"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?" 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 her 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