The years
which had passed since those tragic days in Gloucestershire had seen the
shadows of that dark episode pass, but the pledge had remained; 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
sentenced 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.
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