The dark young leader, who had been at the Judge’s, uttered something in a warning voice to a sullen young woman who lounged against a pile of bright-colored rugs, and with whom he had been having evidently a fierce argument.  She wore a soiled, silken cap, loaded with gilt coins, and her dress was in tawdry reds and yellows, yet picturesque and becoming to her dark beauty.  She stared insolently at Judy as the latter came forward, but the young leader was smiling and profuse in his welcome.

“You have come,” he said, “and alone?”

Something in his tone made Judy draw away from him.

“Yes,” she said, and then, peremptorily, “I want my fortune told.”

“I will speak to the queen,” he said, and left her, with another of his flashing smiles.

The camp life as Judy looked upon it presented an alluring picture to one of her romantic turn of mind.  Back in the darkness and dimness of a cave-like opening in the rocks, an old woman bent over a charcoal brazier.  Her hair, gray and grizzled, fell over a yellow face that, lighted by the blue flames, took on a hag-like aspect.  Her skinny hands moved as if in incantations, and Judy shivered with the mystery of it until the strong and unmistakable odor of beef and onion stew rose on the air and relieved her mind as to the nature of the brew which might have been of “wool of bat and tongue of dog” for all she knew to the contrary.

A group of swarthy men lounged under the trees and down by the stream a half-dozen children played with a half-dozen dogs.  The children were fat and rosy, and the curs lean and cadaverous, and the dozen of them had stared at Judy as she came into the camp in animal-like curiosity, and then had gone on with their playing.

From one of the two big wagons drawn up near the road came the wailing of an infant, and in the other a woman, half-hidden by the curtain, sat weaving a bright-colored basket.

“Do you all work at basket weaving?” Judy asked the silent girl on the rugs.

“I do not work,” was the answer.  Then she tossed her head, defiantly.  “I will not work.  They cannot make me.”

She started to say more, but she stopped as the dark young leader came back.

He had spoken to the old woman who presided at the fire, and Judy saw her wipe her hands and make for a dilapidated tent under an oak.

It was to this tent that she was directed, and when she was once within and her eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness, she saw the old hag, looking more witch-like than ever, with her head tied up in a flaming yellow bandanna, and her shoulders wrapped in a great cloak covered with cabalistic signs.

“Cross my hand with silver,” she murmured, and Judy took out the only piece of money she had with her—­a silver quarter of a dollar.

The old woman looked at it with dissatisfaction.  “That is not enough,” she said.  “I can tell you nothing for that.”