came from it strange flashes of fire, showing with what extraordinary
skill the rubies and diamonds had been adjusted so that their facets
should catch and concentrate the rays of the moon.

'Yes,' he said, taking the cross again in his hand and fondling it
passionately, 'it must never be possessed by any one after me.'

'But it might be stolen, father--stolen from your coffin.'

'That would indeed he a disaster,' he said with a shudder. Then a
look of deadly vengeance overspread his face and brought out all its
Romany characteristics as he said: 'But with it there will be buried
a curse written in Hebrew and English--a curse upon the despoiler,
which will frighten off any thief who is in his senses.'

And he showed me a large parchment scroll, folded exactly like a
title-deed, with the following curse and two verses from the 109th
Psalm written upon it in Hebrew and English. The English version
was carefully printed by himself in large letters:--


'He who shall violate this tomb.--he who shall steal this amulet,
hallowed as a love-token between me and my dead wife,--he who shall
dare to lay a sacrilegious hand upon this cross, stands cursed by
God. cursed by love, and cursed by me. Philip Aylwin, lying here.

"Let there be no man to pity him, nor to have compassion upon his
fatherless children.... Let his children be vagabonds, and beg
their bread; let them seek it also out of desolate places." Psalm
cix. So saith the Lord. Amen.'