow of a local publican, who had a nice little 
 block of stock in one of Ingolby's railways, which 
 yielded her seven per cent., and who knew how to 
 handle the citizens of the City of Booze. When she 
 married Tom Straker, her first husband, he drank 
 on an average twenty whiskies a day. She got him 
 280
 
 The Monseigneur and the Nomad 
 
 down to one; and then he died and had as fine a 
 funeral as a judge. There were those who said that 
 if Tom's whiskies hadn't been cut down so but 
 there it was: Tom was in the bosom of Abraham, 
 and William Jones, who was never called anything 
 else than Willy Welsh, had been cut down from his 
 unrecorded tabulations to none at all; but he smoked 
 twenty-cent cigars at the ex-widow's expense. 
 
 To-day Willy Welsh played with heart and cour- 
 age, "I'm Going Home to Glory," at the head of the 
 Orange procession; for who that has faced such a 
 widow as was his for one whole year could fear the 
 onset of faction-fighters! Besides, as the natives 
 of the South Seas will never eat a Chinaman, so a 
 Western man will never kill a musician. Senators, 
 magistrates, sheriffs, police, gamblers, horse-stealers, 
 bankers, and broncho-riders all die unnatural deaths 
 at times, but a musician in the West is immune 
 from all except the hand of Fate. Not one can be 
 spared. Even a tough convicted of cheating at cards, 
 or breaking a boom on a river, has escaped punish- 
 ment because he played the concertina. 
 
 The discord and jangle between the two bands 
 was the first collision of this fateful day. While 
 yet there was a space between the two processions, 
 the bands broke into furious contest. It was then 
 that, through the long funeral line, men with hard- 
 set faces came closer up together, and forty, detach- 
 ing themselves from the well-kept run of marching 
 lodgemen, closed up around the horses and the 
 hearse, making a solid flanking force. At stated 
 intervals also, outside the lodgemen in the lines, 
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 were special constables, many of whom had been 
 the stage-drivers, hunters, cattlemen, prospectors, 
 and pioneers of the early days. Most of them had 
 come of good religious stock Presbyterians, Bap- 
 tists, Methodists, Unitarians; and though they had 
 little piety, and had never been able to regain the 
 religious customs and habits of their childhood, they 
 "Stood for the Thing the Old Folks stand for." 
 They were in a mood which would tear cotton, as 
 the saying was. There was not one of them but ex- 
 pected that broken heads and bloodshed would be 
 the order of the day, and they were stonily, fearlessly 
 prepared for the worst. 
 
 Since the appearance of Gabriel Druse on the 
 scene, the feeling had grown that the luck would 
 be with them. When he started at the head of the 
 cortege, they could scarce forbear to cheer. Such a 
 champion in appearance had never been seen in the 
 West, and, the night before, he had proved his right 
 to the title by shaking a knot of toughs into spots 
 of disconcerted humanity. 
 
 As they approached the crossroads of the bridge, 
 his voice, clear and sonorous, could be heard com- 
 manding the Orange band to cease playing. 
 
 When the head of the funeral procession was op- 
 posite the bridge the band, the hearse, the body- 
 guard of the hearse Gabriel Druse stood aside, and 
 took his place at the point where the lines of the two 
 processions would intersect. 
 
 It was at this moment that the collision came. 
 There were only about sixty feet of space between 
 the two processions, when a voice rang out in a chal- 
 282
 
 The Monseigneur and the Nomad 
 
 lenge so offensive, that the men of Manitou got their 
 cue for attack without creating it themselves. 
 Every Orangeman of the Lodge of Lebanon after- 
 wards denied that he had raised the cry; and the 
 chances are that every one spoke the truth. It 
 was like Felix Marchand to arrange for just such an 
 episode and so throw the burden of responsibility 
 on the Orangemen. 
 
 " To hell with the Pope ! To hell with the Pope !" 
 the voice rang out, and it had hardly ceased before 
 the Manitou procession made a rush forward. The 
 apparent leader of the Manitou roughs was a black- 
 bearded man of middle height, who spoke raucously 
 to the crowd behind him. 
 
 Suddenly a powerful voice rang out. 
 
 "Halt, in the name of the Queen!" it called. 
 
 Surprise is the very essence of successful war. 
 The roughs of Manitou had not looked for this. 
 They had foreseen the appearance of the official 
 Chief Constable of Lebanon; they had expected his 
 challenge and warning in the vernacular; but here 
 was something which struck them with consterna- 
 tion first, the giant of Manitou in the post of 
 command, looking like some berserker; and then 
 the formal reading of that stately document in the 
 name of the Queen. 
 
 Far back in the minds of every French habitant 
 present was the old monarchical sense. He makes, 
 at worst, a poor anarchist, though he is a good 
 revolutionist; and the French colonials had never 
 been divorced from monarchical France. 
 
 In the eyes of the most forward of those on the 
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 Sagalac bridge, there was a sudden wonderment and 
 confusion. To the dramatic French mind, cere- 
 monial is ever welcome; and for a moment it had 
 them in its grip, as old Gabriel Druse read out in his 
 ringing voice, the trenchant royal summons. 
 
 It was a strange and dramatic scene the Orange 
 funeral standing still, garish yet solemn, with hun- 
 dreds of men, rough and coarse, quiet and refined, 
 dissolute and careless, sober and puritanic, broad 
 and tolerant, sharp and fanatical; the labour pro- 
 cession, polyglot in appearance, but with Gallic 
 features and looseness of dress predominating; 
 excitable, brutish, generous, cruel; without intel- 
 lect, but with an intelligence which in the lowest 
 was acute, and with temperaments responsive to 
 drama. 
 
 As Druse read, his eyes now and then flashed, at 
 first he knew not why, to the slim, bearded figure of 
 the apparent leader. At length he caught the fever- 
 ish eye of the man, and held it for a moment. It was 
 familiar, but it eluded him; he could not place it. 
 He heard, however, Jowett's voice say to him, scarce 
 above a whisper : 
 
 "It's Felix Marchand, boss!" 
 
 Jowett also had been puzzled at first by the 
 bearded figure, but it suddenly flashed upon him 
 that the beard and wig were a disguise, that Mar- 
 chand had resorted to Ingolby's device. It might 
 prove as dangerous a stratagem with him as it had 
 to Ingolby. 
 
 There was a moment's hesitation after Druse had 
 finished reading as though the men of Manitou 
 284
 
 The Monseigneur and the Nomad 
 
 had not quite recovered from their surprise then 
 the man with the black beard said something to those 
 nearest him. There was a start forward, and some- 
 one cried, "Down with the Orangemen d bos 
 I'Orange!" 
 
 Like a well-disciplined battalion the Orangemen 
 rolled up quickly into a compact mass, showing that 
 they had planned their defence well, and the mo- 
 ment was black with danger, when, suddenly, 
 Druse strode forward. Flinging right and left two 
 or three river-drivers, he caught the man with the 
 black beard, snatched him out from among the on- 
 coming crowd, and tore off the black beard and wig. 
 Felix Marchand stood exposed. 
 
 A cry of fury rang out from the Orangemen be- 
 hind, and a dozen men rushed forward, but Gabriel 
 Druse acted with the instant decision of a real com- 
 mander. Seeing that it would be a mistake to arrest 
 Marchand at that moment, he raised the struggling 
 figure of the wrecker above his head and, with 
 Herculean effort, threw him up over the heads of the 
 Frenchmen in front of him. 
 
 So extraordinary was the sight that, as if fas- 
 cinated, the crowd before and behind followed the 
 action with staring eyes and tense bodies. The 
 faces of all the contending forces were as con- 
 centrated for the instant, as though the sun were 
 falling out of the sky. It was so great a feat, one 
 so much in consonance with the spirit of the frontier 
 world, that gasps of praise broke from both crowds. 
 As though it were a thunderbolt, the Manitou 
 roughs standing where Marchand was like to fall, 
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 instead of trying to catch him, broke away from 
 beneath the bundle of falling humanity, and Mar- 
 chand fell on the dusty cement of the bridge with a 
 dull thud, like a bag of bones. 
 
 For a moment there was no motion on the part of 
 either procession. Banners drooped and swayed 
 as the men holding them were lost in the excitement. 
 
 Time had only been gained, however. There was 
 no reason to think that the trouble was over, or that 
 the special constables who had gathered close behind 
 Gabriel Druse would not have to strike heavy blows 
 for the cause of peace. 
 
 The sudden appearance of a new figure in the nar- 
 row, open space between the factions in that mo- 
 mentary paralysis was not a coincidence. It was 
 what Jowett had planned for the factor for peace in 
 which he most believed. 
 
 A small, spare man in a scarlet cassock, white 
 chasuble, and black biretta, suddenly stole out from 
 the crowd on the Lebanon side of the bridge, carry- 
 ing the elements of the Mass. His face was shining 
 white, and in the eyes was an almost unearthly fire. 
 It was the beloved Monseigneur Lourde. 
 
 Raising the elements before him towards his own 
 people on the bridge, he cried in a high, searching 
 voice : 
 
 "I prayed with you, I begged you to preserve the 
 peace. Last night I asked you in God's name to 
 give up your disorderly purposes. I thought then 
 I had done my whole duty; but the voice of God 
 has spoken to me. An hour ago I carried the ele- 
 ments to a dying woman here in Lebanon, and gave 
 286
 
 The Monseigneur and the Nomad 
 
 her peace. As I did so the funeral bell rang out, 
 and it came to me, as though the One above had 
 spoken, that peace would be slain and His name in- 
 sulted by all of you by all of you, Catholic and 
 Protestant. God's voice bade me come to you from 
 the bed of one who has gone hence from peace to 
 Peace. In the name of Christ, peace, I say ! Peace, 
 in the name of Christ!" 
 
 He raised the sacred vessel high above his head, 
 so that his eyes looked through the walls of his up- 
 lifted arms. "Kneel!" he called in a clear, ringing 
 voice which yet quavered with age. 
 
 There was an instant's hush, and then great num- 
 bers of the crowd in front of him, toughs and wreck- 
 ers, blasphemers, turbulent ones and evil-livers, yet 
 Catholics all, with the ancient root of the Great 
 Thing in them, sank down; and the banners of the 
 labour societies drooped before the symbol of peace 
 won by sacrifice. 
 
 Even the Orangemen bared their heads in the 
 presence of that Popery which was anathema to 
 them, which they existed to combat, and had been 
 taught to hate. Some, no doubt, would rather have 
 fought than have had peace at the price; but they 
 could not free their minds from the sacred force 
 which had brought most of the crowd of faction- 
 fighters to their knees. 
 
 With a wave of the hand, Gabriel Druse ordered 
 the cortege forward, and silently the procession with 
 its yellow banners and its sable, drooping plumes 
 moved on. 
 
 Once on its way again, Willy Welsh and his silver- 
 287
 
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 cornet band struck up the hymn, "Lead, Kindly 
 Light." 
 
 It was the one real coincidence of the day that this 
 moving hymn was written by a cardinal of the 
 Catholic Church. It was also an irony that, as the 
 crowd of sullen Frenchmen turned back to Manitou, 
 the train bearing the Mounted Police, for whom the 
 Mayor had sent to the capital, steamed noisily in, 
 and redcoats showed at its windows and on the 
 steps of the cars. 
 
 The only casualty that the day saw was the 
 broken arm and badly bruised body of Felix 
 Marchand, who was gloomily helped back to his 
 home across the Sagalac.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THE BEACONS 
 
 THERE were few lights showing in Lebanon or 
 Manitou; but here and there along the Sagalac 
 was the fading glimmer of a camp-fire, and in 
 Tekewani's reservation one light glowed softly like a 
 star. It came from a finely-made and chased 
 safety-lantern given to Tekewani by the Govern- 
 ment, as a symbol of honour for having kept the 
 braves quiet when an Indian and half-breed rising 
 was threatened; and to the powerless chief it had 
 became a token of his authority, the sign of the 
 Great White Mother's approval. By day a spray 
 of eagle's feathers waved over his tepee, but the 
 gleam of the brass lantern every night was like a 
 sentry at the doorway of a monarch. 
 
 It was a solace to his wounded spirit; it allayed the 
 smart of subjection; made him feel himself a ruler 
 in retirement, even as Gabriel Druse was a self- 
 ordained exile. 
 
 These two men, representing the primitive nomad 
 life, had been drawn together in friendship. So 
 much so, that to Tekewani alone of all the West, 
 Druse gave his confidence and told his story. It 
 
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 came in the Springtime, when the blood of the 
 young bucks was simmering and the ancient spell 
 was working. There had preceded them generations 
 of hunters who had slain their thousands and then- 
 tens of thousands of wild animals and the fowls of 
 the air; had killed their enemies in battle; had 
 seized the comely women of their foes and made them 
 their own. No thrill of the hunter's trail now drew 
 off the overflow of desire. In the days of rising sap, 
 there were only the young maidens or wives of their 
 own tribe to pursue, and it lacked in glory. Also in 
 the Springtime, Tekewani himself had his own trials, 
 for in his blood the old medicine stirred. His face 
 turned towards the prairie North and the mountain 
 West where yet remained the hunter's quarry; and 
 he longed to be away with rifle and gun, with his 
 squaw and the papooses trailing after like camp- 
 followers, to eat the fruits of victory. But that 
 could not be; he must remain in the place the 
 Great White Mother had reserved for him; he and 
 his braves must assemble, and draw their rations at 
 the appointed times and seasons, and grunt thanks 
 to those who ruled over them. 
 
 It was on one of these virginal days, when there 
 was a restless stirring among the young bucks, who 
 smelled the wide waters, the pines and the wild 
 shrubs; who heard the cry of the loon on the lonely 
 lake and the whir of the wild duck's wings, who 
 answered to the phantom cry of ancient war; it was 
 on such a day that the two chiefs opened their hearts 
 to each other. 
 
 Near to the boscage on a little hill overlooking the 
 290
 
 The Beacons 
 
 great river, Gabriel Druse had come upon Tekewani 
 seated in the pine-dust, rocking to and fro, and chant- 
 ing a low, sorrowful refrain, with eyes fixed on the 
 setting sun. And the Ry of Rys understood, with 
 the understanding which only those have who live 
 close to the earth, and also near to the heavens of 
 their own gods. He sat down beside the forlorn 
 chief, and in the silence their souls spoke to each 
 other. There swept into the veins of the Romany 
 ruler something of the immitigable sadness of the 
 Indian chief; and, with a sudden premonition that 
 he also was come to the sunset of his life, his big 
 nomad eyes sought the westering rim of the heavens, 
 and his breast heaved. 
 
 In that hour the two men declared themselves to 
 each other, and Gabriel Druse told Tekewani all that 
 he had hidden from the people of the Sagalac, and 
 was answered in kind. It seemed to them that they 
 were as brothers wjio were one and who had parted 
 in ages long gone; and having met were to part 
 and disappear once more, beginning still another 
 trail in an endless reincarnation. 
 
 "Brother," said Tekewani, "it was while there was 
 a bridge of land between the continents at the North 
 that we met. Again I see it. I forgot it, but again 
 I see. There was war, and you went upon one path 
 and I upon another, and we met no more under all 
 the moons till now." 
 
 "Dordi, so it was and at such a time," answered the 
 Ry of Rys. ' ' And once more we will follow after the 
 fire-flies which give no light to the safe places but 
 only lead farther into the night." 
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 Tekewani rocked to and fro again, muttering to 
 himself, but presently he said : 
 
 "We eat from the hands of those who have driven 
 away the buffalo, the deer, and the beaver; and the 
 young bucks do naught to earn the joy of women. 
 They are but as lusting sheep, not as the wild-goat 
 that chases its mate over the places of death, till it 
 conies upon her at last, and calls in triumph over 
 her as she kneels at his feet. So it is. Like tame 
 beasts we eat from the hand of the white man, and 
 the white man leaves his own camp where hjs own 
 women are, and prowls in our camps, so that not even 
 our own women are left to us." 
 
 It was then that Gabriel Druse learned of the 
 hatred of Tekewani for Felix Marchand, because of 
 what he had done in the reservation, prowling at 
 night like a fox or a coyote in the folds. 
 
 They parted that hour, believing that the epoch 
 of life in which they were and tjie fortunes of time 
 which had been or were to come, were but turns of a 
 wheel that still went on turning; and that whatever 
 chanced of good or bad fortune in the one span of 
 being, might be repaired in the next span, or the 
 next, or the next; so, through their creed of rein- 
 carnation, taking courage to face the failure of the 
 life they now lived. Not by logic or the teaching of 
 any school had they reached this revelation, but 
 through an inner sense. They were not hopeful 
 and wondering and timid; they were only sure. 
 Their philosophy, their religion, whether heathen or 
 human, was inborn. They had comfort in it and in 
 each other. 
 
 2Q2
 
 The Beacons 
 
 After that day Gabriel Druse always set a light in 
 his window which burned all night, answering to the 
 lantern-light at the door of Tekewani's home the 
 lights of exile and of an alliance which had behind it 
 the secret influences of past ages and vanished peoples. 
 
 There came a night, however, when the light at the 
 door of Tekewani's tepee did not burn. At sunset it 
 was lighted, but long before midnight it was extin- 
 guished. Looking out from the doorway of his 
 home, (it was the night after the Orange funeral), 
 Gabriel Druse, returned from his new duties at 
 Lebanon, saw no light in the Indian reservation. 
 With anxiety, he set forth in the shine of the moon 
 to visit it. 
 
 Arrived at the chief's tepee, he saw that the lan- 
 tern of honour was gone, and waking Tekewani, he 
 brought him out to see. When the old Indian knew 
 his loss, he gave a harsh cry and stooped, and, 
 gathering a handful of dust from the ground, 
 sprinkled it on his head. Then with arms out- 
 stretched he cursed the thief who had robbed him 
 of what had been to him like a never-fading mirage, 
 an illusion blinding his eyes to the bitter facts of his 
 condition. 
 
 To his mind all the troubles come to Lebanon and 
 Manitou had had one source; and now the malign 
 spirit had stretched its hand to spoil those already 
 dispossessed of all but the right to live. One name 
 was upon the lips of both men, as they stood in the 
 moonlight by Tekewani's tepee. 
 
 "There shall be an end of this," growled the 
 Romany. 
 
 293
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 "I will have my own," said Tekewani, with 
 malediction on the thief who had so shamed him. 
 
 Black anger was in the heart of Gabriel Druse as 
 he turned again towards his own home, and he was 
 glad of what he had done to Felix Marchand at the 
 Orange funeral.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 THE KEEPER OP THE BRIDGE 
 " Like the darkness of the grave, which is darkness itself " 
 
 MOST of those who break out of the zareba of 
 life, who lay violent hands upon themselves, 
 do so with a complete reasoning, which in itself is 
 proof of their insanity. It may be domestic tragedy, 
 or ill-health, or crime, or broken faith, or shame, or 
 insomnia, or betrayed trust whatever it is, many 
 a one who suffers from such things, tries to end it all 
 with that deliberation, that strategy, and that cun- 
 ning which belong only to the abnormal. 
 
 A mind which has known a score or more of sleep- 
 less nights acquires an invincible clearness of its own, 
 seeing an end which is without peradventure. It 
 finds a hundred perfect reasons for not going on, 
 every one of which is in itself sufficient; every one of 
 which knits into the other ninety and nine with 
 inevitable affinity. 
 
 To the mind of Ingolby came a hundred such rea- 
 sons for breaking out of life's enclosure, as the 
 effect of the opiate Rockwell had given him wore off, 
 and he regained consciousness. As he did so, some- 
 one in the room was telling of that intervention of 
 295
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 Gabriel Druse and the Monseigneur at the Orange 
 funeral, which had saved the situation. At first 
 he listened to what was said it was the nurse 
 talking to Jim Beadle with no sharp perception of 
 the significance of the story; though it slowly 
 pierced the lethargy of his senses, and he turned over 
 in the bed to face the watchers. 
 
 "What time is it, Jim?" he asked heavily. 
 
 They told him it was sunset. 
 
 "Is it quiet in both towns?" he asked after a 
 pause. 
 
 They told him that it was. 
 
 "Any telegrams for me?" he asked. 
 
 There was an instant's hesitation. They had had 
 no instructions on this point, and they hardly knew 
 what to say; but Jim's mind had its own logic, and 
 the truth seemed best to him now. He answered 
 that there were several wires, but that they "didn't 
 amount to nothin'." 
 
 "Have they been opened?" Ingolby asked with a 
 frown, half-raising himself. It was hard to resign 
 the old masterfulness and self-will. 
 
 "I'd like to see anybody open 'em 'thout my 
 pe'mission," answered Jim imperiously. "When 
 you's asleep, Chief, I'm awake; and I take care of 
 you' things, same as ever I done. There ain't no 
 wires been opened, and there ain't goin' to be whiles 
 I'm runnin' the show for you." 
 
 "Open and read them to me," commanded Ingol- 
 by. Again Ingolby was conscious of hesitation on 
 Jim's part. Already the acuteness of the blind was 
 possessing him, sharpening the senses left unimpaired. 
 296
 
 The Keeper of the Bridge 
 
 Although Jim moved, presumably, towards the 
 place where the telegrams lay, Ingolby realized that 
 his own authority was being crossed by that of the 
 doctor and the nurse. 
 
 "You will leave the room for a moment, nurse," he 
 said with a brassy vibration in the voice a sign of 
 nervous strain. With a smothered protest the 
 nurse left, and Jim stood beside the bed with the 
 telegrams. 
 
 "Read them to me, Jim," Ingolby repeated irri- 
 tably. "Be quick." 
 
 They were not wires which Ingolby should have 
 heard at the time, when his wound was still in- 
 flamed, when he was still on the outer circle of that 
 artificial sleep which the opiates had secured. They 
 were from Montreal and New York, and, resolved 
 from their half -hidden suggestion into bare elements, 
 they meant that henceforth others would do the 
 work he had done. They meant, in effect, that save 
 for the few scores of thousand dollars he had made, 
 he was now where he was when he came West. 
 
 When Jim had finished reading them, Ingolby sank 
 back on the pillows and said quietly: 
 
 "All right, Jim. Put them in the drawer of the 
 table and I'll answer them to-morrow. I want to get 
 a little more sleep, so give me a drink, and then 
 leave me alone both nurse and you till I ring the 
 bell. There's a bell on the table, isn't there ?" 
 
 He stretched out a hand towards the table beside 
 the bed, and Jim softly pushed the bell under his 
 fingers. 
 
 "That's right," he added. "Now, I'm not to be 
 297
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 disturbed unless the doctor comes. I'm all right, 
 and I want to be alone and quiet. No one at all in 
 the room is what I want. You understand, Jim?" 
 
 "My head's just as good to get at what you want 
 as ever it was, and you' goin' have what you want, 
 I guess, while I'm on deck," was Jim's reply. 
 
 Jim put a glass of water into his hand. He drank 
 very slowly, was indeed only mechanically conscious 
 that he was drinking, for his mind was far away. 
 
 After he had put the glass down, Jim still stood 
 beside the bed, looking at him. 
 
 "Why don't you go, as I tell you, Jim?" Ingolby 
 asked wearily. 
 
 "I'm goin'" Jim tucked the bedclothes in care- 
 fully "I'm goin', but, boss, I jes' want to say dat 
 dis thing goin' to come out all right bime-by. There 
 ain't no doubt 'bout dat. You goin' see everything, 
 come jes' like what you want suh!" 
 
 Ingolby did not reply. He held out his hand, and 
 black fingers shot over and took it. A moment later 
 the blind man was alone in the room. 
 
 The light of day vanished, and the stars came out. 
 There was no moon, but it was one of those nights 
 of the West when millions of stars glimmer in the blue 
 vault above, and every planet and every star and 
 cluster of stars are so near that it might almost seem 
 they could be caught by an expert human hand. 
 The air was very still, and a mantle of peace was 
 spread over the tender scene. The window and the 
 glass doors that gave from Ingolby's room upon the 
 veranda on the south side of the house, were open, and 
 the air was warm as in Midsummer. Now and then 
 298
 
 The Keeper of the Bridge 
 
 the note of a night-bird broke the stillness, but noth- 
 ing more. 
 
 It was such a night as Ingolby loved; it was such 
 a night as often found him out in the restful gloom of 
 the trees, thinking and brooding, planning, revelling 
 in memories of books he had read, and in dreaming 
 of books he might write if there were time. Such a 
 night insulated the dark moods which possessed him 
 occasionally almost as effectively as fishing did; and 
 that was saying much. 
 
 But the darkest mood of all his days was upon him 
 now. When Rockwell came, soon after Jim and the 
 nurse left him, he simulated sleep, for he had no 
 mind to talk; and the doctor, deceived by his even 
 breathing, had left, contented. At last he was 
 wholly alone with his own thoughts, as he desired. 
 From the moment Jim had read him the wires, which 
 were the real revelation of the situation to which he 
 had come, he had been travelling hard on the road 
 leading to a cul-de-sac, from which there was no egress 
 save by breaking through the wall. Never, it might 
 have seemed, had his mind been clearer, but it was a 
 clearness belonging to the abnormal. It was a 
 straight line of thought which, in its intensity, 
 gathered all other thoughts into its wake, reduced 
 them to the control of an obsession. It was borne in 
 on his mind that his day was done, that nothing 
 could right the disorder which had strewn his path 
 with broken hopes and shattered ambitions. No 
 life-work left, no schemes to accomplish, no con- 
 struction to achieve, no wealth to gain, no public 
 good to be won, no home to be his, no woman, his 
 299
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 very own, to be his counsellor and guide in the 
 natural way! 
 
 As myriad thoughts drove through his brain on 
 this Indian-summer night, they all merged into the 
 one obsession that he could no longer stay. The 
 irresistible logic of the brain stretched to an abnormal 
 tenuity, and an intolerable brightness was with him. 
 He was in the throes of that intense visualization 
 which comes with insomnia, when one is awake 
 yet apart from the waking world, where nothing is 
 really real and nothing normal. He had a call to 
 go hence, and he must go. Minute after minute 
 passed, hours passed, and the fight of the soul to 
 maintain itself against the disordered mind went on. 
 All his past seemed but part of a desert, lonely and 
 barren and strange. 
 
 In the previous year he had made a journey to 
 Arizona with Jowett, to see some railway construc- 
 tion there, and at a ranch he had visited he came 
 upon some verses which had haunted his mind ever 
 since. They fastened upon his senses now. They 
 were like a lonesome monotone which at length 
 gave calm to his torturing reflections. In his dark- 
 ness the verses kept repeating themselves: 
 
 "I heard the desert calling, and my heart stood still 
 
 There was Winter in my world and in my heart: 
 A breath came from the mesa and a message stirred my will, 
 And my soul and I arose up to depart. 
 
 I heard the desert calling; and I knew that over there, 
 In an olive-sheltered garden where the mesquite grows, 
 
 Was a woman of the sunrise, with the starshine in her hair, 
 And a beauty that the almond-blossom blows. 
 300
 
 The Keeper of the Bridge 
 
 In the night-time when the ghost-trees glimmered in the moon, 
 Where the mesa by the watercourse was spanned, 
 
 Her loveliness enwrapped me like the blessedness of June, 
 And all my life was thrilling in her hand. 
 
 I hear the desert calling, and my heart stands still; 
 
 There is Summer in my world and in my heart; 
 A breath comes from the mesa, and a will beyond my will 
 
 Binds my footsteps as I rise up to depart." 
 
 This strange, half -mystic song of the mesa and the 
 olive-groves, of the ghost-trees and the moon, kept 
 playing upon his own heated senses like the spray 
 from a cooling stream, and at last it quieted him. 
 The dark spirit of self-destruction loosened its hold. 
 
 His brain had been strained beyond the normal; 
 almost unconsciously his fingers had fastened on the 
 pistol in the drawer of the table by his bed. It had 
 been there since the day when he had travelled down 
 from Alaska loaded as it had been when he had 
 carried it down the southern trail. But as his 
 fingers tightened on the little engine of death, from 
 the words which had been ringing in his brain came 
 the flash of a revelation : 
 
 " And a will beyond my will 
 
 Binds my footsteps as I rise up to depart." 
 
 A will beyond his will! It was as though Fleda's 
 fingers were laid upon his own; as though she 
 whispered in his ear and her breath swept his 
 cheek; as though she was there in the room beside 
 him, making the darkness light, tempering the wind 
 of chastisement to his naked soul. In the over- 
 301
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 strain of his nervous system the illusion was power- 
 ful. He thought he heard her voice. The pistol 
 slipped from his fingers, and he fell back on the pil- 
 low with a sigh. The will beyond his will bound his 
 footsteps. 
 
 Who can tell? The grim, malign experience of 
 Fleda in her bedroom with the Thing she thought was 
 from beyond the bounds of her own life; the voice 
 that spoke to Ingolby, and the breath that swept 
 over his cheek were, perhaps, as real in a sense as 
 would have "been the corporeal presence of Jethro 
 Fawe in one case and of Fleda Druse in the other. 
 It may be that in very truth Fleda Druse's spirit 
 with its poignant solicitude controlled his will as he 
 "rose up to depart." But if it was only an illusion, 
 it was not less a miracle. Some power of suggestion 
 bound his fleeing footsteps, drew him back from the 
 Brink. 
 
 He slept. Once the nurse came and looked at 
 him and returned to the other room; and twice Jim 
 stole in silently for a moment and retired again to his 
 own chamber. The stars shone in at the doors that 
 opened out from the quiet room into the night, the 
 watch beside the bed ticked on, the fox-terrier which 
 always slept on a mat at the foot of the bed sighed in 
 content, while his master breathed heavily in a sleep 
 full of dreams that hurried past like phantasmagoria 
 of a hundred things that had been in his life, and 
 that had never been; of people he had known, dis- 
 torted, ridiculous and tremendous. There were 
 dreams of fiddlers and barbers, of crowds writhing 
 in passion in a room where there was a billiard- 
 302
 
 The Keeper of the Bridge 
 
 table and a lucky horseshoe on the wall. There were 
 dreams that tossed and mingled in one whirlpool 
 vision; and then at last came a dream which was so 
 cruel and clear that it froze his senses. 
 
 It was the dream of a great bridge over a swift- 
 flowing river; of his own bridge over the Sagalac 
 of that bridge being destroyed by men who crept 
 through the night with dynamite in their hands. 
 
 With a hoarse, smothered cry he awoke. His eyes 
 opened wide. His heart was beating like a hammer 
 against his side. Only the terrier at his feet heard 
 the muttered agony. With an instinct all its own, it 
 slipped to the floor. 
 
 It watched its master get out of bed, cross the 
 room and feel for a coat along the wall an overcoat 
 which he used as a dressing-gown at times. Putting 
 it on hastily, with outstretched hands Ingolby felt 
 his way to the glass doors opening on the veranda. 
 The dog, as though to let him know he was there, 
 rubbed against his legs. Ingolby murmured a soft, 
 unintelligible word, and, in his bare feet, passed out 
 on to the veranda, and from there to the garden and 
 towards the gate at the front of the house. 
 
 The nurse heard the gate click lightly, but she was 
 only half-awake, and as all was quiet in the next 
 room, she composed herself in her chair again with 
 the vain idea that she was not sleeping. And Jim 
 the faithful one, as though under a narcotic of fate, 
 was snoring softly beside the vacant room. The 
 streets were still. No lights burned anywhere so 
 far as eye could see. But now and then, in the still- 
 ness through which the river flowed on, murmuring 
 303
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 and rhythmic, there rose the distant sounds of dis- 
 orderly voices. Ingolby was in a state which was 
 neither sleep nor waking, which was in part delirium, 
 in part oblivion to all things in the world save one 
 an obsession so complete, that he moved auto- 
 matically through the street in which he lived tow- 
 ards that which led to the bridge. 
 
 His terrier, as though realizing exactly what he 
 wished, seemed to guide him by rubbing against his 
 legs, and even pressing hard against them when he 
 was in any danger of losing the middle of the road, 
 or swerving towards a ditch or some obstruction. 
 Only once did they pass any human being, and that 
 was when they came upon a camp of road-builders, 
 where a red light burned, and two men slept in the 
 open by a dying fire. One of them raised his head 
 when Ingolby passed, but being more than half- 
 asleep, and seeing only a man and a dog, thought 
 nothing of it, and dropped back again upon his rough 
 pillow. He was a stranger to Lebanon, and there 
 was little chance of his recognizing Ingolby in the 
 semi-darkness. 
 
 As they neared the river, Ingolby became deeply 
 agitated. He moved with his hands outstretched. 
 Had it not been for his dog he would probably have 
 walked into the Sagalac; for though he seemed to 
 have an instinct that was extra-natural, he swayed 
 and staggered in the delirium driving him on. 
 There was one dreadful moment when, having 
 swerved from the road leading on to the bridge, he 
 was within a foot of the river-bank. One step 
 farther, and he would have plunged down thirty 
 304
 
 The Keeper of the Bridge 
 
 feet into the stream, to be swept to the Rapids 
 below. 
 
 But for the first time the terrier made a sound. 
 He gave a whining bark almost human in its meaning, 
 and threw himself at the legs of his master, pushing 
 him backwards and over towards the road leading 
 upon the bridge, as a collie guides sheep. Presently 
 Ingolby felt the floor of the bridge under his feet; 
 and now he hastened on, with outstretched arms and 
 head bent forward, listening intently, the dog 
 trotting beside, with what knowledge working in 
 him Heaven alone knew. 
 
 The roar of the Rapids below was a sonorous ac- 
 companiment to Ingolby's wild thoughts. One 
 thing only he felt, one thing only heard the men in 
 Barbazon's Tavern saying that the bridge should be 
 blown up on the Saturday night; and this was 
 Saturday night the night of the day following that 
 of the Orange funeral. He had heard the criminal 
 hireling of Felix Marchand say that it should be 
 done at midnight, and that the explosive should be 
 laid under that part of the bridge which joined the 
 Manitou bank of the Sagalac. As though in very 
 truth he saw with his eyes, he stopped short not far 
 from the point where the bridge joined the land, and 
 stood still, listening. 
 
 For several minutes he was motionless, intent as an 
 animal waiting for its foe. At last his newly- 
 sensitive ears heard footsteps approaching and low 
 voices. The footsteps came nearer, the voices, 
 though so low, became more distinct. They were 
 now not fifty feet away, but to the delirious Ingolby 
 
 20 305
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 they were as near as death had been when his 
 fingers closed on the pistol in his room. 
 
 He took a step forward, and with passionate voice 
 and arms outstretched, he cried : 
 
 "You shall not do it by God, you shall not touch 
 my bridge! I. built it. You shall not touch it. 
 Back, you devils back !" The terrier barked loudly. 
 
 The two men in the semi-darkness in front of him 
 cowered at the sight of this weird figure holding the 
 bridge they had come to destroy. His words, uttered 
 in so strange and unnatural a voice, shook their 
 nerves. They shrank away from the ghostly form 
 with the outstretched arms. 
 
 In the minute's pause following on his words, a 
 giant figure suddenly appeared behind the dyna- 
 miters. It was the temporary Chief Constable of 
 Lebanon, returning from his visit to Tekewani. 
 He had heard Ingolby's wild words, and he realized 
 the situation. 
 
 "Ingolby steady there, Ingolby!" he called. 
 "Steady! Steady! Gabriel Druse is here. It's all 
 right." 
 
 At the first sound of Druse's voice the two wreckers 
 turned and ran. 
 
 As they did so, Ingolby's hands fell to his side, and 
 he staggered forward. 
 
 "Druse Fleda," he murmured, then swayed, 
 trembled and fell. 
 
 With words that stuck in his throat Gabriel Druse 
 
 stooped and lifted him up in his arms. At first he 
 
 turned towards the bridge, as though to cross over to 
 
 Lebanon, but the last word Ingolby had uttered rang 
 
 306
 
 The Keeper of the Bridge 
 
 in his ears, and he carried him away into the trees 
 towards his own house, the faithful terrier following. 
 
 "Druse Fleda!" They were the words of one 
 who had suddenly emerged from the obsession of 
 delirium into sanity, and then had fallen into as 
 sudden unconsciousness. 
 
 ' ' Fleda ! Fleda !" called Gabriel Druse outside the 
 door of his house a quarter of an hour later, and her 
 voice in reply was that of one who knew that the 
 feet of Fate were at her threshold.
 
 BOOK III
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 TWO LIFE PIECES 
 
 " IT'S a fine day." 
 
 * "Yes, it's beautiful." 
 
 Fleda wanted to ask how he knew, but hesitated 
 from feelings of delicacy. Ingolby seemed to under- 
 stand. A faint reflection of the old whimsical smile 
 touched his lips, and his hands swept over the 
 coverlet as though smoothing out a wrinkled map. 
 
 "The blind man gets new senses," he said dreamily. 
 "I feel things where I used to see them. How did I 
 know it was a fine day? Simple enough. When the 
 door opened there was only the lightest breath of 
 wind, and the air was fresh and crisp, and I could 
 smell the sun. One sense less, more degree of power 
 to the other senses. The sun warms the air, gives it 
 a flavour, and between it and the light frost, which 
 showed that it was dry outside, I got the smell of a 
 fine Fall day. Also, I heard the cry of the wild 
 fowl going South, and they wouldn't have made a 
 sound if it hadn't been a fine day. And also, and 
 likewise, and besides, and howsomever, I heard Jim 
 singing, and that nigger never sings in bad weather. 
 Jim's a fair-weather raven, and this morning he was 
 singing like a 'lav'rock in the glen.'" 
 3"
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 Being blind, he could not see that, suddenly, a 
 storm of emotion swept over her face. 
 
 His cheerfulness, his boylike simplicity, his in- 
 domitable spirit, which had survived so much, and 
 must still face so much, his almost childlike ways, and 
 the naive description of a blind man's perception, 
 waked in her an almost intolerable yearning. It was 
 not the yearning of a maid for a man. It was the 
 uncontrollable woman in her, the mother- thing, 
 belonging to the first woman that ever was protec- 
 tion of the weak, hovering love for the suffering, the 
 ministering spirit. 
 
 Since Ingolby had been brought to the house in the 
 pines, Madame Bulteel and herself, with Jim, had 
 nursed him through the Valley of the Shadow. 
 They had nursed him through brain-fever, through 
 agonies which could not have been borne with 
 consciousness. The tempest of the mind and the 
 pains of misfortune went on from hour to hour, from 
 day to day, almost without ceasing, until at last, 
 a shadow of his former self, but with a wonderful 
 light on his face which came from something within, 
 ae waited patiently for returning strength, propped 
 dp with pillows in the bed which had been Fleda's 
 own, in the room outside which Jethro Fawe had 
 sung his heathen serenade. 
 
 It was the room of the house which, catching the 
 morning sun, was best suited for an invalid. So she 
 had given it to him with an eagerness behind which 
 was the feeling that somehow it made him more of 
 the inner circle of her own life; for apart from every 
 other feeling she had, there was in her a deep spirit 
 312
 
 Two Life Pieces 
 
 of comradeship belonging to far-off times when her 
 life was that of the open road, the hillside and the 
 vale. In those days no man was a stranger; all 
 belonged. 
 
 To meet, and greet, and pass was the hourly event, 
 but the meeting and the greeting had in it the famil- 
 iarity of a common wandering, the sympathy of the 
 homeless. Had Ingolby been less to her than he was, 
 there would still have been the comradeship which 
 made her the great creature she was fast becoming. 
 It was odd that, as Ingolby became thinner and 
 thinner, and ever more wan, she, in spite of her 
 ceaseless nursing, appeared to thrive physically. 
 She had even slightly increased the fulness of her 
 figure. The velvet of her cheeks had grown richer, 
 and her eyes deeper with warm fire. It was as 
 though she flourished on giving : as though a hundred 
 nerves of being and feeling had opened up within 
 her and had expanded her life like some fine flower. 
 
 Gazing at Ingolby now there was a great hungering 
 desire in her heart. She looked at the sightless 
 eyes, and a passionate protest sprang to her lips 
 which, in spite of herself, broke forth in a sort of 
 moan. 
 
 "What is it?" Ingolby asked, with startled face. 
 
 "Nothing," she answered, "nothing. I pricked 
 my finger badly, that's all." 
 
 And, indeed, she had done so, but that would not 
 have brought the moan to her lips. 
 
 "Well, it didn't sound like a pricked finger com- 
 plaint," he remarked. "It was the kind of groan 
 I'd give if I had a bad pain inside."
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 "Ah, but you're a man!" she remarked lightly, 
 though two tears fell down her cheeks. 
 
 With an effort she recovered herself. "It's time 
 for your tonic," she added, and she busied herself 
 with giving it to him. "As soon as you have taken 
 it, I'm going for a walk, so you must make up your 
 mind to have some sleep." 
 
 "Am I to be left alone?" he asked, with an as- 
 sumed grievance in his voice. 
 
 "Madame Bulteel will stay with you," she replied. 
 
 "Do you need a walk so very badly?" he asked 
 presently. 
 
 "I don't suppose I need it, but I want it," 
 she answered. "My feet and the earth are very 
 friendly." 
 
 "Where do you walk?" he asked. 
 
 "Just anywhere," was her reply. "Sometimes up 
 the river, sometimes down, sometimes miles away in 
 the woods." 
 
 "Do you never take a gun with you?" 
 
 "Of course," she answered, nodding, as though 
 he could see. "I get wild pigeons and sometimes a 
 wild duck or a prairie-hen." 
 
 "That's right," he remarked; "that's right." 
 
 "I don't believe in walking just for the sake of 
 walking," she continued. "It doesn't do you any 
 good, but if you go for something and get it, that's 
 what puts the mind and the body right." 
 
 Suddenly his face grew grave. "Yes, that's it," 
 he remarked. "To go for something you want, a 
 long way off. You don't feel the fag when you're 
 thinking of the thing at the end; but you've got to
 
 Two Life Pieces 
 
 have the thing at the end, to keep making for it, or 
 there's no good going none at all. That's life; 
 that's how it is. It's no good only walking you've 
 got to walk somewhere. It's no good simply going 
 you've got to go somewhere. You've got to fight 
 for something. That's why, when they take the 
 something you fight for away when they break you 
 and cripple you, and you can't go anywhere for what 
 you want badly, life isn't worth living." 
 
 An anxious look came into her face. This was the 
 first time, since recovering consciousness, that he had 
 referred, even indirectly, to all that had happened. 
 She understood him well ah, terribly well! It was 
 the tragedy of the man stopped in his course because 
 of one mistake, though he had done ten thousand 
 wise things. The power taken from his hands, the 
 interrupted life, the dark future, the beginning again, 
 if ever his sight came back : it was sickening, heart- 
 breaking. 
 
 She saw it all in his face, but as if some inward 
 voice had spoken to him, his face cleared, the swift- 
 moving hands clasped in front of him, and he said 
 quietly: "But because it's life, there it is. You 
 have to take it as it comes." 
 
 He stopped a moment, and in the pause she 
 reached out her hand with a sudden passionate 
 gesture, to touch his shoulder, but she restrained 
 herself in time. 
 
 He seemed to feel what she was doing, and turned 
 his face towards her, a slight flush coming to his 
 cheeks. He smiled, and then he said: "How won- 
 derful you are ! You look ' ' 
 
 315
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 He checked himself, then added with a quizzical 
 smile : 
 
 "You are looking very well to-day, Miss Fleda 
 Druse, very well indeed. I like that dark-red dress 
 you're wearing." 
 
 An almost frightened look came into her eyes. It 
 was as though he could see, for she was wearing a 
 dark-red dress "wine-coloured," her father called 
 it, "maroon," Madame Bulteel called it. Could he 
 then see, after all?" 
 
 "How did you know it was dark-red?" she asked, 
 her voice shaking. 
 
 "Guessed it! Guessed it!" he answered almost 
 gleefully. ' ' Was I right ? Is it dark-red ? ' ' 
 
 "Yes, dark-red," she answered. "Was it really a 
 guess?" 
 
 "Ah, but the guessiest kind of a guess," he 
 replied. "But who can tell? I couldn't see it, 
 but is there any reason why the mind shouldn't 
 see when the eyes are no longer working? Come 
 now," he added, "I've a feeling that I can tell 
 things with my mind just as if I saw them. I 
 do see. I'll guess the time now with my mind's 
 eye." 
 
 Concentration came into his face. "It's three 
 minutes to twelve o'clock," he said decisively. 
 
 She took up the watch which lay on the table 
 beside the bed. 
 
 "Yes, it's just three minutes to twelve," she 
 declared in an awe-struck voice. "That's marvel- 
 lous how wonderful you are!" 
 
 "That's what I said of you a minute ago," he re- 
 316
 
 Two Life Pieces 
 
 turned. Then, with a swift change of voice and 
 manner, he added, "How long is it?" 
 
 "You mean, since you came here?" she asked, 
 divining what was in his mind. 
 
 "Exactly. How long?" 
 
 1 ' Six weeks, ' ' she answered. ' ' Six weeks and three 
 days." 
 
 "Why don't you add the hour, too?" he urged half- 
 plaintively, though he smiled. 
 
 "Well, it was three o'clock in the morning to the 
 minute," she answered. 
 
 "Old Father Time ought to make you his chief of 
 staff," he remarked gaily. "Now, I want to know," 
 he added, with a visible effort of determination, 
 "what has happened since three o'clock in the morn- 
 ing, six weeks and three days ago. I want you to 
 tell me what has happened to 'my concerns to the 
 railways, and also to the towns. I don't want you 
 to hide anything, because, if you do, I'll have Jim 
 in, and Jim, under proper control, will tell me the 
 whole truth, and perhaps more than the truth. 
 That's the way with Jim. When he gets started he 
 can't stop. Tell me exactly everything." 
 
 Anxiety drove the colour from her cheeks. She 
 shrank back. 
 
 "You must tell me," he urged. "I'd rather hear 
 it from you than from Dr. Rockwell, or Jim, or your 
 father. Your telling wouldn't hurt as much as any- 
 body else's, if there has to be any hurt. Don't 
 you understand but don't you understand?" he 
 urged. 
 
 She nodded to herself in the mirror on the wall
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 opposite. "I'll try to understand," she replied 
 presently. 
 
 "Tell me, then: have they put someone in my 
 place?" 
 
 "I understand so," she replied. 
 
 He remained silent for a moment, his face very 
 pale. 
 
 "Who is running the show?" he asked. 
 
 She told him. 
 
 "Oh, him!" he exclaimed. "He's dead against 
 my policy. He'll make a mess." 
 
 "They say he's doing that," she remarked. 
 
 He asked her a series of questions which she tried 
 to answer frankly, and he came to know that the 
 trouble between the two towns, which, after the 
 Orange funeral and his own disaster had subsided, 
 was up again; that the railways were in difficulties; 
 that there had been several failures in the town; 
 that one of the banks the Regent had closed its 
 doors; that Felix Marchand, having recovered from 
 the injury he had received from Gabriel Druse on 
 the day of the Orange funeral, had gone East for a 
 month and had returned; that the old trouble was 
 reviving in the mills, and that Marchand had linked 
 himself with the enemies of the group controlling the 
 railways hitherto directed by himself. 
 
 For a moment after she had answered his questions, 
 there was strong emotion in his face, and then it 
 cleared. 
 
 He reached out a hand towards her. How eagerly 
 she clasped it! It was cold, and hers was so warm 
 and firm and kind. 
 
 318
 
 Two Life Pieces 
 
 "True friend o' mine!" he said with feeling. 
 "How wonderful it is that somehow it all doesn't 
 seem to matter so much. I wonder why ? I wonder 
 Tell me about yourself, about your life," he added 
 abruptly, as though it had been a question he had 
 long wished to ask. In the tone was a quiet certainty 
 suggesting that she would not hesitate to answer. 
 
 "We have both had big breaks in our lives," he 
 went on. "I know that. I've lost everything, in a 
 way, by the break in my life, and I've an idea that 
 you gained everything when the break in yours 
 came. I didn't believe the story Jethro Fawe told 
 me, but still I knew there was some truth in it; 
 something that he twisted to suit himself. I 
 started life feeling I could conquer the world like 
 another Alexander or Napoleon. I don't know that 
 it was all conceit. It was the wish to do, to see 
 how far this thing on my shoulders" he touched 
 his head "and this great physical machine" he 
 touched his breast with a thin hand "would 
 carry me. I don't believe the main idea was 
 vicious. It was wanting to work a human brain 
 to its last volt of capacity, and to see what it could 
 do. I suppose I became selfish as I forged on. I 
 didn't mean to be, but concentration upon the 
 things I had to do prevented me from being the 
 thing I ought to be. I wanted, as they say, to get 
 there. I had a lot of irons in the fire too many 
 but they weren't put there deliberately. One thing 
 led to another, and one thing, as it were, hung upon 
 another, until they all got to be part of the scheme. 
 Once they got there, I had to carry them all on, I 
 319
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 couldn't drop any of them; they got to be my life. 
 It didn't matter that it all grew bigger and bigger, 
 and the risks got greater and greater. I thought 
 I could weather it through, and so I could have done, 
 if it hadn't been for a mistake and an accident; 
 but the mistake was mine. That's where the thing 
 nips the mistake was mine. I took too big a risk. 
 You see, I'd got so used to being lucky, it seemed as 
 if I couldn't go wrong. Everything had come my 
 way. Ever since I began in that Montreal railway 
 office, after leaving college, I hadn't a single set- 
 back. I pulled things off. I made money, and I 
 plumped it all into my railways and the Regent 
 Bank; and as you said a minute ago, the Regent 
 Bank has closed down. That cuts me clean out 
 of the game. What was the matter with the bank? 
 The manager?" 
 
 His voice was almost monotonous in its quietness. 
 It was as though he told the story of something 
 which had passed beyond chance or change. As it 
 unfolded to her understanding, she had seated her- 
 self near to his bed. The door of the room was open, 
 and in view outside on the landing sat Madame 
 Bulteel reading. She was not, however, near enough 
 to hear the conversation. 
 
 Ingolby's voice was low, but it sounded as loud as 
 a waterfall in the ears of the girl, who, in a few weeks, 
 had travelled great distances on the road called 
 Experience, that other name for life. 
 
 "It was the manager?" he repeated. 
 
 "Yes, they say so," she answered. "He specu- 
 lated with bank money." 
 320
 
 Two Life Pieces 
 
 "In what?" 
 
 "In your railways," she answered hesitatingly. 
 
 "Curious I dreamed that," Ingolby remarked 
 quietly, and leaned down and stroked the dog lying 
 at his feet. It had been with him through all his 
 sickness. "It must have been part of my delirium, 
 because, now that I've got my senses back, it's as 
 though someone had told me about it. Speculated 
 in my railways, eh? Chickens come home to roost, 
 don't they? I suppose I ought to be excited over it 
 all," he continued. "I suppose I ought. But the 
 fact is, you only have just the one long, big moment 
 of excitement when great trouble and tragedy come, 
 or else it's all excitement, all the time, and then you 
 go mad. That's the test, I think. When you're 
 struck by Fate, as a hideous war-machine might 
 strike you, and the whole terror of loss and ruin 
 bears down on you, you're either swept away in an 
 excitement that hasn't any end, or you brace your- 
 self, and become master of the shattering thing." 
 
 "You are a master," she interposed. "You are 
 the Master Man," she repeated admiringly. 
 
 He waved a hand deprecatingly. "Do you know, 
 when we talked together in the woods soon after you 
 ran the Rapids you remember the day if you had 
 said that to me then, I'd have cocked my head and 
 thought I was a jim-dandy, as they say. A Master 
 Man was what I wanted to be. But it's a pretty 
 barren thing to think, or to feel, that you're a 
 Master Man; because, if you are if you've had a 
 'scoop' all the way, as Jowett calls it, you can be as 
 sure as anything that no one cares a rap farthing 
 
 21 321
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 what happens to you. There are plenty who pre- 
 tend they care, but it's only because they're sailing 
 with the wind, and with your even keel. It's only 
 the Master Man himself that doesn't know in the 
 least he's that who gets anything out of it all." 
 
 "Aren't you getting anything out of it?" she 
 asked softly. "Aren't you Chief?" 
 
 At the familiar word Jowett always called him 
 Chief a smile slowly stole across his face. "I 
 really believe I am, thanks to you," he said nodding. 
 
 He was going to say, "Thanks to you, Fleda," but 
 he restrained himself. He had no right to be famil- 
 iar, to give an intimate turn to things. His game 
 was over; his journey of ambition was done. He 
 saw this girl with his mind's eye how much he 
 longed to see her with the eyes of the body in all 
 her strange beauty; and he knew that even if she 
 cared for him, such a sacrifice as linking her life with 
 his was impossible. Yet her very presence there was 
 like a garden of bloom to him: a garden full of the 
 odour of life, of vital things, of sweet energy and 
 happy being. Somehow, he and she were strangely 
 alike. He knew it. From the time he held her in 
 his arms at Carillon, he knew it. The great ad- 
 venturous spirit which was in him belonged also to 
 her. That was as sure as light and darkness. 
 
 "No, there's no master man in me, but I think I 
 know what one could be like," he remarked at last. 
 
 He straightened himself against the pillows. The 
 old look of power came to a face hardly strong 
 enough to bear it. It was so fine and thin now, 
 and the spirit in him was so prodigious. 
 322
 
 Two Life Pieces 
 
 "No one cares what happens to the man who 
 always succeeds; no one loves him," he continued. 
 "Do you know, in my trouble I've had more out of 
 nigger Jim's affection than I've had in my life. 
 Then there's Rockwell, Osterhaut, and Jowett, and 
 there's your father. It was worth while living to feel 
 the real thing." His hands went out as though 
 grasping something good and comforting. "I don't 
 suppose every man needs to be struck as hard as 
 I've been to learn what's what, but I've learned it. 
 I give you my word of honour, I've learned it." 
 
 Her face flushed and her eyes kindled greatly. 
 "Jim, Rockwell, Osterhaut, Jowett, and my father!" 
 she exclaimed. ' ' Of course trouble wouldn't do any- 
 thing but make them come closer round you. Poor 
 people live so near to misfortune all the time I 
 mean poor people like Jim, Osterhaut, and Jowett 
 that changes of fortune are just natural things to 
 them. As for my father, he has had to stretch out 
 his hands so often to those in trouble " 
 
 "That he carried me home on his shoulders from 
 the bridge six weeks and three days ago, at three 
 o'clock in the morning," interjected Ingolby with a 
 quizzical smile. 
 
 "Why did you omit Madame Bulteel and myself 
 when you mentioned those who showed their 
 friendship?" she asked, hesitating at the last word. 
 "Haven't we done our part?" 
 
 "I was talking of men," he answered. "One 
 
 knows what women do. They may leave you in the 
 
 bright days, not in the dark days. On the majority 
 
 of them you couldn't rely in prosperity, but in mis- 
 
 323
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 fortune you couldn't do anything else. They are 
 there with you. They're made that way. The best 
 life can give you in misfortune is a woman. It's 
 the great beginning-of-the-world thing in them. 
 Men can't stand prosperity, but women can stand 
 misfortune. Why, if Jim and Osterhaut and Jowett 
 and all the men of Lebanon and Manitou had de- 
 serted me, I shouldn't have been surprised; but I'd 
 have had to recast my philosophy if Fleda Druse 
 had turned her bonny brown head away." 
 
 It was evident he was making an effort to conquer 
 emotions which were rising in him; that he was play- 
 ing on the surface to prevent his deep feelings from 
 breaking forth. "Instead of which," he added ju- 
 bilantly, "here I am, in the nicest room in the world, 
 in a fine bed with springs like an antelope's heels." 
 
 He laughed, and hunched his back into the 
 mattress. It was the laugh of the mocker, but he 
 was mocking himself. She did not misunderstand. 
 It was a nice room, as he said. He had never seen 
 it with his eyes, but if he had seen it he would have 
 realized how like herself it was adorably fresh, 
 happily coloured, sumptuous and fine. It had sim- 
 ple curtains, white sheets, and a warm carpet on the 
 floor; and yet with something, too, that struck the 
 note of a life outside. A pennant of many colours 
 hung where two soft pink curtains joined, and at 
 the window and over the door was an ancient cross 
 in bronze and gold. It was not the simple Christian 
 cross of the modern world, but an ancient one which 
 had become a symbol of the Romanys, a sign to 
 mark the. highways, the guide of the wayfarers. 
 324
 
 Two Life Pieces 
 
 The pennant had been on the pole of the Ry's tent 
 in far-off days in the Roumelian country. In the 
 girl herself there was that which corresponded to the 
 gorgeous pennant and the bronze cross. It was not 
 in dress or in manner, for there was no sign of 
 garishness, of the unusual anywhere in manner she 
 was as well controlled as any woman of fashion, in 
 dress singularly reserved but in the depths of the 
 eyes there was some restless, unsettled thing, some 
 flicker of strange banners akin to the pennant at the 
 joining of the pink curtains. There had been some- 
 thing of the same look in Ingolby's eyes in the past, 
 only with him it was the sense of great adventure, 
 intrepid enterprise, a touch of vision and the beckon- 
 ing thing. That look was not in his eyes now. 
 Nothing was there; no life, no soul; only darkness. 
 But did that look still inhabit the eyes of the soul? 
 
 He answered the question himself. "I'd start 
 again in a different way if I could," he said musingly, 
 his face towards the girl. "It's easy to say that, 
 but I would. It isn't only the things you get, it's 
 how you use them. It isn't only the things you do, 
 it's why you do them. But I'll never have a chance 
 now; I'll never have a chance to try the new way. 
 I'm done." 
 
 Something almost savage leaped into her eyes a 
 wild, bitter protest, for it was her tragedy, too, if 
 he was not to regain his sight. The great impulse 
 of a nature which had been disciplined into reserve 
 broke forth. 
 
 "It isn't so," she said with a tremor in her voice. 
 All that he and she was in danger of losing came 
 325
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 home to her. "It isn't so. You shall get well 
 again. Your sight will come back. To-morrow, 
 perhaps to-day, Hindlip, the great oculist, comes from 
 New York. Mr. Warbeck, the Montreal man, holds 
 out hopes. If the New York man says the same, 
 why despair? Perhaps in another month you will 
 be on your feet again, out in the world, fighting, 
 working, mastering, just as you used to do." 
 
 A sudden stillness seemed to take possession of 
 him. His lips parted; his head was thrust forward 
 slightly as though he saw something in the distance. 
 He spoke scarcely above a whisper. 
 
 "I didn't know the New York man was coming. 
 I didn't know there was any hope at all," he said 
 with awe in his tones. 
 
 "We told you there was," she answered. 
 
 "Yes, I know. But I thought you were all only 
 trying to make it easier for me, and I heard Warbeck 
 say to Rockwell, when they thought I was asleep, 
 'It's ten to one against him.'" 
 
 1 ' Did you hear that ?" she said sorrowfully. ' ' I'm 
 so sorry; but Mr. Warbeck said afterwards only a 
 week ago that the chances were even. That's the 
 truth. On my soul and honour it's the truth. He 
 said the chances were even. It was he suggested 
 Mr. Hindlip, and Hindlip is coming now. He's on 
 the way. He may be here to-day. Oh, be sure, 
 be sure, be sure, it isn't all over. You said your 
 life was broken. It isn't. You said my life had 
 been broken. It wasn't. It was only the wrench of 
 a great change. Well, it's only the wrench of a 
 great change in your life. You said I gained every- 
 326
 
 Two Life Pieces 
 
 thing in the great change of my life. I did; and 
 the great change in your life won't be lost, it will be 
 gain, too. I know it; in my heart I know it." 
 
 With sudden impulse she caught his hand in both 
 of hers, and then with another impulse, which she 
 could not control, she caught his head to her bosom. 
 For one instant her arms wrapped him round, and 
 she murmured something in a language he did not 
 understand the language of the Roumelian country. 
 It was only one swift instant, and then with shocked 
 exclamation she broke away from him, dropped into 
 a chair, and buried her face in her hands. 
 
 He blindly reached out his hand towards her as if to 
 touch her. "Mother-girl, dear mother-girl that's 
 what you are," he said huskily. "What a great, 
 kind heart you've got!" 
 
 She did not reply, but sat with face hidden in her 
 hands, rocking backwards and forwards. He un- 
 derstood; he tried to help her. There was a great 
 joy in his heart, but he dared not give it utterance. 
 
 "Please tell me about your life about that great 
 change in it," he said at last in a low voice. "Per- 
 haps it would help me. Anyhow, I'd like to know, 
 if you feel you can tell me." 
 
 For a moment she was silent. Then she said to 
 him with an anxious note in her voice: "What do 
 you know about my life about the 'great change,' 
 as you call it?" 
 
 He reached out over the coverlet, felt for a sock 
 which he had been learning to knit, and, slowly plying 
 the needles, replied: "I only know what Jethro 
 Fawe told me, and he was a promiscuous liar." 
 3 2 7
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 "I don't think he lied about me," she answered 
 quietly. "He told you I was a Gipsy; he told you 
 that I was married to him. That was true. I was a 
 Gipsy. I was married to him in the Romany way, 
 when I was a child of three, and I never saw him 
 again until here, the other day, on the Sagalac." 
 
 "You were married to him as much as I am," he 
 interjected scornfully. "That was a farce. It was 
 only a promise to pay on the part of your father. 
 There was nothing in that. Jethro Fawe could not 
 claim on that." 
 
 "He has tried to do so," she answered, "and if I 
 were still a Gipsy he would have the right to do so 
 from his standpoint." 
 
 "That sounds silly to me," Ingolby remarked, his 
 fingers moving now more quickly with the needles. 
 
 "No, it isn't silly," she said, her voice almost as 
 softly monotonous as his had been when he told her 
 of his life a little while before. It was as though she 
 was looking into her own mind and heart and speak- 
 ing to herself. "It isn't silly," she repeated. "I 
 don't think you understand. Just because a race 
 like the Gipsies have no country and no home, so 
 they must have things that bind them which other 
 people don't need in the same way. Being the 
 vagrants of the earth, so they must have things that 
 hold them tighter than any written laws made by 
 King or Parliament. Unless the Gipsies kept their 
 laws sacred they couldn't hold together at all. 
 They're iron and steel, the Gipsy laws. They can't 
 be stretched, and they can't be twisted. They can 
 only be broken, and then there's no argument about 
 328
 
 Two Life Pieces 
 
 it. When they are broken, there's the penalty, and 
 it has to be met." 
 
 Ingolby stopped knitting for a moment. "You 
 don't mean that a penalty could touch you?" he 
 asked incredulously. 
 
 "Not for breaking a law," she answered. "I'm 
 not a Gipsy any more. I gave my word about that, 
 and so did my father; and I'll keep it." 
 
 "Please tell me about it," he urged. "Tell me, 
 so that I can understand everything." 
 
 There was a long pause in which Ingolby inspected 
 carefully with his fingers the work which he was 
 doing, but at last Fleda's voice came to him, as it 
 seemed out of a great distance, while she began to 
 tell of her first memories: of her life by the Danube 
 and the Black Sea, and drew for him a picture, so 
 as she could recall it, of her marriage with Jethro, 
 and of the years that followed. Now and again as 
 she told of some sordid things, of the challenge of the 
 law in different countries, of the coarse vagabondage 
 of the Gipsy people in this place or in that, and some 
 indignity put upon her father, or some humiliating 
 incident, her voice became low and pained. It 
 seemed as if she meant that he should see all she had 
 been in that past, which still must be part of the 
 present and have its place in the future, however far 
 away all that belonged to it would be. She appeared 
 to search her mind to find that which would prejudice 
 him against her. While speaking with slow scorn 
 of the life which she had lived as a Gipsy, yet she 
 tried to make him understand, too, that, in the days 
 when she belonged to it, it all seemed natural to her, 
 329
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 and that its sordidness, its vagabondage did not 
 produce repugnance in her mind when she was 
 part of it. Unwittingly she over-coloured the pic- 
 ture, and he knew she did. 
 
 In spite of herself, however, some aspects of the 
 old life called forth pictures of happy Nature, of 
 busy animal life of wood and glen and stream and 
 footpath which was exquisite in its way. She was 
 in spirit at one with the multitudinous world of 
 nature among which so many men and women 
 lived, without seeing or knowing. It was all unde- 
 signedly a part of herself, and she was one of a 
 population in a universal nation whose devout 
 citizen she was. Sometimes in response to an inter- 
 jection from Ingolby, deftly made, she told of some 
 incident which revealed as great a poetic as dramatic 
 instinct. As she talked, Ingolby in his imagination 
 pictured her as a girl of ten or twelve, in a dark-red 
 dress, brown curls falling in profusion on her shoul- 
 ders, with a clear, honest, beautiful eye, and a face 
 that only spoke of a joy of living, in which the small 
 things were the small things and the great things 
 were the great: the perfect proportion of sane life 
 in a sane world. 
 
 Now and again, carried away by the history of 
 things remembered, she visualized scenes for him 
 with the ardour of an artist and a lover of created 
 things. He realized how powerful a hold the old 
 life still had upon her. She understood it, too, for 
 when at last she told of the great event in England 
 which changed her life, and made her a deserter from 
 Gipsy life; when she came to the giving of the 
 330
 
 Two Life Pieces 
 
 pledge to a dying woman, and how she had kept that 
 pledge, and how her father had kept it, sternly, 
 faithfully, in spite of all it involved, she said to him: 
 
 "It may seem strange to you, living as I live now 
 in one spot, with everything to make life easy, that 
 I should long sometimes for that old life. I hate it 
 in my heart of hearts, yet there's something about it 
 that belongs to me, that's behind me, if that tells 
 you anything. It's as though there was some other 
 self in me which reached far, far back into centuries, 
 that wills me to do this and wills me to do that. It 
 sounds mad to you of course, but there have been 
 times when I have had a wild longing to go back to it 
 all, to what some Gorgio writers call the pariah 
 world the Ishmaelites." 
 
 More than once Ingolby's heart throbbed heavily 
 against his breast as he felt the passion of her nature, 
 its extraordinary truthfulness, making it clear to 
 him by indirect phrases that even Jethro Fawe, whom 
 she despised, still had a hateful fascination for her. 
 It was all at variance to her present self, but it sum- 
 moned her through the long avenues of ancestry, 
 predisposition; through the secret communion of 
 those who, being dead, yet speak. 
 
 "It's a great story told in a great way," he said, 
 when she had finished. "It's the most honest thing 
 I ever heard, but it's not the most truthful thing I 
 ever heard. I don't think we can tell the exact 
 truth about ourselves. We try to be honest; we 
 are savagely in earnest about it, and so we exag- 
 gerate the bad things we do, and we often show dis- 
 trust of the good things we do. That's not a fair
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 picture. I believe you've told me the truth as you 
 see it and feel it, but I don't think it's the real truth. 
 In my mind I sometimes see an oriel window in the 
 college where I spent three years. I used to work 
 and think for hours in that oriel window, and in the 
 fights I've been having lately I've looked back and 
 thought I wanted it again; wanted to be there in the 
 peace of it all, with the books, and the lectures, and 
 the drone of history, and the drudgery of examina- 
 tions; but if I did go back to it, three days 'd sicken 
 me, and if you went back to the Gipsy life three 
 days 'd sicken you." 
 
 "Yes, I know. Three hours would sicken me. 
 But what might not happen in those three hours! 
 Can't you understand?" 
 
 Suddenly she got to her feet with a passionate 
 exclamation, her clenched hands went to her temples 
 in an agony of emotion. "Can't you understand?" 
 she repeated. "It's the going back at all for 
 three days, for three hours, for three minutes that 
 counts. It might spoil everything; it might kill 
 my life." 
 
 His face flushed, crimsoned, then became pale; 
 his hands ceased moving; the knitting lay still on his 
 knee. 
 
 "Maybe, but you aren't going back for three 
 minutes, any more than I'm going back to the oriel 
 window for three seconds," he said. "We dreamers 
 have a lot of agony in thinking about the things 
 we're never going to do just as much agony as in 
 thinking about the things we've done. Every one 
 of us dreamers ought to be insulated. We ought to 
 332
 
 Two Life Pieces 
 
 wear emotional lightning-rods to cany off the brain- 
 waveslnto the ground. 
 
 "I've never heard such a wonderful story," he 
 added, after an instant, with an intense longing to 
 hold out his arms to her, and a still more intense 
 will to do no such wrong. A blind man had no 
 right or title to be a slave-owner, for that was what 
 marriage to him would be. A wife would be a 
 victim. He saw himself, felt himself being gradu- 
 ally devitalized, with only the placid brain left, con- 
 sidering only the problem of hourly comfort, and 
 trying to neutralize the penalties of blindness. She 
 must not be sacrificed to that, for apart from all else 
 she had greatness of a kind in her. He knew far 
 better than he had said of the storm of emotion in 
 her, and he knew that she had not exaggerated the 
 temptation which sang in her ears. Jethro Fawe 
 the thought of the man revolted him; and yet there 
 was something about the fellow, a temperamental 
 power, the glamour and garishness of Nature's gifts, 
 prostituted though they were, finding expression in a 
 striking personality, in a body of athletic grace a 
 man-beauty. 
 
 "Have you seen Jethro Fawe lately?" he asked. 
 
 "Not since" she was going to say not since the 
 morning her father had passed the sentence of the 
 patrin upon him; but she paused in time. "Not 
 since everything happened to you," she added 
 presently. 
 
 "He knows the game is up," Ingolby remarked 
 with forced cheerfulness. "He won't be asking for 
 any more." 
 
 333
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 "It's time for your milk and brandy," she said 
 suddenly, emotion subsiding and a look of purpose 
 coming into her face. She poured out the liquid, 
 and gave the glass into his hand. His fingers 
 touched hers. 
 
 "Your hands are cold," she said to him. 
 
 "Cold hands, warm heart," he chattered. 
 
 A curious, wilful, rebellious look came into her 
 eyes. "I shouldn't have thought it in your case," 
 she said, and with sudden resolve turned towards 
 the door. "I'll send Madame Bulteel," she added. 
 "I'm going for a walk." 
 
 She had betrayed herself so much, had shown so 
 recklessly what she felt, and yet, yet why did he not 
 she did not know what she wanted him to do. 
 It was all a great confusion. Vaguely she realized 
 what had been working in him, but yet the knowl- 
 edge was dim indeed. She was a woman. In her 
 heart of hearts she knew that he did care for her, 
 and yet in her heart of hearts she denied that he 
 cared. 
 
 She was suddenly angry with herself, angry with 
 him, the poor blind man, back from the Valley of the 
 Shadow. She had not reached the door, however, 
 when Madame Bulteel entered the room. 
 
 "The doctor from New York has come," she said, 
 holding out a note from Dr. Rockwell. "He will 
 be here in a couple of hours." 
 
 Fleda turned back towards the bed. 
 
 "Good luck!" she said. "You'll see, it will be all 
 right." 
 
 "Certainly I'll see if it's all right," he said cheer- 
 334
 
 Two Life Pieces 
 
 fully. "Am I tidy? Have I used Pears' soap?" 
 He would have his joke at his own funeral if pos- 
 sible. 
 
 "There are two hours to get you fit to be seen," 
 she rejoined with raillery, infected by his cheer- 
 fulness in spite of herself. "Madame Bulteel is 
 very brave. Nothing is too hard for her!" 
 
 An instant later she was gone, with her heart tell- 
 ing her to go back to him, not to leave him, but yet 
 with a longing stronger still driving her to the open 
 world, to which she could breathe her trouble in 
 great gasps, as she sped onward through the woods 
 and by the river. To love a blind man was sheer 
 madness, but in her was a superstitious belief that 
 he would see again. It prevailed against the doubts 
 and terrors. It made her resent his own sense of 
 fatality, his own belief that he would be in darkness 
 all his days. 
 
 In the room where he awaited the verdict of the 
 expert, he kept saying to himself: 
 
 "She would have made everything else look cheap 
 if it could have been."
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 THE SNARE OP THE FOWLER 
 
 '"THE last rays of the setting sun touched the 
 * gorgeous Autumn woods with a loving, bright 
 glow, and the day stole pensively away into a purple 
 bed beyond the sight of the eyes. From a lonely 
 spot by the river, Fleda watched the westering gleam 
 until it vanished, her soul alive to the melancholy 
 beauty of it all. Not a human being seemed to be 
 within the restricted circle of her vision. There 
 were only to be seen the deep woods, in myriad tints 
 of bronze and red and saffron, and the swift-flowing 
 river. Overhead was the Northern sky, so clear, so 
 thrilling, and the stars were beginning to sparkle 
 in the incredibly swift twilight which links daytime 
 and nighttime in that Upper Land. Lonely and 
 delicately sad it all looked, but there was no feeling 
 of loneliness among those who lived the life of the 
 Sagalac. Many a man has stood on a wide plain of 
 snow, white to the uttermost horizon, or in the 
 yellow-brown grass of the Summer prairie, empty of 
 all human life so far as eye could see, and yet has felt 
 no solitude. It is as though the air itself is in- 
 habited by a throng of happy comrades whispering 
 in the communion of the invisible world. 
 336
 
 The Snare of the Fowler 
 
 As a child Fleda had often gazed upon just such 
 scenes, lonely and luminous, but she was only con- 
 scious then of a vague and pleasant awe, a kindly 
 confusion, which, like the din of innumerable bees, 
 lulled wonder to sleep. Even as a child, however, 
 something of what it meant had pierced her awe 
 and wonder. Once as she crossed a broken, bare 
 mountain of Roumania she had seen a wild ass 
 perched upon a high summit gazing, as it were, over 
 the wide valley, where beneath, among the rocks, 
 other wild asses wandered. There was something so 
 statue-like in this immovable wild creature that 
 Fleda had watched it till it was hid from her view 
 by a jutting rock. But the thing which made a 
 lasting impression, drawing her nearer -to nature- 
 life than all that had chanced since she was born, 
 was the fact that on returning, hours after, the wild 
 ass was still standing upon the summit of the liill, 
 still gazing across the valley. Or was it gazing 
 across the valley? Was there some other vision 
 commanding its sight? 
 
 So a young wife not yet a mother loses herself for 
 hours together in a vista of unexplored experience. 
 Fleda had passed on, out of sight of the wild ass on 
 the hills, but for ever after the memory of it re- 
 mained with her and the picture of it sprang to her 
 eye innumerable times. The hypnotized wild thing 
 hypnotized by its own vague instinct, or by some- 
 thing outside itself became to her as the Sphinx 
 to the Egyptian, the everlasting question of existence. 
 
 Now, as she watched the day fleeing, and night 
 with swift stealthiness coming on, that unforgettable 
 
 22 337
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 picture of the Roumanian hills came to her again. 
 The instinct of those far-off days which had been 
 little removed from the finest animal intelligence 
 had now developed into thought. Brain and soul 
 strove to grasp what it all meant, and what the 
 revelation was between Nature and herself. Nature 
 was so vast ; she was so insignificant ; changes in its 
 motionless inorganic life were imperceptible save 
 through the telescopes of years; but she, like the 
 wind, the water, and the clouds, was variable, in- 
 constant. Was there any real relation between the 
 vast, imperturbable earth, its seas, its forests, its 
 mountains and its plains, its life of tree and plant 
 and flower and the men and women dotted on its 
 surface? Did they belong to each other, or were 
 mankind only, as it were, vermin infesting the de- 
 sirable world? Did they belong to each other? 
 It meant so much if they did belong, and she loved 
 to think they did. Many a time she kissed the 
 smooth bole of a maple or whispered to it; or laid 
 her cheek against a mossy rock and murmured a 
 greeting in the spirit of a companionship as old as the 
 making of the world. 
 
 On the evening of this day of her destiny carry- 
 ing the story of her own fate within its twenty-four 
 hours she was in a mood of detachment from life's 
 routine. As at a great opera, a sensitive spirit loses 
 itself in visions alien to the music and yet born of it, 
 so she, lost in this primeval scene before her, saw 
 visions of things to be. 
 
 If Ingolby's sight came back! In her abstraction 
 she saw him with sight restored and by her side, and 
 338
 
 The Snare of the Fowler 
 
 even in that joy her mind felt a hovering sense of 
 invasion, no definite, visible thing, but a presence 
 which made shadow. Suddenly oppressed by it, she 
 turned back into the woods from the river-bank 
 to make for home. She had explored nearly every 
 portion of this river-country for miles up and down, 
 but on this evening, lost in her dreams, she had 
 wandered into less familiar regions. There was no 
 chance of her being lost, so long as she kept near to 
 the river, and indeed by instinct and not by thought 
 or calculation she made her way about at all times. 
 Turned homeward, she walked for about a quarter of 
 a mile, retreading the path by which she had come. 
 It was growing darker, and, being in unfamiliar sur- 
 roundings, she hurried on, though she knew well 
 what course to take. Following the bank of the 
 river she would have increased her walk greatly, as 
 the stream made a curve at a point above Manitou, 
 and then came back again to its original course; 
 so she cut across the promontory, taking the most 
 direct line homeward. 
 
 Presently, however, she became conscious of other 
 people in the wood besides herself. She saw no one, 
 but she heard breaking twigs, the stir of leaves, the 
 nutter of a partridge which told of human presence. 
 The underbrush was considerable, darkness was 
 coming on, and she had a sense of being surrounded. 
 It agitated her, but she pulled herself together, stood 
 still and admonished herself. She called herself a 
 fool; she asked herself if she was going to be a 
 coward. She laughed out loud at her own appre- 
 hension; but a chill stole into her blood when she 
 339
 
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 heard near by there was no doubt about it now 
 mockery of her own laughter. Then suddenly, be- 
 fore she could organize her senses, a score of men 
 seemed to rise up from the ground around her, to 
 burst out from the bushes, to drop from the trees, 
 and to storm upon her. She had only time to 
 realize that they were Romanys, before scarfs 
 were thrown around her nead, bound around her 
 body, and, unconscious, she was carried away into 
 the deep woods. 
 
 When she regained consciousness Fleda found her- 
 self in a tent, set in a kind of prairie amphitheatre 
 valanced by shrubs and trees. Bright fires burned 
 here and there, and dark-featured men squatted upon 
 the ground, cared for their horses, or busied them- 
 selves near two large caravans, at the doors or on the 
 steps of which now and again appeared a woman. 
 
 She had waked without moving, had observed the 
 scene without drawing the attention of a man a 
 sentry who sat beside the tent door. The tent 
 was empty save for herself. There was little in it 
 besides the camp-bed against the tent wall, upon 
 which she lay, and the cushions supporting her head. 
 She had waked carefully, as it were: as though some 
 inward monitor had warned her of impending dan- 
 ger. She realized that she had been kidnapped by 
 Romanys, and that the hand behind the business 
 was that of Jethro Fawe. The adventurous and 
 reckless Fawe family had its many adherents in the 
 Romany world, and Jethro was its head, the hered- 
 itary claimant for its leadership. 
 340
 
 The Snare of the Fowler 
 
 Notwithstanding the Ry of Rys' prohibition, 
 there had drawn nearer and ever nearer to him, 
 from the Romany world he had abandoned, many 
 of his people, never, however, actually coming 
 within his vision till the appearance of Jethro Fawe. 
 Here and there on the prairie, to a point just beyond 
 Gabriel Druse's horizon, they had come from all 
 parts of the world ; and Jethro, reckless and defiant 
 under the Sentence, and knowing that the chances 
 against his life were a million to one, had deter- 
 mined on one bold stroke which, if it failed, would 
 make his fate no worse, and, if it succeeded, would 
 give him his wife and, maybe, headship over all the 
 Romany world. For weeks he had planned, watched 
 and waited, filling the woods with his adherents, 
 secretly following Fleda day by day, until, at last, 
 the opportunity seemed perfect; and here she lay 
 in a Romany tan once more, with the flickering fires 
 outside in the night, and the sentry at her doorway. 
 This watchman was not Jethro Fawe, but she knew 
 well that Jethro was not far off. 
 
 Through the open door of the tent, for some 
 minutes, her eyes studied the segment of the circle 
 within her vision, and she realized that here was an 
 organized attempt to force her back into the 
 Romany world. If she repudiated the Gorgio life 
 and acknowledged herself a Romany once again, 
 she knew her safety would be secured; but in truth 
 she had no fear for her life, for no one would dare to 
 defy the Ry of Rys so far as to kill his daughter. 
 But she was in danger of another kind in deep and 
 terrible danger; and she knew it well. As the
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 thought of it took possession of her, her heart seemed 
 almost to burst. Not fear, but anger and emotion 
 possessed her. All the Romany in her stormed back 
 again from the past. It sent her to her feet with a 
 scarcely smothered cry. She was not quicker, 
 however, than was the figure at the tent door, which, 
 with a half-dozen others, sprang up as she appeared. 
 A hand was raised, and, as if by magic, groups of 
 Gipsies, some sitting, some standing, some with the 
 Gipsy fiddle, one or two with flutes, began a Romany 
 chant in a high, victorious key, and women threw 
 upon the fire powders from which flamed up many 
 coloured lights. 
 
 In a moment the camp was transformed. From 
 the woods around came swarthy -faced men, with 
 great gold rings in their ears and bright scarfs around 
 their necks or waists, some of them handsome, dirty 
 and insolent; others ugly, watchful, and quiet in 
 manner and face ; others still most friendly and land 
 in face and manner. All showed instant respect for 
 Fleda. They raised their hands in a gesture of 
 salutation as a Zulu chief thrusts up a long arm and 
 shouts "Inkoos!" to one whom he honours. Some, 
 however, made the sweeping Oriental gesture of the 
 right hand, palm upward, and almost touching the 
 ground a sign of obedience and infinite respect. 
 It had all been well arranged. Skilfully managed 
 as it was, however, there was something in it deeper 
 than theatrical display or dramatic purpose. 
 
 It was clear that many of them were deeply moved 
 at being in the presence of the daughter of the Ry of 
 Rys, who had for so long exiled himself. Racial, 
 342
 
 The Snare of the Fowler 
 
 family, clan feeling spoke in voice and gesture, in 
 look and attitude ; but yet there were small groups of 
 younger men whose salutations were perfunctory, 
 not to say mocking. These were they who resented 
 deeply Fleda's defection, and truthfully felt that she 
 had passed out of their circle for ever; that she 
 despised them, and looked down on them from 
 another sphere. They were all about the age of 
 Jethro Fawe, but were of a less civilized type, and 
 had semi-barbarism written all over them. Unlike 
 Jethro they had never known the world of cities. 
 They repudiated Fleda, because their ambition 
 could not reach to her. They recognized the touch 
 of fashion and of form, of a worldly education, of a 
 convention which lifted her away from the tan and 
 the caravan, from the everlasting itinerary. They 
 had not had Jethro's experiences in fashionable 
 hotels of Europe, at midnight parties, at gay sup- 
 pers, at garish dances, where Gorgio ladies answered 
 the amorous looks of the ambitious Romany with 
 the fiddle at his chin. Because these young Ro- 
 manys knew they dare not aspire, they were re- 
 sentful; but Jethro, the head of the rival family 
 and the son of the dead claimant to the headship, 
 had not such compulsory modesty. He had ranged 
 far and wide, and his expectations were extensive. 
 He was nowhere to be seen in the groups which 
 sang and gestured in the light of the many coloured 
 fires, though once or twice Fleda's quickened ear 
 detected his voice, exulting, in the chorus of song. 
 Presently, as she stood watching, listening, and 
 strangely moved in spite of herself by the sudden 
 343
 
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 dramatic turn which things had taken, a seat was 
 broaght to her. It 'was a handsome stool, looted 
 perhaps from some chateau in the Old World, and 
 over it was thrown a dark-red cloth which gave a 
 semblance of dignity to the seat of authority, which 
 it was meant to be. 
 
 Fleda did not refuse the honour. She had choked 
 back the indignant words which had rushed to her 
 lips as she left the tent where she had been lying. 
 Prudence had bade her await developments. She 
 could not yet make up her mind what to do. It was 
 clear that a bold and deep purpose lay behind it all, 
 and she could not tell how far-reaching it was, nor 
 what it represented of rebellion against her father's 
 authority. That it did represent rebellion she had 
 no doubt. She was well enough aware of the claims 
 of Jethro's dead father to the leadership, abandoned 
 for three thousand pounds and marriage with her- 
 self; and she was also aware that while her father's 
 mysterious isolation might possibly have developed 
 a reverence for him, yet active pressure and calumny 
 might well have done its work. Also, if the marriage 
 was repudiated, Jethro would be justified in resum- 
 ing the family claim to the leadership. 
 
 She seated herself upon the scarlet seat with a 
 gesture of thanks, while the salutations and greetings 
 increased; then she awaited events, thrilled by the 
 weird and pleasant music, with its touches of Eastern 
 fantasy. In spite of herself she was moved, as 
 Romanys, men and women, ran forward in excite- 
 ment with arms raised towards her as though they 
 meant to strike her, then suddenly stopped short, 
 344
 
 The Snare of the Fowler 
 
 made obeisance, called a greeting, and ran backwards 
 to their places. 
 
 Presently a group of men began a ceremony or 
 ritual, before which the spectators now and again 
 covered their eyes, or bent their heads low, or 
 turned their backs, and raised their hands in a sort 
 of ascription. As the ceremony neared its end, 
 with its strange genuflections, a woman dressed in 
 white was brought forward, her hands bound behind 
 her, her hair falling over her shoulders, and after 
 a moment of apparent denunciation on the part of 
 the head of the ceremony, she was suddenly thrown 
 to the ground, and the pretence of drawing a knife 
 across her throat was made. As Fleda watched it 
 she shuddered, but presently braced herself, because 
 she knew that this ritual was meant to show what 
 the end must be of those who, like herself, proved 
 traitor to the traditions of race. 
 
 It was at this point, when fifty knives flashed in 
 the air, with vengeful exclamations, that Jethro 
 Fawe appeared in the midst of the crowd. He was 
 dressed in the well-known clothes which he had worn 
 since the day he first declared himself at Gabriel 
 Druse's home, and, compared with his friends around 
 him, he showed to advantage. There was command 
 in his bearing, and experience of life had given him 
 primitive distinction. 
 
 For a moment he stood looking at Fleda in un- 
 disguised admiration, for she made a remarkable 
 picture. Animal beauty was hers, too. There was 
 a delicate, athletic charm in her body and bearing; 
 but it added to, rather than took away from, the 
 345
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 authority of her presence, so differing from Jethro. 
 She had never compared herself with others, and 
 her passionate intelligence would have rebelled 
 against the supremacy of the body. She had no 
 physical vanity, but she had some mental vanity, 
 and it placed mind so far above matter that her 
 beauty played no part in her calculations. At sight 
 of him, Fleda's blood quickened, but in indignation 
 and in no other sense. As he came towards her, 
 however, despising his vanity as she did, she felt 
 how much he was above all those by whom he was 
 surrounded. She realized his talent, and it almost 
 made her forget his cunning and his loathsomeness. 
 As he came near to her he made a slight gesture to 
 someone in the crowd, and a chorus of salutations 
 rose. 
 
 Composed and still she waited for him to come 
 quite close to her, and the look in her face was like 
 that of one who was scarcely conscious of what was 
 passing around her, whose eyes saw distant things 
 of infinite moment. 
 
 A few feet away from her he spoke. 
 
 ' ' Daughter of the Ry of Rys, you are among your 
 own people once again, ' ' he said. ' ' From everywhere 
 in the world they have come to show their love for 
 you. You would not have come to them of your 
 own free will, because a madness got hold of you, and 
 so they came to you. You cut yourself off from 
 them and told yourself you had become a Gorgio. 
 But that was only your madness; and madness can 
 be cured. We are the Fawes, the ancient Fawes, 
 who ruled the Romany people before the Druses 
 346
 
 The Snare of the Fowler 
 
 came to power. We are of the ancient blood, yet 
 we are faithful to the Druse that rules over us. 
 His word prevails, although his daughter is mad. 
 Daughter of the Ry of Rys, you have seen us once 
 again. We have sung to you; we have spoken to 
 you; we have told you what is in our hearts; we 
 have shown you how good is the end of those who 
 are faithful, and how terrible is the end of the traitor. 
 Do not forget it. Speak to us. " 
 
 Fleda had a fierce desire to spring to her feet and 
 declare to them all that the sentence of the patrin 
 had been passed upon Jethro Fawe, but she laid a 
 hand upon herself. She knew they were unaware 
 that the Sentence had been passed, else they would 
 not have been with Jethro. In that case none 
 would give him food or shelter or the hand of friend- 
 ship; none dare show him any kindness; and it was 
 the law that anyone against whom he committed an 
 offence, however small, might take his life. The 
 Sentence had been like a cloud upon her mind ever 
 since her father had passed it; she could not endure 
 the thought of it. She could not bring herself to 
 speak of it to denounce him. Sooner or later the 
 Sentence would reach every Romany everywhere, 
 and Jethro would pass into the darkness of oblivion, 
 not in his own time nor in the time of Fate. The 
 man was abhorrent to her, yet his claim was there. 
 Mad and bad as it was, he made his claim of her 
 upon ancient rights, and she was still enough a 
 Romany to see his point of view. 
 
 Getting to her feet slowly, she ignored Jethro, 
 looked into the face of the crowd, and said: 
 347
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 "I am the daughter of the Ry of Rys still, though 
 I am a Romany no longer. I made a pledge to be 
 no more a Romany and I will keep it; yet you and 
 all Romany people are dear to me because through 
 long generations the Druses have been of you. 
 You have brought me here against my will. Do 
 you think the Ry of Rys will forgive that ? In your 
 words you have been kind to me, but yet you have 
 threatened me. Do you think that a Druse has 
 any fear? Did a Druse ever turn his cheek to be 
 smitten? You know what the Druses are. I am 
 a Druse still. I will not talk longer, I have nothing 
 to say to you all except that you must take me back 
 to my father, and I will see that he forgives you. 
 Some of you have done this out of love; some of 
 you have done it out of hate ; yet set me free again 
 upon the path to my home, and I shall forget it, 
 and the Ry of Rys will forget it." 
 
 At that instant there suddenly came forward from 
 the doorway of a tent on the outskirts of the crowd a 
 stalwart woman, with a strong face and a self-reliant 
 manner. She was still young, but her slightly pock- 
 marked countenance showed the wear and tear of 
 sorrow of some kind. She had, indeed, lost her 
 husband and her father in the Montenegrin wars. 
 Hastening forward to Fleda she reached out a 
 hand. 
 
 "Come with me," she said; "come and sleep in 
 my tent to-night. To-morrow you shall go back 
 to the Ry of Rys, perhaps. Come with me." 
 
 There was a sudden murmuring in the crowd, 
 which was stilled by a motion of Jethro Fawe's hand, 
 348
 
 The Snare of the Fowler 
 
 and a moment afterwards Fleda gave her hand to 
 the woman. 
 
 "I will go with you," Fleda said. Then she 
 turned to Jethro: "I wish to speak to you alone, 
 Jethro Fawe," she added. 
 
 He laughed triumphantly. "The wife of Jethro 
 Fawe wishes to speak with him," he bombastically 
 cried aloud to the assembled people, and he pre- 
 pared to follow Fleda. 
 
 As Fleda entered the woman's tent a black-eyed 
 girl, with tousled hair and a bold, sensual face, ran 
 up to Jethro, and in an undertone of evil suggestion 
 said to him: 
 
 "To-night is yours, Jethro, You can make to- 
 morrow sure."
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 THE SECRET MAN 
 
 are wasting your time." 
 Fleda said the words with a quiet deter- 
 mination, and yet in the tone was a slight over- 
 emphasis which was like a call upon reserve forces 
 within herself. 
 
 "Time is nothing to me," was the complete reply, 
 clothed in a tone of soft irony. "I'm young enough 
 to waste it. I've plenty of it in my knapsack." 
 
 "Have you forgotten the Sentence of the Patrin?" 
 
 Fleda asked the question in a voice which showed 
 a sudden access of determination. 
 
 "He will have to wipe it out after to-morrow," 
 replied the other with a gleam of sulky meaning and 
 furtive purpose in his eyes. 
 
 "If you mean that I will change my mind to- 
 morrow, and be your wife, and return to the Gipsy 
 life, it is the thought of a fool. I asked you to come 
 here to speak with me because I was sure I could 
 make you see things as they truly are. I wanted to 
 explain why I did not tell the Romanys outside there 
 that the Sentence had been passed on you. I did 
 not tell them because I can't forget that your people 
 and my people have been sib for hundreds of years;
 
 The Secret Man 
 
 that you and I were children together; that we were 
 sealed to one another when neither of us could have 
 any say about it. If I had remained a Gipsy, who 
 can tell my mind might have become like yours! 
 I think there must be something rash and bad in me 
 somewhere, because I tell you frankly now that a 
 chord in my heart rang when you made your wild 
 speeches to me there in the Hut in the Wood months 
 ago, even when I hated you, knowing you for what 
 you are." 
 
 "That was because there was another man," 
 interjected Jethro. 
 
 She inclined her head. "Yes, it was partly be- 
 cause of another man," she replied. "It is a man 
 who suffers because of you. When he was alone 
 among his foes, a hundred to one, you betrayed him. 
 That itself would have made me despise you to the 
 end of my life, even if the man had been nothing 
 at all to me. It was a low, cowardly thing to do. 
 You did it; and if you were my brother, I would 
 hate you for it; if you were my father, I should leave 
 your house; if you were my husband, I should kill 
 you. I asked you to speak with me now because 
 I thought that if you would go away far away 
 promising never to cross my father's path, or my 
 path, again, I could get him to withdraw the Sen- 
 tence. You have kidnapped me. Where do you 
 think you are? In Mesopotamia? You can't break 
 the law of this country and escape as you would 
 there. They don't take count of Romany custom 
 here. Not only you, but every one of the Fawes 
 here will be punished if the law reaches for your
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 throat. I want you to escape, and I tell you to go 
 now. Go back to Europe. I advise you this for 
 your own sake because you are a Fawe and of the 
 clan." 
 
 The blood mounted to Jethro's forehead, and he 
 made an angry gesture. "And leave you here for 
 him ! Mi Duvel! I can only die once, and I would 
 rather die near you than far away," he exclaimed. 
 
 His eyes had a sardonic look, there was a savage 
 edge to his tongue, yet his face was flushed with 
 devouring emotion and he was quivering with hope. 
 That which he called love was flooding the field 
 of his feelings, and the mad thing the toxic impulse 
 which is deep in the brain of Eastern races bled 
 into his brain now. He was reckless, rebellious 
 against fate, insanely wilful, and what she had 
 said concerning Ingolby had roused in him the soul 
 of Cain. 
 
 She realized it, and she was apprehensive of some 
 desperate act; yet she had no physical fear of him. 
 Something seemed to tell her that, no matter what 
 happened, Ingolby would not wait for her in vain, 
 and that he would yet see her enter to him again 
 with the love-light in her eyes. 
 
 "But listen to me," Jethro said, with an unnatural 
 shining in his eyes, his voice broken in its passion. 
 "You think you can come it over me with your 
 Gorgio talk and the clever things you've learned in 
 the Gorgio world. You try to look down on me. 
 I'm as well born or as ill born as you. The only 
 difference between us is the way you dress, the way 
 you live and use your tongue. All that belongs to 
 352
 
 The Secret Man 
 
 the life of the cities. Anyone can learn it. Anyone 
 well born like you and me, with a little practise, 
 can talk like Gorgio dukes and earls. I've been 
 among them and I know. I've had my friends 
 among them, too. I've got the hang of it all. It's 
 no good to me, and I don't want it. It's all part of 
 a set piece. There's no independence in that life; 
 you live by rule. Viable! I know. I've been in 
 palaces; I've played my fiddle to the women in high 
 places who can't blush. It's no good; it brings 
 nothing in the end. It's all hollow. Look at our 
 people there." He swept a hand to the tent door. 
 "They're tanned and rough, as all out-door things 
 are rough, but they've got their share of happiness, 
 and every day has its pleasures. Listen to them!" 
 he cried with a gesture of exultation. "Listen to 
 that!" 
 
 The colour slowly left Fleda's face. Outside in the 
 light of the dying fires, under the glittering stars, in 
 the shade of the trees, groups of Romariys were sing- 
 ing the Romany wedding melody, called "The Song 
 of the Sealing." It was not like the ringing of 
 wedding-bells alone, it sealed blessing upon the man 
 and the woman. It was a poem in praise of mar- 
 riage passion; it was a paean proclaiming the ac- 
 complishment of life. Crude, primitive, it thrilled 
 with Eastern feeling; a weird charm was showered 
 from its notes. 
 
 "Listen !" exclaimed Jethro again, a fire burning in 
 his face. "That's for you and me. To them you 
 are my wife, and I am your man. Mi Duvel it 
 shall be so ! I know women. For an hour you will 
 
 23 353
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 hate me; for a day you will resent me, and then 
 you will begin to love me. You will fight me, but 
 I will conquer. I know you I know you all you 
 women. But no, it will not be I that will conquer, 
 It's my love that will do it. It's a den of tigers. 
 When it breaks loose it will have its way. Here 
 it is. Can't you see it in my face? Can't you hear 
 it in my voice? Don't you hear my heart beating? 
 Every throb says, 'Fleda Fleda Felda, come to 
 me.' I have loved you since you were three. I 
 want you now. We can be happy. Every night 
 we will make a new home. The world will be ours; 
 the best that is in it will come to us. We will tap 
 the trees of happiness they're hid from the Gorgio 
 world. You and I will know where to find them. 
 Every land shall be ours; every gift of paradise 
 within our reach riches, power, children. Come 
 back to your own people; be a true daughter of the 
 Ry of Rys ; live with your Romany chal. You will 
 never be at home anywhere else. It's in your bones; 
 it's in your blood; it's deeper than all. Here, now, 
 come to me my wife." 
 
 He flung the flap of the tent door across the 
 opening, shutting out the camp-fires and the people. 
 4 'Here now come. Be mine while they sing." 
 
 For one swift moment the great passion and 
 eloquence of the man lifted her off her feet ; for one 
 instant the Romany in her triumphed, and a thrill 
 of passion passed through her, storming her senses, 
 like a mist shutting out all the rest of the world. 
 This Romany was right; there was in her the wild 
 thing the everlasting strain of race and years 
 354
 
 The Secret Man 
 
 breaking down all the defences which civilized life 
 had built up within her. Just for one instant so 
 and then there flashed before her a face with two 
 blind eyes. 
 
 Like a stream of ether playing upon warm flesh, 
 making it icy cold, so something of the ineradicable 
 good in her swept like a frozen spray upon the 
 elements of emotion, and with both hands she made 
 a gesture of repulsion. 
 
 His eyes with their reddish glow burned nearer 
 and nearer to her. He bulked over her, driving her 
 back against the couch by the tent wall. For an 
 instant like that and then, with clenched hand, 
 she struck him in the face. 
 
 Swift as had been the change in her, so a change 
 like a cyclone swept over him. The hysterical pas- 
 sion which had possessed him suddenly passed, and 
 a dark, sullen determination swept into his eyes and 
 over his face. His lips parted in a savage smile. 
 
 "Hell, so that's what you've learned in the Gorgio 
 world, is it?" he asked malevolently. "Then I'll 
 teach you what they do in the Romany world; 
 and to-morrow you can put the two together and 
 see what they look like." 
 
 With a Romany expletive, he flung back the cur- 
 tain of the tent and passed out into the night. 
 
 For a long time Fleda sat stunned and overcome 
 by the side of the couch, her brain tortured by a 
 thousand thoughts. She knew there was no im- 
 mediate escape from the encampment. She could 
 only rely upon the hue and cry which would be 
 355
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 raised and the certain hunt which would be made 
 for her. But what might not happen before any 
 rescue came? The ancient grudge of the Fawes 
 against the Druses had gained power and activity 
 by the self-imposed exile of Gabriel Druse; and 
 Jethro had worked upon it. The veiled threats 
 which Jethro had made she did not despise. He 
 was a barbarian. He would kill what he loved; 
 he would have his way with what he loved, whether 
 or not it was the way of law or custom or right. 
 Outside, the wedding song still made musical the 
 night. Women's voices, shrill, and with falsetto 
 notes, made the trees ring with it; low, bass voices 
 gave it a kind of solemnity. The view which the en- 
 campment took of her captivity was clear. Where 
 was the woman that brought her to the tent whose 
 tent it was? She seemed kind. Though her face 
 had a hard look, surely she meant to be friendly. 
 Or did she only mean to betray her; to give her a 
 fancied security, and leave her to Jethro and the 
 night? She looked round for some weapon. There 
 was nothing available save two brass candlesticks. 
 Though the door of the tent was closed, she knew 
 that there were watchers outside; that any break for 
 liberty would only mean defeat, and yet she was 
 determined to save herself. 
 
 As she tried to take the measure of the situation 
 and plan what she would do, the noise of the music 
 suddenly ceased, and she heard a voice, though 
 low in tone, give some sort of command. Then 
 there was a cry, and what seemed the chaotic noise 
 of a struggle followed; then a voice a little louder 
 356
 
 The Secret Man 
 
 speaking, a voice of someone she remembered, 
 though she could not place it. Something vital 
 was happening outside, something punctuated by 
 sharp, angry exclamations; afterwards a voice speak- 
 ing soothingly, firmly, prevailed ; and then there was 
 silence. As she listened there was a footstep at the 
 door of the tent, a voice called to her softly, and a 
 hand drew aside the tent curtain. The woman who 
 had brought her to this place entered. 
 
 "You are all safe now," she said, reaching out both 
 hands to Fleda. "By long and by last, but it was 
 a close shave! He meant to make you his wife to- 
 night, whether you would or no. I'm a Fawe, but 
 I'd have none of that. I was on my way to your 
 father's house when I met someone someone that you 
 know. He carries your father's voice in his mouth." 
 
 She stepped to the tent door and beckoned; and 
 out of the darkness, only faintly lightened by the 
 dying fires, there entered one whom Fleda had seen 
 not more than fifty times in her life, and never but 
 twice since she had ceased to be a Romany. It was 
 her father's secret agent, Rhodo, the Roumelian, 
 now grizzled and gaunt, but with the same vitality 
 which had been his in the days when she was a little 
 child. Here and there in the world went Rhodo, the 
 voice of the Ry of Rys to do his bidding, to say his 
 say. No minister of a Czar was ever more dreaded 
 or loved. His words were ever few, but his deeds 
 had been many. Now, as he looked at Fleda, his 
 old eyes gleamed, and he showed a double row of 
 teeth, not one of which was imperfect, though he 
 was seventy years of age. 
 
 357
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 "Would you like to come?" he asked. "Would 
 you like to come home to the Ry?" 
 
 With a cry she flung herself upon him. "Rhodo! 
 Rhodo!" she exclaimed, and now the tears broke 
 forth, and her body shook with sobs. 
 
 A few moments later he said to her: "It's fifteen 
 years since you kissed me last. I thought you were 
 ashamed of old Rhodo." 
 
 She did not answer, but looked at him with eyes 
 streaming, drawing back from him. Her embrace 
 was astonishing even to herself, for as a child Rhodo 
 had been a figure of awe to her, and the feeling had 
 deepened as the years had gone on, knowing as she 
 did his work throughout the world for the Ry of Rys. 
 In his face was secrecy, knowledge, and some tragic 
 underthing which gave him, apart from his office, a 
 singular loneliness of figure and manner. He was so 
 closely knit in form; there was such concentration 
 in face, bearing and gesture, that the isolation of his 
 position was greatly deepened. 
 
 "No, you never kissed me after you were old 
 enough to like or dislike," he said with mournful 
 and ironical reflection. 
 
 There crept into his face a kind of yearning such as 
 one might feel who beheld afar off a promised land, 
 and yet was denied its joys. Rhodo was wifeless, 
 childless, and had been so for forty years. He had 
 had no intimates among the Romany people. His 
 life he lived alone. That the daughter of the Ry 
 of Rys should kiss him was a thing of which he 
 would dream when deeds were done and over and the 
 shadows threatened. 
 
 358
 
 The Secret Man 
 
 "I will kiss you again in another fifteen years," she 
 said half -smiling through her tears. "But tell me 
 tell me what has happened." 
 
 "Jethro Fawe has gone," he answered with a 
 sweeping outward gesture. 
 
 "Where has he gone?" she asked, apprehension 
 seizing her. 
 
 "A journey into the night," responded the old man 
 with scorn and wrath in his tone, and his lips were set. 
 
 "Is he going far?" she asked. 
 
 "The road you might think long would be short 
 to him," he answered. 
 
 Her hands became cold; her heart seemed to stop 
 beating. 
 
 "What road is that?" she asked. She knew, but 
 she must ask. 
 
 "Everybody knows it; everybody goes it some 
 time or another," he answered darkly. 
 
 "What was it you said to all of them outside?" 
 she made a gesture towards the doorway. "There 
 were angry cries, and I heard Jethro Fawe's voice." 
 
 "Yes, he was blaspheming," remarked the old 
 man grimly. 
 
 "Tell me what it was you said, and tell me what 
 has happened," she persisted. 
 
 The old man hesitated a moment, then said 
 grimly: "I told them they must go one way and 
 Jethro Fawe another. I told them the Ry of Rys 
 had said no patrins should mark the road Jethro 
 Fawe's feet walked. I had heard of this gathering 
 here, and I was on my way to bid them begone, 
 for in following the Ry they have broken his com- 
 359
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 mand. As I came, I met the woman of this tent 
 who has been your friend. She is a good woman; 
 she has suffered. Her people are gone, but she has 
 a heart for others. I met her. She told me of 
 what that rogue and devil had done and would do. 
 He is the head of the Fawes, but the Ry of Rys is 
 the head of all the Romany s of the world. He had 
 spoken the Word against Jethro, and the Word shall 
 prevail. The Word of the Ry when it is given can- 
 not be withdrawn. It is like the rock on which the 
 hill rests." 
 
 "They did not go with him?" she asked. 
 
 "It is not the custom," he answered sardonically. 
 "That is a path a Romany walks alone." 
 
 Her face was white. ' ' But he has not come to the 
 end of the path has he?" she asked tremulously. 
 
 "Who can tell? This day, or twenty years from 
 now, or to-morrow, or next moon, he will come to 
 the end of the path. No one knows, he least of all. 
 He will not see the end, because the road is dark. 
 I don't think it will be soon," he added, because he 
 saw how haggard her face had grown. "No, I 
 don't think it will be soon. He is a Fawe, at the 
 head of all the Fawes; so perhaps there will be time 
 for him to think, and no doubt it will not be soon." 
 
 "Perhaps it will not be at all. My father spoke, 
 but he can withdraw his word," she urged. 
 
 Suddenly the old Gipsy's face hardened. A look 
 of dark resolve and iron force came into it. 
 
 "The Ry will not withdraw. He has spoken, and 
 it must be. If he spoke lightly he is not fit to rule. 
 Unless the word of the Ry of Rys is good against 
 360
 
 The Secret Man 
 
 breaking, then the Romanys are no more than 
 scattered leaves at the will of the wind. It is the 
 word of the Ry that holds our folk together. It shall 
 not bless, and it shall not curse in vain." 
 
 Pitying the girl's face, however, and realizing that 
 the Gorgio life had given her a new view of things; 
 angry with her because it was so, but loving her for 
 herself, he added : 
 
 "But the night road may be long, though it is 
 lonely, aid if it should be that the Ry should pass 
 before the end of the road comes to Jethro, then 
 is Jethro iVeed, since the Word is gone which binds 
 his feet foi^the pitfall." 
 
 "He must not die," she insisted. 
 
 "Then the Ry of Rys must not live," he re- 
 joined sternly. With a kindly gesture, however, he 
 stretched out his hand. "Come, we shall reach 
 the house of the Ry before the morning," he added. 
 "He is not returned from his journey, and so will 
 not be troubled by having missed you. There will 
 be an hour for beauty-sleep before the sun rises," 
 he continued with the same wide smile with which 
 he greeted her first. Then he lifted up the curtain 
 and passed out into the night. 
 
 Following him, Fleda saw that the Romanys had 
 broken camp, and only a small handful remained, 
 among them the woman who had befriended her. 
 Fleda went up to her : 
 
 "I will never forget you," she said. "Will you 
 wear this for me?" she added, and she took from her 
 throat a brooch which she had worn ever since her 
 first days in England, after her great illness there. 
 361
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 The woman accepted the brooch. "Lady love," 
 she said, "you've lost your sleep to-night, but that's 
 a loss you can make good. If there's a night's sleep 
 owing you, you can collect the debt some time. 
 No, a night's sleep lost in a tent is nothing, if you're 
 the only one in the tent. But if you're not alone, 
 and you lose a night's sleep, someone else may pick 
 it up, and you might never get it again!" 
 
 A flush slowly stole over Fleda's face, and a look 
 of horror came into her eyes. She read the parable 
 aright. 
 
 "Will you let me kiss you?" she said to the woman, 
 and now it was the woman's turn to flush. 
 
 "You are the daughter of the Ry of Rys," she said 
 almost shyly, yet proudly. 
 
 "I'm a girl with a debt to pay and can never pay 
 it," Fleda answered, putting her arms impulsively 
 around the woman's neck and kissing her. Then 
 she took the brooch from the woman's hand, and 
 pinned it at her throat. 
 
 "Think of Fleda of the Druses sometimes," she 
 said, and she laid a hand upon the woman's breast. 
 
 "Lady love lady love," said the blunt woman 
 with the pockmarked face, "you've had the worst 
 fright to-night that you'll ever have." She caught 
 Fleda's hand and peered into it. "Yes, it's happi- 
 ness for you now, and on and on," she added exult- 
 ingly, and with the fortune-teller's air. "You've 
 passed the danger place, and there'll be wealth and 
 a man who's been in danger, too; and there's 
 children, beautiful children I see them." 
 
 In confusion, Fleda snatched her hand away. 
 362
 
 The Secret Man 
 
 "Good-bye, you fool- woman," she said impatiently, 
 yet gently, too. "You talk such sense and such 
 nonsense. Good-bye," she added brusquely, but 
 yet she smiled at the woman as she turned away. 
 
 A moment later she was on her way back to 
 Manitou, but she did not get to her father's house 
 before the break of day; and in the doorway she 
 met Madame Bulteel, whose pale, drawn face pro- 
 claimed a sleepless night. 
 
 "Tell me what has happened? Tell me what has 
 happened?" she asked in distress. 
 
 Fleda took both her hands. "Before I answer, 
 tell me what has happened here," she said breath- 
 lessly. "What news?" 
 
 Madame Bulteel's face lighted. "Good news," 
 she exclaimed eagerly. 
 
 "He will see he will see again?" Fleda asked in 
 great agitation. 
 
 "The Montreal doctor said that the chances were 
 even," answered Madame Bulteel. "This man from 
 the States says it is a sure thing." 
 
 With a murmur Fleda sank into a chair, and a 
 faintness came over her. 
 
 "That's not like a Romany," remarked old Rhodo. 
 
 "No, it's certainly not like a Romany," remarked 
 Madame Bulteel meaningly.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 THE RETURN OF BELISARIUS 
 
 REY days in the prairie country do not come 
 very often, but they are very depressing when 
 they arrive. The landscape is not of the luscious 
 kind; it has no close correspondence with a picture 
 by Corot or Constable; sunlight is needed to give 
 it the touch of the habitable and the homelike. 
 It was, therefore, unfortunate for the spirits of the 
 Lebanon people that the meeting summoned by 
 local agitators to discuss with asperity affairs on both 
 sides of the Sagalac should, while starting with fitful 
 sunlight in the early morning, have developed to a 
 bleak greyness by three o'clock in the afternoon, the 
 time set for the meeting. 
 
 Another strike was imminent in the factories at 
 Manitou and in the railway-shops at Lebanon, due 
 to the stupidity of the policy of Ingolby's successor 
 as to the railways and other financial and manu- 
 facturing interests. If he had planned a campaign 
 of maladroitness he could not have more happily 
 fulfilled his object. It was not a good time for re- 
 ducing wages, or for quarrelling with the Town 
 Councils of Manitou and Lebanon concerning assess- 
 ments and other matters. November and May al- 
 364
 
 The Return of Belisarius 
 
 ways found Manitou, as though to say, "upset." 
 In the former month, men were pouring through the 
 place on their way to the shanties for their Winter's 
 work, and generally celebrating their coming in- 
 ternment by "irrigation"; in the latter month, they 
 were returning from their Winter's imprisonment, 
 thirsty for excitement, and with memories of Winter 
 quarrels inciting them to "have it out of someone." 
 
 And it was in October, when the shantyman was 
 passing through on his way to the woods a natural 
 revolutionary, loving trouble as a coyote loves his 
 hole that labour discontent was practically whipped 
 into action, and the Councils of the two towns were 
 stung into bitterness against the new provocative 
 railway policy. Things looked dark enough. The 
 trouble between the two towns and the change of 
 control and policy of the railways, due to Ingolby's 
 downfall, had greatly shaken land and building 
 values in Lebanon, and a black eye, as it were, had 
 been given to the whole district for the moment. 
 
 So serious had the situation been regarded that the 
 Mayor of Lebanon, with Halliday the lawyer and 
 another notable citizen, all friends of Ingolby, had 
 "gone East" as a journey to Montreal, Toronto, 
 or Quebec was generally called to confer with and 
 make appeal to the directorate of the great railways. 
 They went with some elation and hope, for they had 
 arguments of an unexpected kind in their possession, 
 carefully hidden from the rest of the population. 
 They had returned only the day before the meeting 
 which was to be held in the square in front of the 
 Town Hall, to find that a platform had been built at 
 365
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 the very steps of the Town Hall with the assent of the 
 Chief Constable, now recovered from illness and re- 
 turned to duty. To the Deputy Mayor and the 
 Council, the Chief Constable, on the advice of 
 Gabriel Druse, had said that it was far better to 
 have the meeting in front of the Town Hall where 
 he could, on the instant, summon special constables 
 from within if necessary, while the influence of a well- 
 built platform and the orderly arrangement of a 
 regular meeting were better than a mob oration from 
 the tops of ash-barrels. 
 
 The signs were ominous. In a day of sunshine the 
 rebellious and discontented spirit does not thrive; 
 on a wet day it is apt to take shelter; on a bleak, 
 grey day men are prone to huddle together in their 
 anger with consequent stimulation of their passions. 
 
 It was a grey enough day at Lebanon, and dark- 
 faced visitors from Manitou felt the need of Winter 
 clothing as they shiveringly crossed the Sagalac by 
 Ingolby's bridge. The air was raw and searching; 
 Nature was sulky. In the sharp wind the trees 
 shook themselves angrily free of leaves. The 
 taverns were greatly frequented, which was not good 
 for Manitou and Lebanon. Up to the time of the 
 meeting, however, the expected strike had not oc- 
 curred. This was mainly due to the fact that Felix 
 Marchand, the evil genius of Manitou, had not been 
 seen in the town or in the district for over a week. 
 It was not generally known that he was absent 
 because a man by the name of Dennis, whose wife he 
 had wronged, was dogging him with no good intent. 
 Marchand had treated the woman's warning with 
 366
 
 The Return of Belisarius 
 
 contempt, but at sight of her injured husband he had 
 himself withdrawn from the scene of his dark enter- 
 prises. His malign influence was therefore not at 
 work at the moment. 
 
 The tactics of the Lebanon Town Council had been 
 careful and wise. So that the meeting should not be 
 composed only of the roughest elements, they pri- 
 vately urged all responsible citizens to attend, and if 
 possible capture the meeting for law and order and 
 legitimate agitation. That was why Osterhaut, the 
 town-crier, went about with a large dinner-bell 
 announcing the hour of the meeting and admonishing 
 all "good folks" to attend. No one had ever seen 
 Osterhaut quite so cheerful and he had a bonny 
 cheerfulness on occasion as on this grisly October 
 day when Nature was very sour and the spirit of 
 the winds was in a "scratchy" mood. But Oster- 
 haut was not more cheerful than Jowett who, in a 
 very undignified way, described the state of his 
 feelings, on receiving a certain confidence from 
 Halliday the lawyer and Gabriel Druse, by turning 
 a cart-wheel in the Mayor's office; which certainly 
 was an unusual thing in a man of fifty years of age. 
 
 It was a people's meeting. No local official was 
 on the platform. Under the influence of alien ele- 
 ments who, though their co-operation was directed 
 against the common enemy, were intensely irritating, 
 the meeting became disorderly. One or two wise 
 men, however, were able to secure order long enough 
 to have the resolution passed for forming a Local 
 Interests Committee whose duty it would be to see 
 that the people were not sacrificed to a "soulless 
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 The World For Sale 
 
 plutocracy." While the names of those who were to 
 form the Committee were being selected, in a storm 
 of disorder arising from the Manitou section of the 
 crowd, the sky overhead grew suddenly brighter and 
 the sun came out, bringing an instant change. It 
 was as though a hand, which had hypnotized them 
 into anger, restored them to good-humour once again. 
 
 At this moment, to the astonishment of all, there 
 appeared at the back of the platform between Jowett 
 and Halliday the lawyer, the man with a tragic his- 
 tory who had been as one buried for weeks past, who 
 had vanished from their calculations. It was their 
 old champion, Ingolby. Slowly a hush came over 
 the vast assembly as, apparently guided by his 
 friends on the platform, he was given a seat on the 
 right of the Chairman's table. 
 
 A strange sensation, partly pleasure, partly resent- 
 ment, passed through the crowd. Why did Ingolby 
 come to remind them of better days gone of his own 
 rashness, of what they had lost through that rash- 
 ness? Why had he come? They could not say 
 and do all that they wanted with him present. 
 It was like having a row in the presence of a corpse. 
 He had been a hero to all in Lebanon, but he was 
 not in the picture now. His day was done. It was 
 no place for him. Yet it was a pleasant omen that 
 the sun broke clear and shining over the platform as 
 Ingolby took his seat. Presently in the silence he 
 half-turned his head, murmured something to the 
 Chairman, and then got to his feet, stretching out a 
 hand towards the crowd. 
 
 For one moment there was silence, a little awe- 
 368
 
 The Return of Belisarius 
 
 stricken, a little painful, and then as from one man 
 a great cheer went up. For a moment they had 
 thought him inconsiderate to come among them in 
 this crisis, for he was no longer of their scheme of 
 things, and must be counted out, a beaten, battered, 
 blind bankrupt. Yet the sight of him on his feet 
 was too much for them. Blind he might be, but 
 there was the personality which had conquered them 
 in the past brave, adroit, reckless, renowned. 
 None of them, or very few of them, had seen him 
 since that night at Barbazon's Tavern, yet in spite 
 of his tragedy there seemed little change in him. 
 There was the same quirk at the corner of the 
 mouth, the same humour in the strong face, not so 
 ruddy now; and strangely enough the eyes were 
 neither guarded by spectacles, nor were they shrunk- 
 en, glazed, or diseased, so far as could be seen. 
 
 Stretching out a hand Ingolby gave a crisp laugh 
 and said: "So there's been trouble since I've been 
 gone, has there?" The corner of his mouth quirked, 
 his eyelids drooped in the old quizzical way, and the 
 crowd laughed in spite of themselves. What a 
 spirit he had to take it all that way. 
 
 "Got a little deeper in the mire, have you, boys?'* 
 he added. "They tell me the town's a frost just 
 now, but it seems nice and warm here in the sun. 
 Yes, boys, it's nice and warm here among you all 
 the same good old crowd that's made the two towns 
 what they are. The same good old crowd," he re- 
 peated, " and up to the same old games!" 
 
 At this point he could scarcely proceed for laughter. 
 "Like true pioneers," he went on, "not satisfied with 
 24 369
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 what you've got, but wanting such a lot more if I 
 might say so in the language of the dictionary, a 
 deuce of a lot more." 
 
 Almost every sentence had been punctuated by 
 cheers. His personality dominated them as afore- 
 time with some new accent to it ; his voice was like 
 that of one given up from the dead, yet come back 
 from the wars alive and loving. They never knew 
 what a figure he was until now when they saw and 
 heard him again, and realized that he was one of the 
 few whom the world call leaders, because they have 
 in them that immeasurable sympathy which is 
 understanding of men and matters. Yet in the old 
 days there never had been the something that was in 
 his voice now, and in his face there was a great 
 friendliness, a sense of companionship, a Jonathan and 
 David something. He was like a comrade talking to 
 a thousand other comrades. There was a new thing 
 in him and they felt it stir them. They thought he 
 had been made softer by his blindness ; and they were 
 not wrong. Even the Manitou section were stilled 
 into sympathy with him. Many of them had heard 
 his speech in Barbazon's Tavern just before the 
 horseshoe struck him down, and they heard him now, 
 much simpler in manner and with that something 
 in his voice and face. Yet it made them shrink 
 a little, too, to see his blind eyes looking out straight 
 before him. It was uncanny. Their idea was that 
 the eyes were as before, but seeing nothing blank to 
 the world. 
 
 Presently his hand shot out again. "The same 
 old crowd !" he said. ' ' Just the same after the same
 
 The Return of Belisarius 
 
 old thing, wanting what we all want: these two 
 places, Manitou and Lebanon, to be boosted till they 
 rule the West and dominate the North. It's good to 
 see you all here again" he spoke very slowly 
 "to see you all here together looking for trouble 
 looking for trouble. There you are, Jim Barager; 
 there you are, Bill Riley ; there you are, Mr. William 
 John Thomas McLeary." The last named was the 
 butt of every tavern and every street corner. ' ' There 
 you are, Berry old brown Berry, my barber." 
 
 At first the crowd did not quite understand, did 
 not realize that he was actually pointing to the 
 people whom he named, but presently, as Berry the 
 barber threw up his hands with a falsetto cry of 
 understanding, there was a simultaneous, wild rush 
 forward to the platform. 
 
 "He sees, boys he sees!" they shouted. ; 
 
 Ingolby's hand shot up above them with a gesture 
 of command. 
 
 "Yes, boys, I see I see you all. I'm cured. 
 My sight's come back, and what's more" he 
 snatched from his pocket a folded sheet of paper and 
 held it aloft "what's more, I've got my commission 
 to do the old job again; to boss the railways, to 
 help the two towns. The Mayor brought it back 
 from Montreal yesterday; and together, boys, to- 
 gether, we'll make Manitou and Lebanon the ful- 
 crum of the West, the swivel by which to swing 
 prosperity round our centre." 
 
 The platform swayed with the wild enthusiasm of 
 the crowd storming it to shake hands with him, 
 when suddenly a bell rang out across the river,
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 wildly, clamorously. A bell only rang like that for 
 a fire. Those on the platform could see a horseman 
 galloping across the bridge. 
 
 A moment later someone shouted, "It's the Cath- 
 olic church at Manitou on fire!"
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 AT LONG LAST 
 
 /"^RIGINALLY the Catholic church at Manitou 
 vx had stood quite by itself, well back from the 
 river, but as the town grew its dignified isolation was 
 invaded and houses kept creeping nearer and nearer 
 to it. So that when it caught fire there was general 
 danger, because the town possessed only a hand fire- 
 engine. Since the first settlement of the place there 
 had been but few fires, and these had had pretty 
 much their own way. When one broke out the plan 
 was to form a long line of men, who passed buckets 
 of water between the nearest pump, well, or river, and 
 the burning building. It had been useful in incipient 
 fires, but it was child's play in a serious outburst. 
 The mournful fact that Manitou had never equipped 
 itself with a first-class fire-engine or a fire-brigade 
 was now to play a great part in the future career 
 of the two towns. Osterhaut put the thing in a 
 nutshell as he slithered up the main street of Lebanon 
 on his way to the manning of the two fire-engines 
 at the Lebanon fire-brigade station. 
 
 "This thing is going to link up Lebanon and 
 Manitou like a trace-chain," he declared with a 
 chuckle. "Everything's come at the right minute. 
 373
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 Here's Ingolby back on the locomotive, running the 
 good old train of Progress, and here's Ingolby's fire- 
 brigade, which cost Lebanon twenty thousand dol- 
 lars and himself five thousand, going to put out the 
 fires of hate consuming two loving hamulets. Out 
 with Ingolby's fire-brigade! This is the day the 
 doctor ordered! Hooray!" 
 
 Osterhaut had a gift of being able to do two things 
 at one time. Nothing prevented him from talking, 
 and though it had probably never been tested, it is 
 quite certain he could have talked under water. 
 His words had been addressed to Jowett, who drew 
 to him on all great occasions like the drafts of a 
 regiment to the main body. Jowett was often very 
 critical of Osterhaut's acts, words, and views, but 
 on this occasion they were of one mind. 
 
 "I guess it's Ingolby's day all right," answered 
 Jowett. "When you say 'Hooray!' Osterhaut, I 
 agree, but you've got better breath 'n I have. I 
 can't talk like I used to, but I'm going to ride that 
 fire-engine to save the old Monseenoor's church or 
 bust." 
 
 Both Jowett and Osterhaut belonged to the Leba- 
 non fire-brigade, which was composed of only a few 
 permanent professionals, helped by capable amateurs. 
 The two cronies had their way, and a few moments 
 later, wearing brass helmets, they were away with 
 the engine and the hose, leaving the less rapid 
 members of the brigade to follow with the ladders. 
 
 ' ' What did the Chief do ?" asked Osterhaut. ' ' Did 
 you see what happened to him?" 
 
 Jowett snorted. "What do you think Mr, Max 
 374
 
 At Long Last 
 
 Ingolby, Esquire, would do ? He commandeered my 
 sulky and that rawbone I bought from the Reverend 
 Tripple, and away he went like greased lightning 
 over the bridge. I don't know why I drove that 
 trotter to-day, nor why I went on that sulky, for 
 I couldn't hear good where I was, on the outskirts 
 of the meeting; but I done it like as if the Lord 
 had told me. The Chief spotted me soon as the 
 fire-bell rung. In a second he bundled me off, 
 straddled the sulky, and was away 'fore you could 
 say snakes." 
 
 "I don't believe he's strong enough for all this. 
 He ain't got back to where he was before the war," 
 remarked Osterhaut sagely. 
 
 "War that business at Barbazon's ! You call that 
 war ! It wasn't war, ' ' declared Jowett spasmodically, 
 grasping the rail of the fire-engine as the wheel 
 struck a stone and nearly shot them from 
 their seats. "It wasn't war. It was terrible low- 
 down treachery. That Gipsy gent, Fawe, pulled the 
 lever, but Marchand built the scaffold." 
 
 "Heard anything more about Marchand where 
 he is?" asked Osterhaut, as the hoofs of the horses 
 clattered on the bridge. 
 
 "Yes, I've heard there's news," responded Jow- 
 ett. "He's been lying drunk at Gautry's caboose 
 ever since yesterday morning at five o'clock, when 
 he got off the West-bound train. Nice sort of guy 
 he is. What's the good of being rich, if you can't 
 be decent! Some men are born low. They always 
 find their level, no matter what's done for them, and 
 Marchand's level is the ditch." 
 375
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 "Gantry's tavern that joint," exclaimed Oster- 
 haut with repulsion. 
 
 "Well, that ranchman, Dennis What's-his-name, 
 is looking for him, and Felix can't go home or to 
 the usual places. I dunno why he comes back at all 
 till this Dennis feller gits out." 
 
 "Doesn't make any bones about it, does he? 
 Dennis Doane's the name, ain't it? Marchand 
 spoiled his wife run away with her up along the 
 Wind River, eh?" asked Osterhaut. 
 
 Jowett nodded: "Yes, that's it, and Mr. Dennis 
 Doane ain't careful; that's the trouble. He's look- 
 ing for Marchand, and blabbing what he means to 
 do when he finds him. That ain't good for Dennis. 
 If he kills Marchand, it's murder, and even if the 
 lawyers plead unwritten law, and he ain't hung, 
 and his wife ain't a widow, you can't have much 
 married life in gaol. It don't do you any good to 
 be punished for punishing someone else. Jonas 
 George Almighty look! Look, Osterhaut!" 
 
 Jowett 's hand was pointing towards the Catholic 
 church, from a window of which smoke was rolling. 
 "There's going to be something to do there. It 
 ain't a false alarm, Snorty." 
 
 "Well, this engine '11 do anything you ask it," 
 rejoined Osterhaut. "When did you have a fire 
 last, Billy?" he shouted to the driver of the engine, 
 as the horses' feet caught the dusty road of 
 Manitou. 
 
 "Six months," was the reply, "but she's working 
 smooth as music. She's as good as anything 'twixt 
 here and the Atlantic." 
 
 376
 
 At Long Last 
 
 "It ain't time for Winter fires. I wonder what set 
 it going," said Jowett, shaking his head ominously. 
 
 "Something wrong with the furnace, I s'pose," 
 returned Osterhaut. "Probably trying the first 
 heat-up of the Fall." 
 
 Osterhaut was right. No one had set the church 
 on fire. The sexton had lighted the furnace for the 
 first time to test it for the Winter's working, but had 
 not stayed to see the result. There was a defect in 
 the furnace, the place had caught fire, and some of 
 the wooden flooring had been burnt before the aged 
 Monseigneur Lourde discovered it. It was he who 
 had given the alarm and had rescued the silver altar- 
 vessels from the sacristy. 
 
 Manitou offered brute force, physical energy, na- 
 tive athletics, muscle and brawn; but it was of no 
 avail. Five hundred men, with five hundred buckets 
 of water, would have had no effect upon the fire at 
 St. Michael's Church at Manitou; willing hands and 
 loving Christian hearts would have been helpless 
 to save the building without the scientific aid of the 
 Lebanon fire-brigade. Ingolby, on founding the 
 brigade, had equipped it to the point where it could 
 deal with any ordinary fire. The work it had to 
 do at St. Michael's was critical. If the church could 
 not be saved, then the wooden houses by which it 
 was surrounded would be swept away, and the 
 whole town would be ablaze; for though it was 
 Autumn, everything was dry, and the wind was 
 sufficient to fan and spread the flames. 
 
 Lebanon took command of the whole situation, and 
 377
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 for the first time in the history of the two towns men 
 worked together under one control like brothers. 
 The red-shirted river-driver from Manitou and the 
 lawyer's clerk from Lebanon; the Presbyterian 
 minister and a Christian brother of the Catholic 
 school; a Salvation Army captain and a black- 
 headed Catholic shantyman; the President of the 
 Order of Good Templars and a switchman member 
 of the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament slaved 
 together on the hand-engine, to supplement the work 
 of the two splendid engines of the Lebanon fire- 
 brigade; or else they climbed the roofs of houses, 
 side by side, to throw on the burning shingles the 
 buckets of water handed up to them. 
 
 For some time it seemed as though the church 
 could not be saved. The fire had made good head- 
 way with the flooring, and had also made progress 
 in the chancel and the altar. Skill and organization, 
 combined with good luck,- conquered, however. 
 Though a portion of the roof was destroyed and the 
 chancel gutted, the church was not beyond repair, 
 and a few thousand dollars would put it right. 
 There was danger, however, among the smaller 
 houses surrounding the church, and there men from 
 both towns worked with great gallantry. By one of 
 those accidents which make fatality, a small wooden 
 house some distance away, with a roof as dry as 
 wool, caught fire from a flying cinder. As everybody 
 had fled from their own homes and shops to the 
 church, this fire was not noticed until it had made 
 headway. Then it was that the cries of Madame 
 Thibadeau, who was confined to her bed in the 
 378
 
 At Long Last 
 
 house opposite, were heard, and the crowd poured 
 down towards the burning building. It was Gau- 
 try's "caboose." Gautry himself had been among 
 the crowd at the church. 
 
 As Gautry came reeling and plunging down the 
 street someone shouted, "Is there anyone in the 
 house, Gautry?" 
 
 Gautry was speechless with drink. He threw his 
 hands up in the air with a gesture of maudlin despair, 
 and shouted something which no one understood. 
 The crowd gathered like magic in the wide street 
 before the house the one wide street in Manitou 
 from the roof and upper windows of which flames 
 were bursting. Far up the street was heard the 
 noisy approach of the fire-engine, which now would 
 be able to do little more than save adjoining build- 
 ings. Gautry, reeling, mumbling and whining, ges- 
 tured and wept. 
 
 A man shook him roughly by the shoulder. 
 "Brace up, get steady, you damned old geezer! 
 Is there anybody in the house? Do you hear? 
 Is- there anybody in the house?" he roared. 
 
 Madame Thibadeau, who had dragged herself 
 from her bed, was now at the window of the house 
 opposite. Seeing Fleda Druse passing beneath, she 
 called to her. 
 
 "Ma'm'selle, Felix Marchand is in Gautry 's house 
 drunk, ' ' she cried. ' ' He'll burn to death but yes, 
 burn to death." 
 
 In agitation Fleda hastened to where the stranger 
 stood shaking old Gautry. 
 
 "There's a man asleep inside the house," she said 
 379
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 to the stranger, and then all at once she realized 
 who he was. It was Dennis Doane, whose wife was 
 staying in Gabriel Druse's home : it was the husband 
 of Marchand's victim. 
 
 "A man in there, is there?" exclaimed Dennis. 
 "Well, he's got to be saved." He made a rush for 
 the door. Men called to him to come back, that 
 the roof would fall in. In the smoking doorway he 
 looked back. "What floor?" he shouted. 
 
 From the window opposite, her fat old face lighted 
 by the blazing roof, Madame Thibadeau called out, 
 "Second floor! It's the second floor!" 
 
 In an instant Dennis was lost in the smoke and 
 flame. 
 
 One, two, three minutes passed. A fire-engine 
 arrived; in a moment the hose was paid out to the 
 river near by, and as a fireman seized the nozzle to 
 train the water upon the building the roof fell in 
 with a crash. At that instant Dennis stumbled out 
 of the house, blind with smoke, his clothes aflame, 
 carrying a man in his arms. A score of hands 
 caught them, coats smothered Dennis's burning 
 clothes, and the man he had rescued was carried 
 across the street and laid upon the pavement. 
 
 "Great glory, it's Marchand! It's Felix Mar- 
 chand!" someone shouted. 
 
 "Is he dead?" asked another. 
 
 "Dead drunk," was the comment of Osterhaut, 
 who had helped to carry him across the street. 
 
 At that moment Ingolby appeared on the scene. 
 "What's all this?" he asked. Then he recognized 
 Marchand. "He's been playing with fire again," he. 
 380
 
 At Long Last 
 
 added sarcastically, and there was a look of contempt 
 on his face. 
 
 As he said it, Dennis broke through the crowd and 
 made for Marchand. Stooping over, he looked into 
 Marchand's face. 
 
 "Hell and damnation you!" he growled. "I 
 risked my life to save you!" 
 
 With a sudden access of rage his hand suddenly 
 went to his hip pocket, but another hand was 
 quicker. It was that of Fleda Druse. 
 
 "No no," she said, her fingers on his wrist. 
 "You have had your revenge. For the rest of his 
 life he will have to bear his punishment that you 
 have saved him. Leave him alone. It was to be. 
 It is fate." 
 
 Dennis Doane was not a man of great thinking 
 capacity. If he got a matter into his head it stayed 
 there till it was dislodged, and dislodging was a real 
 business with him. 
 
 "If you want her to live with you again, you had 
 better let this be as it is," whispered Fleda, for the 
 crowd were surging round and cheering the new hero. 
 
 "Just escaped the roof falling in," said one. 
 
 ' ' Got the strength of two, for a drunk man weighs 
 twice as heavy as a sober one," exclaimed another 
 admiringly. 
 
 "Marchand's game is up on the Sagalac," declared 
 a third decisively. 
 
 The excitement was so great, however, that only a 
 
 very few of them knew what they were saying, and 
 
 fewer still knew that Dennis Doane had risked his 
 
 life to save the man he had been stalking for weeks 
 
 381
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 past. Marchand had been lying on his face in the 
 smoke-filled room when Dennis broke into it, and 
 he had been carried down the stairs without his face 
 being seen at all. 
 
 To Dennis it was as though he had been made a 
 fool of by Fate or Providence, or whatever con- 
 trolled the destinies of men ; as though the dangerous 
 episode had been arranged to trap him into this 
 situation. 
 
 Ingolby drew near and laid a hand upon Dennis's 
 arm. Fleda's hand was on the other arm. 
 
 "You can't kill a man and save him too," said 
 Ingolby quietly, and holding the abashed blue eyes of 
 Dennis. "There were two ways to punish him; 
 taking away his life at great cost, or giving it him 
 at great cost. If you'd taken away his life, the cost 
 would probably have been your own life; in giving 
 him his life you only risked your own; you had a 
 chance to save it. You're a bit scorched hair, 
 eyebrows, moustache, clothes too, but he'll have 
 brimstone inside him. Come along. Your wife 
 would rather have it this way; and so will you, to- 
 morrow. Come along." 
 
 Dennis suddenly swung round with a gesture of 
 fury. "He spoiled her treated her like dirt," he 
 cried huskily. 
 
 With savage purpose he made a movement tow- 
 ards where Marchand had lain; but Marchand was 
 gone. With foresight Ingolby had quickly and 
 quietly accomplished that while Dennis's back was 
 turned. 
 
 "You'd be treating her like a brute if you went to 
 382
 
 At Long Last 
 
 prison for killing Marchand," urged Ingolby. "Give 
 her a chance. She's fretting her heart out." 
 
 "She wants to go back to Elk Mountain with 
 you," pleaded Fleda gently. "She couldn't do that 
 if the law took hold of you." 
 
 "Ain't there to be any punishment for men like 
 him?" demanded Dennis, stubbornly yet helplessly. 
 "Why didn't I let him burn! I'd have been willing 
 to burn myself to have seen him sizzling. Ain't 
 men like that to be punished at all?" 
 
 "When he knows who has saved him, he'll sizzle 
 inside for the rest of his life," remarked Ingolby. 
 "Don't think he hasn't got a heart. He's done 
 wrong and gone wrong; he has belonged to the 
 sewer, but he isn't all bad, and maybe this is the 
 turning-point. Drink '11 make a man do anything." 
 
 "His kind are never sorry for what they do," 
 commented Dennis bitterly. "They're sorry for 
 what comes from what they do, but not for the 
 doing of it. I can't think the thing out. It makes 
 me sick. I was hunting for him to kill him; I 
 was watching this town like a lynx, and I've been 
 and gone and saved his body from Hell on earth." 
 
 "Well, perhaps you've saved his soul from Hell 
 below," said Fleda. "Ah, come! Your face and 
 hands are burned, your hair is scorched your clothes 
 need mending. Arabella is waiting for you. Come 
 home with me to Arabella." 
 
 With sudden resolve Dennis squared his shoulders. 
 "All right, " he said. "This thing's too much for me. 
 I can't get the hang of it. I've lost my head." 
 
 "No, I won't come, I can't come now," said 
 383
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 Ingolby, in response to an inquiring look from 
 Fleda. "Not now, but before sundown, please." 
 
 As Fleda and Dennis disappeared, Ingolby looked 
 back towards the fire. "How good it is to see again 
 even a sight like that," he said. "Nothing that the 
 eyes see is so horrible as the pictures that come to 
 the mind when the eyes don't see. As Dennis said, 
 I can't get the hang of it, but I'll try I'll try." 
 
 The burning of Gautry's tavern had been con- 
 quered, though not before it was a shell; and the 
 houses on either side had been saved. Lebanon had 
 shown itself masterful in organization, but it had 
 also shown that that which makes enemies is not so 
 deep or great a thing as that which makes friends. 
 Jealous, envious, narrow and bitter, Manitou had 
 been, but she now saw Lebanon in a new light. It 
 was a strange truth that if Lebanon had saved the 
 whole town of Manitou, it would not have been the 
 same to the people as the saving of the church. 
 Beneath everything in Manitou beneath its dirt 
 and its drunkenness, its irresponsibility and the 
 signs of primeval savagery which were part of its 
 life, there was the tradition of religion, the almost 
 fanatical worship of that which was their master, 
 first and last, in spite of all the Church. Not 
 one of its citizens but would have turned with horror 
 from the man who cursed his baptism; not one but 
 would want the last sacrament when his time came. 
 Lebanon had saved the Catholic church, the temple 
 of their faith, and in an hour was accomplished what 
 years had not wrought. 
 
 The fire at the church was out. A few houses had 
 384
 
 At Long Last 
 
 been destroyed, and hundreds of others had been 
 saved. The fire-brigade of Lebanon, with its two 
 engines, had performed prodigies of valour. The 
 work done, the men marched back, but with Oster- 
 haut sitting on one fire-engine and Jowett on the 
 other, through crowds of cheering, roaring work- 
 men, rivermen, shantymen, and black-eyed habi- 
 tants. When Ingolby walked past Barbazon's Tav- 
 ern arm in arm with Monseigneur Lourde, to the tiny 
 house where the good priest lived, the old man's 
 face beaming with gratitude, and with a piety which 
 was his very life, the jubilant crowd followed them 
 to the very door. There the sainted pioneer ex- 
 pressed the feeling of the moment when he raised 
 his hands in benediction over them and said: 
 
 "Peace be unto you and the blessings of peace; 
 and the Lord make his face to shine upon you and 
 give you peace now and for ever more."
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 MAN PROPOSES 
 
 DEFORE sunset, as Ingolby had promised, he 
 U made his way towards Gabriel Druse's house. 
 A month had gone since he had left its hospitality 
 behind. What had happened between that time 
 and this day of fate for Lebanon and Manitou? 
 
 It is not a long story, and needs but a brief back- 
 ward look. This had happened: 
 
 The New York expert performed the operation 
 upon Ingolby's eyes, announced it successful, de- 
 clared that his sight would be restored, and then 
 vanished with a thousand dollars in his pocket. 
 For days thereafter the suspense was almost more 
 than Fleda could bear. She grew suddenly thin 
 and a little worn, and her big eyes had that look 
 of yearning which only comes to those whose sorrow 
 is for another. Old Gabriel Druse was emphatic 
 in his encouragement, but his face reflected the 
 trouble in that of his daughter. He knew well that 
 if Ingolby remained blind he would never marry 
 Fleda, though he also knew well that, with her 
 nature, almost fanatical in its convictions, she would 
 sacrifice herself, if sacrifice was the name for it. 
 The New York expert had prophesied and promised, 
 386
 
 Man Proposes 
 
 but who could tell ! There was the chance of failure, 
 and the vanished eye-surgeon had the thousand dol- 
 lars in his pocket. 
 
 Two people, however, were cheerful; they were 
 Ingolby and Jim. Jim went about the place hum- 
 ming a nigger melody to himself, and twice he 
 brought Berry the barber to play to his Chief on the 
 cotton-field fiddle. Nigger Jim, though it was two 
 generations gone which linked him with the wilds 
 of the Gold Coast, was the slave of fanatical imagi- 
 nation, and in Ingolby's own mind there was the 
 persistent superstition that all would be well, be- 
 cause of a dream he had had. He dreamed he heard 
 his dead mother's voice in the room, where he lay. 
 She had called him by name, and had said, "Look 
 at me, Max," and he had replied, "I cannot see," and 
 she had said again, "Look at me, my son!" Then 
 he thought that he had looked at her, had seen her 
 face clearly, and it was as the last time they parted, 
 shining and sweet and good. She had said to him 
 in days long gone, that if she could ever speak to 
 him across the Void, she would; and he had the 
 fullest belief now that she had done so. 
 
 So it was that this dreadnought of industry and 
 organization, in dock for repairs, cheerfully awaited 
 the hour when he would be launched again upon the 
 tide of work healthy, healed and whole. At last 
 there came the day when, for an instant, the bandages 
 could be removed. There were present, Rockwell, 
 Fleda, and Jim Jim, pale but grinning, at the foot 
 of the bed; Fleda, with her back against the door 
 and her hands clenched behind her as though to 
 387
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 shut out the invading world. Never had her heart 
 beat as it beat now, but her eyes were steady and 
 bright. There was in them, however, a kind of 
 pleading look. She could not see Ingolby's face; 
 did not want to see it when the bandages were 
 taken off; but at the critical moment she shut 
 her eyes and her back held the door, as though a 
 thousand were trying to force an entrance. 
 
 The first words after the bandages were removed 
 came from Ingolby. 
 
 "Well, Jim, you look all right!" he said. 
 
 Swaying as she went, Fleda half-blindly moved 
 towards a chair near by and sank into it. She 
 scarcely heard Jim's reply. 
 
 ' ' Looking all right yourself, Chief. You won't see 
 much change in this here old town." 
 
 Ingolby's hand was in Rockwell's. "It's all right, 
 isn't it?" he asked. 
 
 "You can see it is," answered Rockwell with a 
 chuckle in his voice, and then suddenly he put the 
 bandages round Ingolby's eyes again. "That's 
 enough for to-day," he said. 
 
 A moment later the bandages were secured and 
 Rockwell stood back from the bed. 
 
 "In another week you'll see as well as ever 
 you did," Rockwell said. "I'm proud of 
 you." 
 
 "Well, I hope I'll see a little better than ever I 
 did," remarked Ingolby meaningly. "I was pretty 
 short-sighted before." 
 
 At that instant he heard Fleda's footstep approach- 
 ing the bed. His senses had grown very acute since 
 388
 
 Man Proposes 
 
 the advent of his blindness. He held out his hand 
 into space. 
 
 "What a nice room this is!" he said as her fingers 
 slid into his. "It's the nicest room I was ever in. 
 It's too nice for me. In a few days I'll hand the 
 lease over again to its owner, and go back to the 
 pigsty Jim keeps in Stormont Street." 
 
 "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 emo- 
 tion which was greatly straining everybody's en- 
 durance. 
 
 "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.'" 
 
 389
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 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'i>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 
 390
 
 Man Proposes 
 
 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 ground-hog 
 scuttled across his path. He smiled as he remem- 
 bered telling Fleda that once, when he was a little 
 boy, he had eaten ground-hog, and she had asked 
 him if he remembered the Gipsy name for ground- 
 hog 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.
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 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 comet 
 
 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 won- 
 derful, 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 search- 
 ingly, shows a new expression, a new contour never 
 before observed, giving fresh significance to the 
 392
 
 Man Proposes 
 
 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? Pres- 
 ently 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 ^Egean 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 moun- 
 tain-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 
 393
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 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 per- 
 petual 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 palpitat- 
 ing life in her, than red lips and bright eye, than 
 394
 
 Man Proposes 
 
 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 book; 
 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 under- 
 stand, 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 re- 
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 member 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. 
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 Man Proposes 
 
 "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 towards 
 the house.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 THE SLEEPER 
 
 TTHE Ry of Rys sat in his huge arm-chair, his 
 A 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 
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 The Sleeper 
 
 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 s"hocked 
 sense; she only sank to her knees in the room a 
 few feet away from him, and looked at him. 
 
 "Father! Oh, Ry! Oh, 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, lum- 
 bering 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. 
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 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 re- 
 marked 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 
 400
 
 The Sleeper 
 
 highfaluting 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 
 
 26 401
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 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. 
 
 1 ' 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 hi 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 
 402
 
 The Sleeper 
 
 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 mo- 
 ment 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 
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 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 wan- 
 dering 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 at- 
 tended 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 renuncia- 
 tion 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 
 405
 
 The World For Sale 
 
 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. 
 
 Bar an exclamation (literally, a hedge). 
 
 Chal lad, fellow. 
 
 Chi child, daughter, girl. 
 
 Dadia an exclamation. 
 Dordi an exclamation. 
 
 Hotchewilchi hedgehog. 
 
 Kek no, none. 
 Koppa blanket. 
 
 Mi DuvelM.y 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.
 
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