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