Vigorously Mehmet Ali rowed till well out into the wide river without saying another word. His manner was so detached that the gipsy chief thought the Tartar had already forgotten what had passed between them in the morning. Sure enough. Why! He was an old man, Mehmet Ali. It was possible he had been commissioned by some Dobrudgean Tartar chief to buy him a wife. He had been refused and now he was no longer thinking about her. He will look somewhere else, where his offer might not be scorned. That offer of Mehmet had upset him. He had never thought of Fanutza other than as a child. Of course he was marrying her to Stan--but it was more like giving her a second father! Suddenly the old gipsy looked at the Tartar who had lifted his oars from the water and brought the boat to an abrupt standstill. Mehmet Ali laid the paddles across the width of the boat and looking steadily into the eyes of Marcu, he said: "As I said this morning, Marcu, it is not fair that you should buy wives from us when you like our women and not sell us yours when we like them." "It is as it is," countered the gipsy savagely. "But it is not fair," argued Mehmet, slyly watching every movement of his old friend. "If Mehmet is tired my arms are strong enough to help if he wishes," remarked Marcu. "No, I am not tired, but I should like my friend to know that I think it is not fair." There was a long silence during which the boat was carried downstream although it was kept in the middle of the river by skilful little movements of the boatman. Fanutza looked at the Tartar. He was about the same age as Stan was. Only he was stronger, taller, broader, swifter. When he chanced to look at her his small bead-like eyes bored through her like gimlets. No man had ever looked at her that way. Stan's eyes were much like her own father's eyes. The Tartar's face was much darker than her own. His nose was flat and his upper lip curled too much noseward and the lower one chinward, and his bulletlike head rose from between the shoulders. There was no neck. No, he was not beautiful to look at. But he was so different from Stan! So different from any of the other men she had seen every day since she was born. Why! Stan--Stan was like her father. They were all like him in her tribe! "And, as I said," Mehmet continued after a while, "as I said, it is not fair. My friend must see that. It is not fair. So I offer you twenty gold pieces for the girl. Is it a bargain?" "She is not for sale," yelled Marcu, understanding too well the meaning of the oars out of the water. "No?" wondered Mehmet, "not for twenty pieces of gold? Well, then I shall offer five more. Sure twenty-five is more than any of your people ever paid to us for a wife. It would shame my ancestors were I to offer more for a gipsy girl than they ever received for one of our women." "She is not for sale," roared the gipsy at the top of his voice.