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 observer 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 impatience. "What do you want with
me, my Romany 'chal'?" he asked sharply.--[A glossary of Romany words
will be found at the end of the book.]

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?"