But the child stamped her sandalled foot. It was still white at the instep, and the sergeant could see by the blue veins that she had not gone long barefoot. The marks of a child either stolen for ransom or run away from home owing to some wild strain in the blood were too obvious to be mistaken. Her liberty of movement among the gipsies made the latter supposition the more probable. "I am _not_ pretty Chica, and I am not little," she cried angrily. "I would have you remember, Pepe, that _I_ made this plan, which the folk of Egypt are to execute to-night. But since this is the great brigand Don Jose of Ronda, who was executed at Salamanca, I will tell him all about it." She looked round at the dark faces with which they were surrounded. "There are new folk among these," she said, "men I do not know. Bid them go away. Else I will not speak of myself, and I have much to say to Don Jose!" Pepe of the Eleven Wounds looked about him, and shook his head. Gipsydom is a commonwealth when it comes to a venture like this, and save in the presence of some undoubted leader, all Egypt has an equal right to hear and to speak. Pepe's authority was not sufficient for this thing. But that of the Sergeant was. He lifted his Montera cap and said, "I would converse a while with this maid on the affairs of Egypt. 'Tis doubtless no more than you know already, and then, having heard her story my advice is at your service. But she will not speak with so many ears about. It is a woman's whim, and such the wisest of us must sometimes humour." The gipsies smiled at the gay wave of his hand with which Cardono uttered this truism and quickly betook themselves out of earshot in groups of ten and a dozen. Cards were produced, and in a few minutes half a score of games were in progress at different points of the quarry-like cauldron which formed the outlaws' rendezvous. At once the humour of the child changed. "They obeyed you," she said; "I like you for that. I mean to have many men obey me when I grow up. Then I will kill many--thousands and thousands. Now I can do nothing--only I have it in my head--here!" The elf tapped her forehead immediately underneath the red sash which was tied about it. The Sergeant, though eager to hear her story and marvelling at such sentiments from the lips of a child, successfully concealed his curiosity, and said gently, "Tell me how you came to think of to-night----" "Of what to-night?" asked the girl quickly and suspiciously. "The deed which is to be done to-night," replied the Sergeant simply, as though he were acquainted with the whole. She leaped forward and caught him by the arm. "You will stay and go with us? You will lead us?" she hissed, her blue eyes aflame and with trembling accents, "then indeed will I be sure of my revenge. Then the Italian woman and her devil's brat shall not escape. Then I shall be sure--sure!"