The Redemption of David Corson | Page 9

admiration he turned to the gypsy and said, "Baltasar, do not misunderstand me, I am neither an officer of the law nor in any other way a minister of justice. I have as few scruples as you as to how I get a horse; but we differ from each other in this, that if you were in my place you would take the horse without giving an equivalent. Now I am a man of mercy, and if you will ask a fair price you shall have it. But mark me! Do not overreach yourself and kill the goose that is about to lay the golden egg."
"Wat muz be, muz be," the gypsy answered, shrugging his shoulders as if in the presence of an inexorable fate, and added: "Ze brice iz zwo hunner and viftee dollars, wiz ze mare drown een."
Putting his pistol back into his pocket with an air of triumph, the doctor said: "There seems to be persuasive power in cold lead. Stretch forth your palm and I will cross it for you."
The gypsy did so, and into that tiger-like paw he counted the golden coin; at the musical clink of each piece the eye of the gypsy brightened, and when he closed his hand upon them and thrust them into his pocket his hair-lip curled with a cynical smile.
The stranger took the bridle and saddle from his mare, placed them on the stallion and mounted.
As they moved forward through the silent forest the gypsy sang softly to himself:
"The Romany chal to his horse did cry As he placed the bit in his jaw, Kosko gry, Romany gry, Muk, man, kuster, tute knaw."
He was still humming this weird tune when they emerged into the open fields, and there the traveler experienced a surprise.
A little rivulet lay across their path, and up from the margin of it where she had been gathering water cresses there sprang a young girl, who cast a startled glance at him, then bounded swiftly toward the tent and vanished through the opening.
Now it happened that this keen admirer of horses was equally susceptible to the charms of female beauty, and the loveliness of this young girl made his blood tingle. In her hand she carried a bunch of cresses still dripping with the water of the brook. A black bodice was drawn close to a figure which was just unfolding into womanhood. The color of this garment formed a striking contrast to a scarlet skirt which fell only a little below her knees. On her feet were low-cut shoes, fastened with rude silver buckles. A red kerchief had become untied and let loose a wave of black hair, which fell over her half bare shoulders. Her face was oval, her complexion olive, her eyes large, eager and lustrous.
All this the man who admired women even more than he admired horses, saw in the single instant before the girl dashed toward the tent and disappeared. So swift an apparition would have bewildered rather than illumined the mind of an ordinary man. But the quack was not an ordinary man. He was endowed with a certain rude power of divination which enabled him to see in a single instant, by swift intuition, more than the average man discovers by an hour of reasoning. By this natural clairvoyance he saw at a glance that this face of exquisite delicacy could no more have been coined in a gypsy camp than a fine cameo could be cut in an Indian wigwam. He knew that all gypsies were thieves, and that these were Spanish gypsies. What was more natural than that he should conclude with inevitable logic that this child had been stolen from people of good if not of noble blood!
He who had coveted the horse with desire, hungered for the maiden with passion; and with him, to feel an appetite, was to rush toward its gratification, as fire rushes upon tow.
"Baltasar!" he said.
The gypsy turned.
"You are a girl-thief as well as a horse-thief."
If the gypsy had felt astonished before, he was now terrified in the presence of a man who seemed to read his inmost thoughts; and for the first time in his life acknowledged to himself that he had met his master in cunning.
Bewildered as he was by this new charge, he still remembered that if speech was silver, silence was golden, and answered not a word.
"Baltasar," continued the strange man on horseback, rightly judging from the gypsy's confusion that he had hit the mark and determining to take another chance shot; "you stole this girl from the family of a Spanish nobleman. I am the representative of this family and have followed your trail for years. You thought I had come to get the horse. You were mistaken; it was the girl!"
"Perdita!" exclaimed the gypsy, taken