the tenors and contraltos wove a garland of glancing melody between the two.  They were all singing now.  Rocking back and forth a little, swaying gently from side to side, lovers clasped together, mothers in their young sons’ arms, and fathers clasping their daughters, they sent out to the velvet arch above them the heart cry of a race, proud and humble, cleanly voluptuous, strong and cruel, passionate and loving, elemental like the north wind and subtle as the fragrance of the poppy.

“Ai—­lallu!  Ai—­lala—­lala!  Ai—­lallu!”

Jan Jacobus sat with his big jaw dropping.  Stupid boor that he was, he could not have explained the terrifying effect which this wild music and those tense, uplifting faces had upon him, but he would have given anything to be back in his mother’s kitchen, with the lamp lit and the dark, unfamiliar night shut out.

As suddenly as the singing had begun, it stopped.  People coughed, moved a little, whispered to one another.  Then George Lane stood upon his feet, pulling Dora Parse with him.

“You see her?” he asked them all, holding out his wife in his arms.

Dora Parse knew then, for he was beginning the ritual of the man or woman who accuses a partner, before the tribe, of unfaithfulness.  He was using the most puro Romany jib, for only so can the serious affairs of the tribe tribunal be conducted.  Dora Parse struggled in the strong hands of her man.

“No!  No!” she cried.  “No—­no!”

“You see her?” George Lane repeated to the circle.

“We see her,” they answered in a murmur that ran around from end to end.

“She is mine?”

“She is yours.”

“What shall be done to her if she has lost the spirit of our love?”

Again Dora Parse furiously struggled, but George Lane held her.

“What shall be done with her?  If that is so?”

Aunty Lee, as the oldest woman present, now took up the replies, as was her right and duty: 

“Let her go to that other, if she wishes, and do you close your tent and your wagon against her.”

“And if she does not wish?”

“Then punish her.”

“What shall be done to the man?”

“Is he a Romany?”

“No.”

Jan Jacobus half started up, but strong hands instantly jerked him down.

“He is a gorgio?”

“Yes.”

“Do nothing.  We do not soil our hands with gorgios.  Let the woman bear the blame.  She is a Romany.  She should have known better.  She is a woman, the wiser sex.  It is her fault.  Let her be punished.”

“Do you all say so?” George Lane demanded.

“We say so.”  Again the rippling murmur.

Jan Jacobus made a desperate attempt to get on his feet, but, for all his strength, he might as well have tried to uncoil the folds of a great snake as to unbind the many hands that held him, for the Romanys have as many secret ways of restraining a person as the Japanese.