This was at the hour of dawn. Unable to sleep, the Earl sat by his open window watching the chill gray light creeping over the dew-laden grass and disclosing the trees one by one as though an unseen hand drew back the curtain of the night from the stately branches. A thrush with a sweet note heralded the day--the deer began to browse beneath the great avenue of yews. Anon, a sweet fresh air, invigorating as a very draught of life itself, came down from the hills and sent the ripples leaping and splashing beneath the arches of the old bridge, as though the river also had awakened from a lover's dreams. And now all stood revealed as in a picture of a forest land; the vast spaces of ripe green grass, delicious vistas of wood and thicket; home scenes, and scenes of Nature untrammelled. Upon other days, often at such an hour as this, the Earl had looked down upon them and said, "Mine--mine ... all these are mine." To-day he viewed them with heavy eyes. Something unfamiliar in the landscape attracted his attention and roused him from his musings. A loom of heavy white smoke floating upward from the glen! Nothing but that. A drift of smoke and anon the figure of a man seen between the trees! Another would hardly have remarked the circumstances, but Robert Forrester became awake in an instant and as vigilant as one who dreads that which his eyes discover. "They are gypsies, by----" he said, "and they have come at this man's bidding." He knew the meaning of their presence without words to tell him. They had come to demand the freedom of their old master, Georges Odin, whose son had carried them across the seas with him. "I must answer them," the Earl said, "and if I answer them, what then! Will the other be silent?" He turned away and shut the window violently, as though to shut the spectre out. "He would kill me," he said; "the world is not big enough to hide me from Georges Odin." CHAPTER XV THE PRICE OF SALVATION Evelyn met her father at the breakfast table on the following morning; but their brief conversation in no way enlightened her. The Earl, indeed, appeared to be entirely wrapped up in his own thoughts, and the few questions he put to her were far from being helpful. "You have seen my friend, Count Odin," he remarked abruptly, "what is your opinion of him?" "He interests me, but I do not like him," she replied as frankly. "A first impression," the Earl continued with a note of annoyance but ill-concealed. "You will get to know him better. His father was my oldest friend." "In which case the son is sometimes an embarrassment," she said naturally, and with no idea of the meaning of her words. The Earl looked up quickly. "Has he told you anything," he asked with little cleverness, "spoken of Bukharest, perhaps? You must have been a good deal together while I was away. What did he say to you? A man like that is never one to hold his tongue." She smiled at the suggestion.