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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78341 ***
+
+
+
+
+                      LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. =1492=
+                      Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius
+
+                         Stories of Gypsy Life
+
+                            Konrad Bercovici
+
+                      HALDEMAN-JULIUS PUBLICATIONS
+                             GIRARD, KANSAS
+
+
+
+
+                            Copyright, 1929,
+                          Doubleday, Doran Co.
+                        Published by Arrangement
+
+                PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+
+
+
+                                CONTENTS
+
+
+                                              Page
+
+                      The Mill on the River      5
+
+                      Ripe Wheat                20
+
+                      Sava                      42
+
+
+
+
+                         STORIES OF GYPSY LIFE
+
+
+
+
+                         THE MILL ON THE RIVER
+
+
+It was an old mill, Dimitru’s mill on the Bistritza River. It had been
+run by the family of Dimitru long before any other mills had ever been
+put on either side of the river, all through the Moldavia country.
+The dykes and the water wheels were of old oak, cut from trees in the
+forest when the country paid yearly tribute to Turkey and was ruled by
+the Fanariots of Stamboul.
+
+Within the mill were fifty pairs of millstones which, grinding wheat
+and corn, had themselves been ground so thin that they had no weight to
+mill any more the hard grain growing in that part of Roumania. These
+old millstones were the pride of the family, for not another mill in
+the country could show so many.
+
+When anybody said anything about Dimitru’s mill or the manner in which
+he milled, the tall, black-bearded, wide-chested, brown-eyed miller
+would stretch to his full height, and pounding the left side of his
+chest with his right hand, he would cry:
+
+“Look at these stones! Fifty pair of stones have ground flour in this
+mill. I myself have used five pair. This is the sixth one on the shaft.”
+
+Those millstones were like arms of the escutcheon of a nobleman, which
+no man was allowed to impugn.
+
+At the inn Dimitru was looked upon with respect by the peasants. He
+was one of the oldest inhabitants of the village. Indeed, the village
+itself, clustered as it was about the mill, was known as Dimitru’s Mill
+Village. For not only did they mill flour there, but they cut logs that
+were let down from the heights of the Carpathians early every spring,
+and they pressed oil out of pumpkin seeds, and carded wool, and even
+worked things out at a lathe which Dimitru himself had installed there;
+at first merely to satisfy a whim he had had after he had first seen a
+lathe work in another village, and then, as he grew more proficient, to
+make furniture for most of the people in the village. Back of the mill
+there was a shop in which carts and wheels were made, and chairs and
+tables; and even small husking machines, patterned after one that had
+been bought in Austria. The water wheel provided the power for all the
+work.
+
+The inn, the church, the school, the mayor’s office, the situation
+of every building was reckoned by its distance from the mill. During
+the winter, when there was only little work to do, the elders of the
+village would assemble in the mill, and watching the still in which the
+mash of plums and pears, grown in the neighborhood, was distilled into
+spirits, watching the drops fall into the receptacle that sat under the
+long copper worm, they would tell the tales they had heard from their
+mothers and grandmothers, who in turn had heard them from their parents
+and grandparents--stories of visitations of wolves; tales of sorceries,
+of witches which had risen up riding in the air on broomsticks,
+and of horses that could run so fast they disappeared from sight in
+less time than it takes to blink an eye. They recalled the different
+battles--battles with the Turks, battles with the Russians, battles
+with the Hungarians; births of five-legged calves and two-headed
+chickens, and the reappearances of deceased men whose ghosts were
+forever roaming about this, that and the other place.
+
+Dimitru repeated an old tale of his own family, of how the stones of
+his mill had stopped once by themselves while some corn was being
+ground. From behind the stones groaned a voice which was recognized as
+being the voice of Vasili, Vasili Yoan Stefans, who had died only a few
+months before.
+
+“Mill not this corn,” the voice had called. “It has been stolen from my
+granary by Panait, the Greek. Give it back to my wife lest my children
+starve this winter.”
+
+The millstones refused to budge or turn until every grain of flour
+which had already been ground was swept out clean and returned to the
+bag from which the corn had been taken. And even then the stones would
+not move, although the water wheels turned and everything else was in
+motion. The wool was being carded, the logs were being sawn; only the
+millstones refused to turn. Not until the widow had been called and
+the corn belonging to her had been returned, and not until Panait had
+confessed to stealing the grain, had the stones turned again.
+
+And there were many tales, similar to that one, centered about the
+mill. For the mill had also refused to grind grain when the Russians
+had invaded the country a century ago, and had refused to grind when
+the Turks had come. It was the mill on the Bistritza that ground wheat
+and corn and pressed oil and sawed logs and turned the lathe only for
+those belonging to the land. And Dimitru was the owner of that mill.
+
+Dimitru had a son, and a daughter whom he had married off when very
+young. The son, like all the sons back in the family, was preparing
+himself to take over the mill of his father when the time should come.
+For even if he were to take a wife while his father was yet alive,
+there was enough room for him and his wife in the house. And even if
+he were to raise a family, there was enough room and enough field for
+him to pasture his dowry of cows and sheep, and to raise enough fodder
+for them. He had indeed already taken off a good deal of the burden of
+his father, for while the old man busied himself with his cart shop,
+preferring the lathe to the mill, George was in complete charge of the
+stones. And he was as good a miller as his father.
+
+But although he joked and played around with most of the young girls
+who came to the mill, although he danced with all of them at the inn,
+teasing, singing, joking with them, there was not one who could say
+that he was giving her preference over the others. Tall, dark, with
+big brown eyes, the lashes of which were always covered with a thin
+white powder, the dark, tufty brows looking like those of an old man
+because of a fine flour powder always on them, he was a good dancer,
+and his voice rose above the voices of the others when any singing was
+being done at the inn. At the wrestling matches on Sunday there were
+few youngsters who dared to match him. And he was gay and always happy.
+And it was known that although he was allowed to take one-tenth of the
+flour he milled, in payment for milling it, from everybody, he took
+only half that amount, and sometimes not even that from the poor and
+the widows of the country. Indeed, many a widow had brought half a bag
+of corn and returned home with a full bag of corn flour, George yelling
+at the top of his voice, when the widow claimed there had been some
+mistake, that he was an honest miller.
+
+“You have brought one bag of corn and not two, widow of Jorga,” he
+would silence the protesting woman, not giving her any chance or time
+to explain herself.
+
+“You have brought one bag, and I know you have brought only one bag! Am
+I a miller, or a thief, or what?” he would shout, and show great anger,
+as he would push her out of the mill.
+
+One winter night, while the wind was howling, and the water wheel,
+raised from the frozen river, was squeaking and groaning, and the storm
+was beating savagely against the windows and doors of the mill, one of
+the villagers sitting about the walled-in stove, in the ashes of which
+the potatoes were being baked, asked:
+
+“George, whom are you going to marry?”
+
+Dimitru gave his son no time to answer. “He will marry the one who will
+bring him a good enough dowry,” he answered, instead of his son.
+
+One by one they passed in review all the marriageable daughters of the
+village. They knew all of them. And when Dimitru had shaken his head to
+the last one, the _staroste_--the elder of the village--trembling and
+with shaking fists, thundered into the face of the man:
+
+“Is it, then, the death of one of the married men that you are waiting
+for, to marry your son?”
+
+George had been making fun of all that was said. He had taken it all as
+a joke. But to the thundering voice of the _staroste_ he replied:
+
+“I wish everyone long life in this village, and in every other one.
+When I am ready to marry, I shall make my own choice.”
+
+“Indeed, my son wants to get married to some pauper. I have given six
+pair of oxen as dowry to my daughter, six pair of oxen and one hundred
+gold pieces. But he may want to marry some pauper!”
+
+“A time will come,” George answered. “My time will come. But it shall
+be of my own choice, not of anybody else’s.”
+
+“Well said,” spoke the gray-bearded _staroste_.
+
+Old Dimitru remained silent.
+
+Then they all sat down to sample the new prune juice that was dripping
+from the copper worm. It was better that such discussion end in joy, so
+they sang their saddest songs.
+
+Finally George remarked, on looking toward the idle stones, “It is a
+pity they should be idle so long.”
+
+George was never happy but when the stones turned around.
+
+“This is a water mill,” his father answered. “When the Bistritza
+freezes, the mill freezes.”
+
+“I know, Father.” He was a miller and lived only when the mill lived.
+“But it is a pity that the stones should not be turning when the
+Bistritza freezes.”
+
+“If it were a windmill, you would be saying half the time the same
+thing,” another man of the group mused.
+
+“If it were a horse mill, the mill would not be turning at night,”
+another man said in jest.
+
+Whereupon one of the men, who had served in the army, and had been far
+away in a large city, began to speak about a large, steam-power mill
+which he had seen on his travels. A steam mill. One prepared logs to
+fire the engine during the summer, and then in winter one had the mill
+go whether the river was frozen or not.
+
+George mused impatiently, “What a pity the Bistritza freezes!”
+
+During the first month of the winter, after the river had frozen, he
+had had some work to do. He had sharpened every tooth and smoothed out
+the grain of the stones, until the teeth were as sharp as steel edges.
+He had cleaned and adjusted and readjusted everything. He had made it
+all ready to go, and now he was anxious to hear the whirl and turn of
+the mill, grinding and crunching all that was shoved into it.
+
+“What a pity the Bistritza freezes!”
+
+His father looked at him and then replied: “It is a thing I am going
+to put into my will, that this is a water mill and it shall remain so.
+This mill has ground fifty pair of stones.”
+
+George was tired of always hearing the same thing. He left the company
+to go to his own room above the shaft.
+
+Soon after, the peasants tightened their wolf-fur coats about them and
+returned to their homes, after wishing one another good luck. It was
+snowing and storming. Wolves were prowling on the road.
+
+Dimitru still pottered about in the cart shop, working on a new
+corn-husking machine he was trying to perfect; then, tired, he, too,
+went to his room, where he lay wondering what was to become of the mill
+after he was no longer there. Was it to be desecrated? Was it to be
+forever forgotten as the water mill on the Bistritza? Was all the pride
+of generations to be sacrificed to that new thing of which the returned
+soldier had spoken? Outside the wind was howling, the lugubrious plaint
+of the hungry wolves was coming near and nearer, the wheel was creaking
+on its axle, straining the ropes that held it to the thick iron staples
+embedded in the stone of the walls. Whom was that son of his to marry
+if he wanted to marry of his own choice? It had not been so with him.
+His father had chosen him a bride, decided on the dowry, and married
+him off. Yet he had been happy! George should do as he had done. He
+was the father, the master.... With these thoughts the old man fell
+asleep.
+
+Early that spring, after the river had broken, and the logs began to
+descend to the mill, and the wheel had begun again to turn, George,
+very busy and very happy, forgot all about the frozen months.
+
+At the inn Dan, Petru’s son, whose farm was across the river and who
+was reputed to be very wealthy, came to meet Dimitru, the miller, to
+talk over matters of matrimony between his daughter Veta and George.
+After the bottle of wine was between them, Dan opened the conversation.
+
+“There is no other man would offer the dowry I offer. What say you?”
+
+“I say that my son George must receive as much as I have given my
+daughter as dowry. Six pair of great oxen, one hundred gold pieces, and
+all the other things.”
+
+Dan, red-haired and easily excited, rose from his chair. “Is my Veta a
+cripple?”
+
+Dimitru answered calmly: “She is not ... but George is a better man
+than the one who married my daughter.”
+
+They both sat down again. It was not fitting they should be heard
+quarreling by the others.
+
+“Am I a miller to be able to give such dowry?” Dan remonstrated. Then,
+as an afterthought, he added, “One should be able to accumulate wealth
+by building a mill the other side of the river so people won’t have to
+lose time rowing back and forth.”
+
+“The mill is on this side,” Dimitru answered. “It is on this side.”
+
+“Since millers ask such dowry, it may come to pass that there will be a
+mill on the other side also.”
+
+Upon that the two men left the inn.
+
+On reaching the mill Dimitru asked his son, “What say you about Veta,
+Dan’s daughter?”
+
+George was busy cleaning the flour funnels. He was as if snow-clad. He
+wiped his face with his sleeve and answered: “It is long since I have
+seen her. They have their own inn on the other side. I remember her
+well, however, beautiful and strong.”
+
+“You will marry her,” Dimitru announced briefly.
+
+“Who says I will?” yelled George. He was furious.
+
+“I say so. I have talked to her father about dowry and things.”
+
+“Marry her, then, yourself. I shall do my own choosing when I am ready.”
+
+“You will do what I say, George.”
+
+“In the mill, because the mill is yours.”
+
+“And do you know what will happen if you don’t marry Veta? Dan will put
+up a mill on the other side and starve our stones. Do you understand?”
+
+George paled. But the next instant he stopped the whirr of the mill to
+be better heard and said to his father:
+
+“Even though she be the fairest on earth, I say ‘no.’ I am not a horse
+or an ox to be marketed that way. Let him build ten mills.”
+
+Upon that he returned to his work, while the old man muttered, “You
+will do as I say,” and went to his shop.
+
+A few days later, bricks were being brought in big carts and deposited
+on the other side of the river. Bricks and beams and lumber, and
+gypsies came to dig the foundation of a large building.
+
+Dimitru’s heart stopped beating when he saw that Dan really intended to
+build a mill. He sent word he wanted to speak to him, but Veta’s father
+refused to come. The old miller could not sleep nights, nor could he
+work at his lathe. The noise of the work across the river maddened him.
+Another mill was rising. Another mill, and his son seemed not to care.
+He asked George to go to the dance across the river and get better
+acquainted with Veta.... The mill had to be stopped. George refused. He
+would not be traded away. He would take a wife of his own choice, mill
+or no mill. Veta was out of the question.
+
+When the foundation had risen above a man’s height from the ground,
+Dimitru, compelling his son to come along, rowed across the Bistritza
+to have a talk with Dan. He found the man busily engaged in giving
+orders, flushed by the activity about him.
+
+“What is it you are doing, Dan, Petru’s son?” Dimitru asked, as if he
+did not know.
+
+“As you see, my neighbor across the water--putting up a mill for the
+people on this side of the river, so that they shall not have to row
+across to your mill.”
+
+“But a good half of my milling comes from your side of the river,”
+Dimitru answered.
+
+“That is just why I am putting up the mill,” Dan replied sarcastically.
+
+“But that is impossible! My mill has been there for over a hundred
+years,” remonstrated Dimitru. “Are you going to starve the stones?”
+
+“To each one his own way of doing,” replied the would-be miller. “But
+young men demand such dowries, nowadays, they can only be made by
+milling and not by farming.”
+
+“But we have been millers for hundreds of years,” Dimitru insisted.
+
+“I hope my grandchildren will be able to say the same thing about this
+mill,” Dan retorted. “Perhaps things will change, and people will begin
+to row from your side of the river to this mill, for I shall mill
+cheaper than you do.”
+
+“So that is what you want to do,” cried Dimitru. “Starve me out!”
+
+“You see,” Dan retorted, “I have only daughters in my house. And the
+young men about this place want big dowries, which only millers can
+give to their daughters.”
+
+While the two men were speaking, Veta, Dan’s daughter, came riding upon
+a small horse. George raised his fur cap as he saw her, and approached
+to help her from the saddle. Instantly the two older men looked at each
+other with a look of understanding. Perhaps the problem was nearer a
+solution than they had just thought. The conversation between them lost
+its acridity as they saw the two youngsters together, Dimitru saying:
+
+“It is not a mill that I should like for my son as dowry. He already
+has one.”
+
+To which Dan answered, “I have not offered the mill as dowry, have I?”
+
+They tried conversation on other subjects, but it always reverted to
+what one had to offer as dowry, and what the other one would be willing
+to accept for his son. In the midst of that, Dimitru, having remarked a
+too great interest in his son for the girl, abruptly decided to leave
+for the other shore.
+
+“Go on and work your mill, son. This is no time to idle. Come.”
+
+“Come dance at our inn,” George urged Veta, as he jumped into the boat.
+
+“There is a big dance at our inn tomorrow, Sunday,” the girl answered.
+
+Then the oars splashed in the water, and the boat was rowed across with
+vigorous strokes by father and son.
+
+Late that night, as the two men were anchoring the water wheel over
+Sunday, the father said to his son:
+
+“I shall ask as dowry that he stop working on his mill.”
+
+Instantly George rose to his full height and looked his father straight
+in the eye.
+
+“You might have asked me,” George remonstrated, “for I happen not to
+wish to marry Veta.”
+
+“You do not?” Dimitru asked furiously. “But I do want you to marry her,
+and marry her you will. I shall not live to see the stones of my mill
+idle when they should be milling--live to see how the corn is rowed
+across the river to be milled in the other mill, led by ungodly German
+wheels turning of themselves. For it is a steam mill he is putting up.”
+
+“This is certain,” George answered, “you cannot make me marry her.”
+
+Then he left his father and went to his room. He was furious. Because
+his father had spoken so compellingly, Veta, of whom he had thought
+rather agreeably, had lost her favor in his eyes. He was going to marry
+whom he pleased, and not because of fifty pair of dead stones that lay
+around there, requesting him to do otherwise.
+
+The following day, Sunday, he went to the inn on his side of the river,
+in his best clothes, looking around for any likely girl whom he had
+not previously remarked, so that he could make love to her, knowing
+full well that his father was watching his every movement. In the midst
+of the dance Veta arrived. She was fairer than most of them, and she
+had put on her best garb. Upon her bare, full neck she wore the gold
+necklace, her white silk shawl hung down from the comb in her hair, and
+her high, well-modeled boots, that reached to her knees, were decorated
+with veins of red and green leather.
+
+The old man smiled to himself when he saw her, sure that George could
+not resist her: she was so beautiful. He was also certain that she
+had come to dance with his son, sent probably by Dan, her father, who
+already regretted what he had done. Ah! He was not going to let Dan off
+so easily if he saw Veta loving his son.
+
+But the girl seemed to pay no attention to George after a perfunctory
+greeting. At the dance she locked her arm into the arm of the son of
+the blacksmith and danced with him in the second, and third, and fourth
+dances, avoiding dancing with George. It enraged the old man. Seating
+himself near his son, who was resting between dances, he said:
+
+“That shrew is trying to play with you.”
+
+“Nobody can play with me,” George answered.
+
+“She thinks that if she can make you love her, her father will get off
+with less dowry than he should pay.”
+
+“Who says I want her?” George answered.
+
+At the end of the fourth dance Veta beckoned to George to come outside;
+she wanted to talk to him. He followed her out quickly.
+
+Once outside, the girl told him rapidly:
+
+“My father wants to compel me to marry you. I don’t want to.”
+
+“And mine wants to compel me to marry you, and I don’t want to,” George
+answered.
+
+“Then it is understood,” Veta replied, after looking the boy straight
+in the face. “Are we cattle to be married against our will? We do not
+want it. I always knew you to be a man, George.”
+
+“No, we do not want it.” And they shook hands on that.
+
+They reentered the inn as unobtrusively as they had gone out. George
+watched her walk ahead of him and thought:
+
+“What a spirited girl! And that fool of a father thinks he can compel
+her to marry somebody she does not want to!”
+
+
+
+
+                               RIPE WHEAT
+
+
+The wheat blades, heavy with the large berry nests, swayed golden in
+the light of the setting sun. The bells of the little church tolled
+the call to prayers. God had been good to the peasants of the Dobrudja
+land. There had been rain in time, and the locusts had kept away from
+the marshlands of Tcherna. The peasants, accompanied by their wives
+and children, all in their Sunday clothes--the embroidered waists with
+the red-and-green skirts and the high boots with the vamps of colored
+leather--crowded the road leading to the house of God.
+
+They had been going to that church every evening while their
+wheatfields ripened. They were praying that no calamity overtake them;
+for they had already suffered enough the previous three years. Two
+years of drought had robbed them of all their labor, and on the third
+clouds of buzzing locusts had suddenly settled upon their fields and
+devoured all, leaving only dry stalks, before moving on, flying lower,
+because heavier, to other fields to do the same work of destruction.
+
+But now all seemed past danger. They offered thanks to the Lord and
+promised gifts of candles and oil for the lamps under the icons of the
+church. On the morrow, they were to begin harvest. Returning from the
+church, talking softly among themselves, still awed by the sacred
+ritual, they looked over the scythes to see if they were sharp enough
+and the curved handles strong enough.
+
+It was only after the evening was over that gaiety entered the square,
+thatched mud huts of the Roumanian peasants. A lone gypsy fiddler
+had appeared at the inn. It was One-Eyed Naie, who traveled from one
+village to another without ever remaining anywhere more than a night.
+Some people said it was because of an oath he had taken. Others said
+that he was continually running away from a curse which followed him
+for a sinful deed in his youth. But it did not matter. Naie was a good
+fiddler. Already the villagers were assembling at the inn.
+
+Tomorrow they were going out to harvest their fields. Many brought
+their curved long-handled scythes to the inn to show them to one
+another, and to whet them still sharper with the oilstones they carried
+in their belts while talking to friends. They had had their first meal
+in more than two weeks; for they had kept “post”--had abstained from
+eating meat while they were praying God’s mercy.
+
+Now Naie was playing. The young men and the girls were ready for the
+dance. Two of the older men, Stan and the blacksmith Gavril, sat down
+near Naie to beat the rhythm with their palms while he was playing the
+dance tunes. There were song and dance and loud laughter before the
+night was very old. Arms were locked in arms--the sinewy brown, hairy
+ones of the young men on the velvet-white, delicately veined ones of
+the girls.
+
+Gay scarfs flashed in the air as they were turning round and round the
+fiddler sitting on top of an overturned barrel. Heels were thumping the
+ground so hard the windows shook and the rafters of the low ceiling
+trembled. And they laughed and sang and yodeled.
+
+In the midst of all the gaiety appeared Boyar Robu. The youngsters
+continued to dance at his approach, but the older men became silent.
+Even the two old men who had been beating the rhythm with their palms
+ceased to do so. He was a tall man, Boyar Robu, and thin and wiry. A
+curly black beard framed his strong brownish face. He was a man of
+about thirty. He was dressed half peasant and half European.
+
+He greeted everybody in a friendly manner, calling each one by name.
+But the answers to his greeting were, though respectful, anything but
+cordial or receptive on the part of the peasants. The priest, Popa
+Stancu, was standing talking to a peasant.
+
+“Good evening, Popa,” Boyar Robu called out, and kissed the extended
+hand of the man of God, as he walked up to him. The priest followed
+almost reluctantly the Boyar to the table.
+
+“And do please serve everybody,” the Boyar called to the innkeeper.
+“This has been a good year.”
+
+The peasants were not much pleased by the Boyar’s generosity, and when
+he noticed their refusal a wild rage overpowered him. Standing up he
+smashed his empty glass on the floor.
+
+Instantly Naie ceased playing. The Boyar stood and narrowed his eyes
+until they looked more like two slits from under which shot dark fire,
+as he called out:
+
+“Am I a heathen that you refuse me? It is on my land that your wheat
+has grown! On mine! And it has been so for generations and generations.
+And while peasants were flogged daily, and beaten and robbed by
+other boyars a few miles from here your fathers and grandfathers and
+yourselves have lived freely on my land, long before the laws of the
+country had given you freedom!”
+
+“It is not that, Boyar,” Stan, the oldest of the peasants, spoke up,
+after looking around to the other men. “But we do know what you want.
+None of the men would put their oxen or drive your oxen to these
+ungodly machines that you have brought from Nemtzia, or from other
+countries, to do the work God made man to do.”
+
+“We’ll talk about that afterward,” the Boyar called.
+
+Instantly glasses clinked. Blessings and good wishes were proffered.
+They were his friends; his peasants. He was their master. Their good
+master. But those machines ... that was a different story ... those
+things were the work of the devil.
+
+The dance having stopped, some of the young people went out in couples
+to speak of things more important to them than what was being discussed
+at the inn. Naie hung his violin on the button under his coat, ready to
+go to sleep in the barn of the inn. The Boyar stopped him and called to
+the innkeeper.
+
+“Give Naie food. I may want him to play tonight for us.”
+
+The gypsy was served at the end of the room, while the peasants,
+standing on their feet, assured the Boyar of their devotion. When they
+had convinced him of that, they all sat down to talk. Gavril leaned
+over with his two hands on the table, and sticking his bearded face
+right under the eyes of the Boyar, said:
+
+“We all love you. And your grandfather and father and you, yourself,
+have always been the best of Boyars to us. The rent of your land
+is cheaper than anywhere, and you have always been kind to us. But
+we would not, any of us, come near to any of the machines you have
+brought. This land here has been plowed with the plow pulled by oxen.
+We have sown the wheat with our own hands. We have harvested it with
+our scythes and threshed it on the threshing floor with our horses.
+That is what peasants are born for. To do all this work. It has been so
+since Adam. And if the Nemtzia Germans or the people from another part
+of the world want to do otherwise, let them do it.”
+
+“Have I spoken right?” Gavril turned around, looking at the other
+peasants.
+
+“He has spoken right,” they answered, nodding their heads. “He has
+spoken our own hearts.”
+
+The whole night long Boyar Robu tried to convince his men that the
+binding machines he had from America, and which were rusting in the
+shed, were not the work of the devil, but the work of man’s brains.
+He explained to them how they worked, how the steel fingers of the
+binding apparatus were catching the Manila thread, and bringing it
+around the sheaf after it had been lifted from the cutting platform on
+the rolling canvas.
+
+But it was all in vain. Stolid, obstinate, the men refused to believe
+it was so simple. The priest was silent, but the peasants knew he sided
+with them. And even after the Boyar had explained that their poverty
+was due to the fact that wheat and corn were sown and harvested in
+other countries in different ways, they refused to understand. If it
+was God’s will that they live in poverty it was God’s will.
+
+Without the help of the peasants on his enormous wheatfields the
+Boyar’s desire to expand by cultivating all the land he owned was an
+empty dream. The peasants were tenants. They paid the rent for their
+land by so many days of work in the Boyar’s fields. He could not ask
+more days than was the custom for each acre. If one took more land he
+needed more time for his own fields. If one cultivated only a little
+land, he owed him fewer days.
+
+Their own fields being comparatively small, it was easy for them to
+harvest their wheat in a few days, and thresh it leisurely on their
+threshing floors. But it was not so with his fields. The locusts not
+having spared him, he, too, had had many bad years.
+
+Attracted by the odor of ripe wheat, the locusts might arrive before
+he had had a chance to harvest his 400 acres of wheat. He had sown so
+much, hoping to recoup his losses of former years. He had bought the
+machines to save himself from ruin. The only thing that could save
+him was speedy work. And yet he could not ask the peasants to go in
+with their scythes in his field before they had cut theirs. With the
+machines the work could be done in a few days.
+
+But they were unwilling, and even when in the stress of pleading with
+them he, Robu, the son of the oldest of the Boyars in the neighborhood,
+cried before them, they wept together with him, but would not do as he
+asked them to.
+
+“Why,” he said, “I’ll lend you my machines. They will cut your wheat,
+all of yours, in two days without much trouble. I can thresh your wheat
+and get half as much more out of the sheaves than you would get on the
+threshing floors. You would get more time and more money. More wheat.”
+
+But the peasants shook their stubborn heads. Machines were the work of
+the devil. All the diseases and all the ills of the world were caused
+by the machines with which men wanted to do more work than God had
+ordained should be done.
+
+Unable to convince them, although he had used the arguments that had
+been made to him at the time he had bought the machines at the capital
+of the country, Boyar Robu called Naie to him.
+
+“Go to your homes. Leave me alone here with Naie.”
+
+In the dim light of the oil lamp hanging from the low-beamed ceiling,
+the air heavy with the odors of boots and quarters of meat and blankets
+and chains and plowshares, the Boyar and the gypsy remained the whole
+night long.
+
+The peasants were already going out into the fields singing the harvest
+song, holding the glittering blue steel of the scythes to the sun, with
+the girls beating the bottoms of empty pots and throwing water, from
+the pails they were carrying, at one another, when the Boyar and the
+gipsy went up the road toward his _curte_ at the end of the village.
+
+Boyar Robu still repeated:
+
+“Fools! Fools! You don’t want to work with my machines!”
+
+Later, Boyar Robu rode out on his horse to see how the harvesting
+in the peasants’ fields was going on. The work was being done very
+rapidly. Everybody from every hut had turned out. Backs bent roundly
+as the swishing scythes rose and fell and left broad paths of gold on
+the ground. The smell of the wheat and the song of sharp steel against
+dried blades mingled with the chant of the men and the cuckoo calls
+from the forest.
+
+Everywhere there was song. And everywhere Boyar Robu was greeted, “We
+shall get into your field tomorrow morning, Boyar. We’ll cut it ere the
+locusts will come, never fear!”
+
+For they all loved him, though they regretted that he wanted to do
+what nobody had ever done before. It was all because of John Petrianu,
+the cruel Petrianu, whose fields were a few miles away. He had bought
+machines and compelled his men to work them at the point of a pistol.
+
+The Boyar nodded his head, accepting their generosity and their
+mirthfulness. Yet, as he looked at the fields, he thought how easily
+the whole thing could be done with his two machines.
+
+Having made the rounds, he returned to the shed to look at the rusting
+monsters on which the name of the harvesting company was lettered with
+gold upon red boards. It amused him to read the words in English and
+their translation below into Roumanian, “Harvesting Machine Company,”
+and, underneath, “Chicago, Illinois.”
+
+He mused about the country they came from as he looked at them. He
+had seen such machines work in the fields of Petrianu, his neighbor.
+How pretty it was to see them run through and cut and bind and drop
+the sheaves of equal thickness, file by file, one after the other.
+How had Petrianu succeeded to get his men to work them? He was a hard
+man, Petrianu was.... He had ordered and it was done. Boyar Robu had
+heard tales of brutalities he did not believe ... yet.... It was all so
+simple! Why should these fools think there was any ungodly thing that
+made this iron and steel work?
+
+Early the following morning, as soon as the heat of the sun had dried
+up the dew of the night on the fields, the peasants came singing
+down the road. Ranging themselves up on the outside of Boyar Robu’s
+wheatfield, they crossed themselves; then, bending their backs, their
+hundred or more glistening hard-steel scythes came down obliquely in
+one large movement into the wheatfield.
+
+“Heigh! Ho! Heigh! Ho!” they sang loudly, marking the rhythm of the
+first strokes as they advanced breast deep into the gold. The women,
+their skirts held upon the side by the narrow red sash, followed in
+their bare feet, to glean and bind into sheaves what fell behind their
+men.
+
+Boyar Robu arrived on horseback. The devotion of his peasants moved him
+deeply. His ancestral worship of field work stirred within him. There
+were several scythes lying idle at the edge of the field, prepared in
+case one should break or some mishap should happen to a handle. He
+threw off his black coat, the only garb that distinguished him from the
+peasants, and, taking one of the scythes after passing the oilstone
+over its edge, he went to work amongst his men.
+
+They kept on working until late after sundown. Then they measured what
+they had done. It would take from eight to ten days to complete the
+harvest.
+
+On arriving home, Boyar Robu, who was living alone with his sister and
+several house servants, found a slim young man sitting on his porch
+peacefully smoking a short pipe. The man was dressed in European garb,
+and because his face was cleanly shaven, a thing never seen in that
+part of the country, Boyar Robu was uncertain as to the age or the
+business of the man.
+
+Ileana, Boyar Robu’s sister, twenty, full-bosomed and long-limbed,
+with big brown eyes and long black straight hair, rushed out to meet
+her brother.
+
+“He came hours ago,” she told him, “this man there. And he asked about
+you in a language I do not understand, but which I think is English. He
+sits there and waits and waits.”
+
+He smiled and remembered the “Ta Ra Ra, Boom De Ay” song, with “Oh,
+yes, Oh, yes.” These were the only English words, except “Mister,” he
+had ever heard. He approached, the man stood up, very much at his ease,
+and offered his hand saying, “James Allison.”
+
+The two shook hands. Boyar Robu asked, “Oh, yes? Oh, yes?”
+
+“You speak English?” James Allison wondered, hearing the two words.
+
+“Oh, yes. Oh, yes,” Boyar Robu answered, and laughed broadly.
+
+The clean-shaven man smiled at him and patted him patronizingly on the
+shoulder, and then launched into a long, loud speech, which the other
+did not understand, to explain that he was the demonstrator of the
+machines Boyar Robu had bought the year before.
+
+The Boyar listened politely to the end and then raised his hands over
+his head and bowed as a sign that he had not understood a word. But he
+did manage to ask Mr. James Allison whether he was hungry and thirsty.
+James Allison understood. He was famished, having arrived hours before,
+after a long journey from the Constanza branch of the company, to find
+out why they had never heard from the Boyar after he had bought the
+machines.
+
+The Boyar, his sister, and the stranger sat down at the table to eat.
+They ate in silence, the Boyar being too polite to talk to his sister
+in a language the other man did not understand. Finally Boyar Robu
+asked James Allison, “Français?”
+
+The other man shook his head. “American.”
+
+That single word shed considerable light on the situation. “Harvesting
+Machine Company, Chicago?” Robu Boyar questioned, mispronouncing every
+word.
+
+“Yes,” James Allison answered gaily. “Harvesting Machine Company.”
+
+Then they looked at one another and the three burst out in loud
+laughter. They sat on the veranda, laughing, smiling, with the tacit
+mutual understanding that the morrow was to bring some explanation
+between them.
+
+Peasants passed back and forth, seemingly to say good evening or to
+report something to the Boyar, but in reality to have a look at this
+strange man of whose appearance they had heard at the inn.
+
+When the village had quieted, the Boyar looked at his guest and looked
+at Ileana.
+
+With sign language, he then turned to his guest and asked him whether
+he was ready to sleep. Allison picked up his big brown bag he had left
+outside the door and nodded his head. He was ready. He was shown to his
+room. Ileana remained on the veranda, thinking of the distant land from
+where that man came; a land where men sheared off the glory of their
+faces. And yet that face had clean lines of chin and nose, and the lips
+were firm.
+
+How did he compare with John Petrianu? She was waiting for him. She
+expected him. He had been coming to see her almost daily and would tell
+her of the lands he had been in and the countries he had visited all
+over the continent. He had seen much. He knew much, Petrianu did.
+
+John Petrianu was of a different kind from Boyar Robu. The Petrianus
+were not of peasant stock as the Robus were. Therefore, they did
+not have the same attitude toward the peasants. For generations the
+peasants had been serfs. Ordinarily they had been treated little better
+than cattle and, regarded as such, they were expected to do the bidding
+of a Boyar. It was one of the things Ileana held against Petrianu. He
+never spoke with love of his people.
+
+Presently Ileana heard the gallop of his horse. It stopped in front of
+the house, and he came down to sit near her.
+
+“John,” Ileana said, as soon as the greetings were over, “there is a
+man upstairs with a clean-shaven face who comes from America, from the
+land where they make the machines that are rusting in our shed. He
+does not understand our language. We do not understand his. We do not
+know what to make of the reason for his coming. Do talk to him in the
+morning, if you have time to come here.”
+
+John was anxious to have occasion to prove his superiority. He knew a
+little English, having lived in England a short while.
+
+“I shall come over in the morning,” John assured Ileana, “and I shall
+help that brother of yours come to his senses. There is no other way of
+dealing with peasants than forcing them to do what you want. Afterward
+they understand. Look at your farm! With three times as much ground
+as I cultivate, you do not produce half the amount. Just because Robu
+wants to be good to the peasants.”
+
+They talked long into the night. John was explaining how one should
+deal with peasants in order to gain ascendancy over them. And as he
+talked and Ileana defended her people he slowly gained over her.
+His strength, his purpose, his decision were compelling. While he,
+realizing how he grew in her eyes, became stronger and more decided. It
+was not that he loved her so much. He needed someone of the other sex
+on whom to exercise his superiority. She became dearer to him when he
+felt he was convincing her.
+
+When Boyar Robu arose the following morning he found James Allison in
+a pair of overalls and a cap which he wore with the visor on his neck.
+He had already found out the shed in which the two harvesting machines
+were housed and was pottering around them.
+
+The two men greeted one another, each in his language. They smiled in
+understanding. Meanwhile, the peasants passed them by, going out to
+the distant fields. The scythes were hanging from their shoulders. And
+as he saw them, Boyar Robu raged that he shouldn’t be able to use the
+machines.
+
+At that moment John Petrianu, dressed in his best riding garb, with
+waxed mustache, freshly shaven face, and oiled hair, came trotting down
+on his proudest horse. Ileana had heard him and was herself presently
+down among the three men. James Allison was so happy to find someone
+who understood him, he shook John Petrianu’s hand with both of his.
+
+“Finally someone I can talk to,” he repeated over and over again. “Now
+tell me what is the trouble here. Why don’t they use these machines?”
+
+“It is because his peasants refuse to handle them,” Petrianu answered.
+“I have some on my farm from your company, and they work well. I have
+had my troubles with them, but it is all over now.”
+
+“Why,” Allison said, “all we have to do is to prove to them that they
+are easy to handle and more economical.”
+
+He was a demonstrator, James Allison, and he had come down to
+demonstrate. Should he succeed in changing the opinion of the peasants,
+hundreds and hundreds of machines could be sold in that territory.
+
+Petrianu, Ileana and James Allison looked at one another. Suddenly
+Petrianu spoke to Robu.
+
+“You have been too soft with your men. It is why they would not listen
+to you. Go back to your room. Let them not see you at all. Let me deal
+with them.”
+
+He stretched to his full height and looked for approval on Ileana’s
+side. He knew by the gesture of Robu that he had won him over. She
+looked admiringly at John. Yet, after a few moments, she paused to say:
+
+“On condition, John Petrianu, that you should not be brutal to them. We
+have been hearing of the way you deal with your people occasionally.”
+
+“It takes a strong hand; it takes a strong hand to handle them,” he
+answered, still flushed and drunk by his anticipation of being able to
+show his power over men.
+
+Allison had been measuring up Ileana. In spite of the proffered
+assistance from Petrianu there was something about the man he did not
+like; a harshness of tone that went against the American’s grain.
+
+Allison had seldom before seen the kind of beauty Ileana possessed.
+Strong, robust, kind, with brown eyes and a milky white face, the head
+set perfectly on wide shoulders.
+
+“We go to the field,” Petrianu said.
+
+Then he called to one of the servitors of the house, who had come with
+Ileana, to saddle two horses: one for the American and one for Ileana.
+Had Robu asked his man for a similar service he would have added some
+polite words. Petrianu’s words were shot out like crisp whip lashes.
+When the horses had been brought out saddled, and they were mounted,
+Petrianu again turned to the servitors.
+
+“And let four oxen be yoked to each of the two machines in the shed,”
+he ordered.
+
+The two servitors crossed themselves and bowed deeply, but they made
+no movement to execute the orders. They looked appealingly in the
+direction where Robu had disappeared.
+
+“Do not look there!” Petrianu thundered. “I am the master here now! Do
+what I tell you!”
+
+Ileana began to tremble. She looked with appealing eyes to James
+Allison, who did not understand what she meant, except that he knew
+that she was afraid something dreadful might take place. Petrianu was
+standing before the men with his nervous hand upon the short handle of
+the braided whip, forcing them to put the yokes on the necks of the
+oxen.
+
+James Allison was mad with rage. But he had been sent there as a
+demonstrator. That man was helping him. If it needed a show of force to
+convince the peasants, well, let it be used.
+
+Trembling and crossing themselves over and over again, the two
+servitors yoked the oxen. Still walking after them with his horse
+broadwise, Petrianu pushed oxen and men to the machines.
+
+“Drive on!” Petrianu ordered.
+
+The spiked wheels of the machines began to clatter down the road, one
+after the other, with Petrianu, Jim Allison, and Ileana riding back of
+them. Occasionally Petrianu would drive alongside of the men and talk
+to them harshly, twisting the lash of his whip as he talked.
+
+Rumbling and clattering, the machines arrived at the wheatfield. The
+two drivers had no sooner seen their people than they plunged amongst
+them, crossing themselves and weeping. Instantly the song of the
+scythe against the ripe wheat ceased. The gleaning women, the colored
+beetles in the gold stubble, unbent their backs. There was silence.
+Why was Petrianu, the cruel Petrianu, of whom they had all heard, and
+this American, come with these machines now to the fields they were
+harvesting? And where was Boyar Robu?
+
+Petrianu advanced toward the two men, who had abandoned the machines.
+Without a word his whip came down upon the shoulder of the first man,
+an elderly white-bearded peasant.
+
+The peasant screamed in horror and withdrew a few paces. Petrianu’s
+whip had already come down upon the other man, and he raised it for the
+third time. Ileana cried out in anguish.
+
+Jim Allison forgot that he was there to demonstrate the working of his
+machines. Suddenly, although the other man was much the heavier and
+taller, he sprang upon him like a cat. With one well-directed blow he
+sent him sprawling on the ground. Petrianu rolled over and, reaching
+into his riding boot, he jumped up with an open drawn dagger in his
+hand.
+
+Jim Allison forgot everything. The sight of the weapon in the other
+man’s hand drove him almost insane with fury. He felt the warm drip
+of blood from a gash in his face; and, as they were fighting, he felt
+blood dripping down from the upper part of his arm.
+
+Ileana screamed. The unarmed man, the boy from the other seas,
+faced the big and powerful Petrianu, who had a knife in his hand.
+The peasants stood aside watching the contest, all siding with the
+stranger, for they understood he had jumped to the rescue of one of
+their men. And they wondered how so light a man should dare fight so
+powerful a man who had a knife in his hand.
+
+The two men were rolling over each other. Allison’s hands were not free
+to hit, for he was holding the wrist of the other man’s dagger hand.
+And as the fight went on an unspeakable hatred for Petrianu rose in
+the hearts of the peasants. Allison had succeeded in taking the weapon
+out of the other man’s hand. Petrianu lay there, bruised and beaten,
+fumbling in his hip pocket. Taking their scythes in hand the peasants
+advanced toward the man who was now slowly getting to his feet.
+
+As readily as he had come to the rescue of the peasants, Jim,
+throwing the knife at a distance over his head, interposed his body
+in protection of the man he had beaten. And then Jim spoke to them in
+feverish language, calling them brothers and asking them to be men and
+understand. In his ardor he had forgotten they were people of another
+language.
+
+But the men listened. The women seemed to understand.
+
+“Get up, you coward!” Jim turned around to Petrianu, who had risen to
+his feet. “Get up, and on your horse!”
+
+And when the men seemed appeased, Jim, with his bleeding arm and the
+blood dripping from his cheek, put his arms around the necks of the two
+men who had driven the oxen.
+
+“Come. Come,” he urged them.
+
+He looked around to see Ileana. She was gone. What mattered it? He
+was a demonstrator. And the men were in a mood to do what he asked.
+They turned around to the other peasants, who made a passage for the
+machines. Jim seated himself on the seat of one while the man was
+driving the oxen.
+
+The machine started its grumbling movement. The cutters sheared the
+wheat blades low. The peasants ran after the machine to watch how it
+operated. See, there a sheaf was piled up, the cord was passed around
+it by the two steel fingers. The needle passed across and twisted the
+cord into a knot. Another sheaf and another sheaf. Five. And then they
+were all dropped softly to the ground.
+
+They had finished the first row when Boyar Robu arrived, riding near
+his sister, who had gone to call him, afraid lest some mishap was to
+befall Jim Allison.
+
+“He has killed him! He has killed him!” she cried.
+
+They found Jim peacefully starting the second row. He had tied a
+handkerchief around the wound on his arm to stop its bleeding; and
+he was continually staunching the wound on his cheek with the sleeve
+he had torn off his shirt. It was his opportunity now. He had won
+the confidence of the men. They were willing. He had been sent as
+a demonstrator and he was demonstrating. He was demonstrating the
+harvesting machine.
+
+Robu rode after him, and Ileana put her arms around him to get him off
+the seat of the machine. He would not leave. The wound did not matter.
+
+But they did not understand. Ileana was deeply concerned about the
+wounds he had received. She put her hands on his arm and her fingers
+trembled as she touched him. His whole body trembled in response. But
+he drove on to finish the other row.
+
+On returning to where the idle machine stood, with the oxen still yoked
+to the pole, he motioned to Robu to sit down on the seat and set it in
+movement. The two machines rode side by side, with the peasants jumping
+from one to the other, looking and giving soft cries of wonderment at
+the regularity with which the sheaves were bound and dropped steadily,
+steadily. At the end of the row stood Ileana with a pail of water. And
+this time she put her arms firmly around the stranger and almost lifted
+him off the seat. She washed his wounds.
+
+Jim was happy. Not a muscle of his face moved as she cleaned the gaping
+flesh of the deep knife wound in the upper part of his arm. Jim was
+happy. For one of the younger peasants, who had watched the machine
+while it had been pulled twice the length of the field, had now jumped
+on the seat in his place and was driving forward, onward, with the
+peasants and their wives running after it as the golden sheaves fell
+and fell to the ground. They were all with their backs toward Jim and
+Ileana.
+
+And then Jim in great joy jumped to his feet and, without knowing
+exactly what he was doing, he threw his arms about the girl’s neck and
+drew her to him and kissed her long upon the lips. She encircled his
+waist with her arms and pressed him to herself.
+
+The following day Jim Allison wrote to the manager of his company:
+
+  We are cutting four hundred acres of wheat with two machines Boyar
+  Robu bought last year. Please send immediately six pieces X-34 and 8
+  L-56.
+
+  I shall, however, remain a little longer here than I expected at
+  first, as I am marrying Boyar Robu’s sister.
+
+                        Yours,
+                            James Allison.
+
+
+
+
+                                  SAVA
+
+
+There were twenty men in Sava’s band: twenty resolute, black-bearded,
+lean, hard men, each one capable of doing whatever was demanded of him
+under any circumstances. Each one could ride a horse until the animal
+fell down exhausted; each one could negotiate twenty miles of hills
+and mountains in torrential rain or heavy snowstorm, and swim across a
+river with a gun so fastened on the back of the head that the powder
+in the barrels remained dry. Twenty men who could stand their ground
+against forty, against fifty, against a hundred, and disappear in the
+batting of an eye at a given signal, in as many different directions,
+and know where and when to meet again in the crevice of a rock in the
+mountains, or in the abandoned dugout of a she bear!
+
+For years Sava and his men had been peacefully smuggling silks from
+the Hungarian side of the Carpathians over into Roumania, and tobacco
+and linens from Roumania into Hungary. They carried the contraband on
+their backs or strapped the packs on the saddles of the small Moldavian
+ponies they rode. Customs guards and gendarmes on both sides had
+watched them closely for years without ever catching them.
+
+Big Sava, the leader, was only thirty. And although his gait was as
+young as that of a man of twenty, the steadiness of his eye and the
+slowness of his speech gave his lean, dark, smooth face a much older
+stamp. He could outdo his men at anything, although they were the pick
+of the gypsy manhood of Roumania.
+
+Sava was the only unmarried man of his band. He danced with all the
+maidens on Sunday at the inn when he was at home. He laughed and danced
+and joked and sang with all of them. Many a time when the older men had
+gone to sleep and the younger ones were yet too full of the joy of life
+to go home or to leave the circle of dancers, Sava would remain with
+two of the most beautiful girls of his tribe, one at his right and the
+other at his left, and amuse himself watching the two women trying to
+outdo each other in the game of husband catching.
+
+When the game had lasted long enough, he would tap his open palms and
+tell them to run to their homes ere misfortune overtook them. For it
+would be misfortune to marry a man who did not love them. The women
+gone, Sava would sit alone somewhere under a tree and wonder when he
+would feel what love really was like. He would pass in review all the
+girls of his tribe. They were all beautiful, but there was not one he
+preferred to another one--not one he longed to see when he was away,
+not one whose nearness made him want to stay....
+
+His own men watched and hoped every spring. They loved him and desired
+to see him happy with a woman of their tribe.
+
+That winter Sava and his men had been detained on the Hungarian side of
+the Carpathians by a terrific snowstorm that lasted two weeks. During
+those two weeks they stayed at “Marga’s,” the inn of a young widow who
+kept the only place of its kind in fifty miles around.
+
+When the storm had abated, the gendarmes learned that Sava and his men
+were at Marga’s. They drew a cordon around them, firmly decided to
+catch the gypsies red-handed in the act of smuggling. Sava resolved to
+outpatience the gendarmes. He did not explain anything to his men. He
+just remained there and slept and drank and danced and sang as he had
+never done before.
+
+Somehow Marga, and even Sava’s own men, interpreted his actions
+according to their own lights. Marga was convinced he remained there
+because of her. As she was very much in love with the young gypsy she
+began to cover him with little attentions and whisper in his willing
+ears all the little gossip she could find out about the gendarmes. At
+first there were twenty. Then she reported a hundred. In a few days
+she reported the forest was full of them, two behind every tree. Sava
+listened quietly and smiled at her.
+
+Besides Sava and his men, there were twenty other men staying at the
+inn. There were heavy-bearded shepherds with sheepskin coats reaching
+to their soles, itinerant peddlers with feet wrapped in red rags, and
+two gypsy fiddlers who had stumbled into the inn early one morning,
+stiff and frozen, as if they had ridden on top of the storm to Marga’s
+door.
+
+After the storm abated, the guests began to depart one by one.
+Ultimately only Sava and his men remained with the two gypsy musicians,
+the gendarmes still watching.
+
+Daily Sava’s men awaited orders from their chief. But Sava seemed to
+have forgotten their existence and forgotten everything about the
+gendarmes watching him. With the two musicians at his side, with the
+buxom blue-eyed widow looking into his eyes as she filled his cup of
+wine, he was oblivious of everything. Never before had he felt so warm
+inside and out. He had no love for Marga, and he knew that. But he knew
+that she felt for him what he had once felt for another woman, whom
+he had been compelled to forget. He gloated in that bitter-sweet of
+being loved without loving, as if he were avenging his soul for what
+had happened once, many years before. He could order Marga around as he
+wished without fear of losing her. He was master of her soul because he
+was master of his own.
+
+His men came in and watched the spectacle. The glowing, full-bosomed,
+round-armed young widow was holding a foaming pitcher to his empty
+glass, while leaning her cheek against his.
+
+The younger gypsies proposed that they overcome the gendarmes and bind
+them and tie up the widow or take her along with them, if Sava must
+have her near him. They were long overdue at home. Their wives and
+their children were weeping for them. Who knew but that Mara and Pania
+and Fanutza had already married former lovers or other men!
+
+It was the beginning of March. Soon the melting of the snows would not
+only make the underground passages impossible but even the paths in the
+woods. The wolves and the bears were traveling in enormous packs. And
+the gendarmes now entered the inn daily.
+
+One day Sava ordered the gypsy fiddlers to play in the center of
+the room instead of playing right near him. The gendarmes, half
+intoxicated, mingled freely with his men, talking and laughing. The
+carbines of the men of the law were stacked in a corner.
+
+Suddenly Sava snapped his fingers. In a leap, each of his men possessed
+himself of one of the weapons and at the same time directed it against
+one of the gendarmes. Sava’s hands were the only ones free of any
+weapons. While his men held the gendarmes at the points of the guns,
+Sava paid his bill to Marga, whispering a few love words to her. And
+then, turning around to the gendarmes, he said:
+
+“If you stay here quietly for an hour, one hour by my watch, you will
+find all your guns stacked up at the foot of the mountain near the big
+white boulder. And no one will know anything about it. If you come
+after us, we’ll have to use the carbines, and you’ll lose them--and
+lose other things besides. Remember, there are wives and children
+waiting for you at home, but there are also wives and children waiting
+for my men.”
+
+They placed the carbines near the white boulder as promised, then they
+disappeared from the surface into a secret tunnel a hundred feet away
+from the place where the gendarmes had camped without knowing that it
+led through the mountains to the other side.
+
+There were loud huzzahs and hurrahs when Sava and his men returned
+early one morning to their village. They had been overdue two months.
+Pania was already allowing Yorga to come much nearer to her tent.
+Fanutza and Mara were being considered young widows.
+
+And now Sava and his men were back, the men looking up at him with even
+greater love and devotion than they had ever done before. It had to
+be celebrated--with the best wine, the loudest shouting, the wildest
+dancing.
+
+They were not ready to tell the story of how Sava had taken them away
+from among the gendarmes. They interrupted themselves in the middle of
+a tale with: “Oh, that can never be told!”
+
+It was a trick of theirs they had for effect, to tell one-half of the
+tale. They let it be understood Sava was a supernatural being who could
+do things no one else could do, things they could not even tell about.
+
+They feasted and celebrated for a whole month. There were many dances.
+And many were the women who turned about Sava, trying to captivate
+him. Whenever Sava would be near one of the girls who had forced her
+attentions upon him, he would be waiting for that pleasant glow which
+he experienced when in the nearness of Marga, the widow innkeeper. She
+was not as beautiful as many of the girls of his own tribe, but he did
+not feel in their presence what he felt in hers. She loved him for
+what he was, not what he did. He felt they were giving him counterfeit
+instead of the clink of real gold.
+
+When the wind and the sun had dried the roads a Turkish merchant,
+coming from the other side of the Danube, brought them a load which
+he wished carried across into Hungary. Sava and half of his men,
+loaded with heavy packs, disappeared early one morning in different
+directions. And though the place where they had to deliver the
+merchandise was miles away from the inn of the widow, Sava found
+himself quite involuntarily stepping in the direction of Marga’s inn.
+
+He told himself repeatedly he did not love her, that he went there only
+because he knew she was waiting for him--for him only....
+
+His men thought it was useless audacity to go to Marga, with gendarmes
+watching about her place. At one point of the road a riding gendarme
+whizzed by. The gypsies looked at one another and looked at their
+chief. He answered with a broad smile and a nod of his head. He knew
+that gendarme was riding at top speed to warn the others of their
+coming. But the merchandise had already been delivered.
+
+They were all in the inn when he opened the door. He greeted them with
+loud laughter. His running away had been a game. He and his men had
+won. Sava offered them wine.
+
+“Let us drink like friends. What has been has been. Wine, Marga.”
+
+The gendarmes refused. Yet they were unwilling to pick a fight with the
+gypsy, fearing that a far greater number than those who had come into
+the inn were outside ready to pounce upon them if they should attack
+Sava. They left the inn cursing and swearing.
+
+When they had gone, Sava leaned over the counter and spoke to Marga:
+
+“I have come to bid you good-morning. I had no time to bid you good-bye
+last time. Let’s drink a glass together if you have forgiven me.”
+
+“Oh, Sava!” the widow answered, happy to touch his hand. “Let me drink
+from your glass. Sava! Sava!”
+
+He looked deeply into her eyes as he held the glass to her lips, and
+asked:
+
+“And if I had told you to come along with me, would you have come?”
+
+She raised her eyes to his and he read the answer: “To the end of the
+world!”
+
+He remained leaning over the counter, looking at her. The warmth
+emanating from her was so pleasant! Why did he not love her? What was
+it that prevented him from loving her as she loved him? She was young.
+She was beautiful! He did not love her. Yet he liked to be near her.
+Why?
+
+Suddenly Marga awoke from her reverie. She bent Sava’s head to her lips
+and whispered in his ear:
+
+“They have found out the underground passage. They have hidden a number
+of gendarmes within the tunnel.”
+
+Sava looked at her gratefully, and called his men to him for a short
+conversation. One by one they went out. Sava was the last one to leave.
+He kissed the widow’s lips before going.
+
+The gypsy smugglers disappeared in different directions. But they met
+a few minutes later near the narrow opening of the underground tunnel
+in which the gendarmes were hidden. One by one, they crawled in, under
+the eyes of Sava, who remained the last. Then he, too, crawled in and
+disappeared in the black hole.
+
+Sava had hardly crawled in when gendarmes who had been hiding behind
+trees followed the gypsies, crawling cautiously after them.
+
+The gypsies did not remain underground very long. They climbed out from
+a side entrance to the tunnel a hundred paces from the first. Then they
+blocked it up. And while half of Sava’s men were running at top speed
+over the forest to close up the other end of the subterranean passage,
+Sava and the others were hastily rolling huge boulders and stones to
+close up the entrance into which the gendarmes had just disappeared.
+
+Leisurely, carrying the bags of contraband which had lain hidden in the
+forest, the gypsies, headed by loud-singing Sava, marched single file
+over the broad road across the border. The gendarmes were all safely
+bottled up.
+
+When they reached their village, Sava’s men were prouder of their
+leader than they had ever been, and told how he had tricked the
+gendarmes and extricated them from their clutches. There were dances
+on the fresh green grass, while the fiddlers, sitting on empty barrels,
+were playing until their strings snapped and were singing at the top of
+their voices.
+
+When the gaiety was at its height a tribe of horse-dealing gypsies
+joined the merriment. They were from the Dobrudja, from the other side
+of the Danube, where they had earned much gold in trading horses.
+
+The welcome to the guest tribe knew no bounds. The men threw their arms
+about one another and patted one another’s shoulders. The women climbed
+down from the tent wagons, helped by the women of Sava’s tribe, while
+the young men watched them, and made comments as each one went down.
+
+“Hey, you black-tressed, long-faced beauty! Where did you get your
+earrings?”
+
+“Hey, you! Did you steal your eyes from the night?”
+
+“Oh, there another one climbs down backward from the wagon, as if she
+were an old woman. Are your feet of glass or are your kneecaps of
+porcelain?”
+
+The young women of Sava’s tribe received their blood sisters with much
+noise, fingered their dresses, looked at their jewels and inspected
+their bracelets and anklets, their bejeweled fingers and necklaces.
+They tugged at one another’s handkerchiefs and waved the fringes of the
+shawls. The children of one tribe began to get acquainted with the
+children of the other, vying with each other as to who could turn more
+somersaults at a stretch. The dogs barked and nosed at the newcomers’
+dogs, then went out side by side to inspect the camp, for the odor of
+broiled meats was rising in the air, mingling with the odor of fried
+oil and garlic in which the tenderer morsels were already being stewed.
+
+Sava was standing near his men, occasionally smiling at a clever sally,
+but never saying anything himself. When Tira, Chief Mincu’s daughter,
+jumped down from the rear end of her father’s wagon there was a cry of
+wonder from the throats of many men. She was no longer very young, as
+gypsies go, perhaps twenty-five. Her face was round and full and quiet.
+Her body, without being supple, was sinuous. Her movements were slow
+and stately. Her big eyes looked the men over quietly and appraisingly
+without any haste. Many a man lowered his head as she looked at him.
+Her glance rested a little longer on Sava than it did upon the other
+men. But it was only a fraction of a second that their eyes met.
+
+The other young men looked at Sava to see the effect of the woman upon
+him, and realizing he had singled her out of all the women, they went
+about to take part in the general gaiety that was being staged. A
+little later, while the smoke was rising from the fire, and the savour
+of steam from the pots, the two tribes mingled freely, the young men
+from Chief Mincu’s tribe were already on terms of friendship with
+the girls from Sava’s tribe, while Sava’s young men were joking and
+laughing with the women of Mincu’s tribe.
+
+Sava approached the chief and, greeting, sat down near him, saying, “I
+am Sava.”
+
+“Oh, you are Sava?” Mincu answered, shaking his hand vigorously again.
+“They have just told me how you bottled the gendarmes up.”
+
+And the shrewd old gypsy trader shook with laughter as he thumped
+Sava’s shoulder vigorously. Defeating the men of the law was great fun
+for all gypsies.
+
+“And your daughter, what is her name?” Sava asked.
+
+“Tira,” Mincu answered. “And though there have been five hundred and
+fifty men who have offered me wealth and riches that I should marry her
+to them, she has so far chosen to remain alone.”
+
+He waxed enthusiastic. “In the Dobrudja a Tatar chief wanted to buy
+her from me, offering all his sheep, a thousand in number, for her. A
+Cherkess in Russia offered me, not very long ago, two of his best blood
+horses, for which I had offered him a thousand pieces of gold, that I
+should give her to him in marriage. She refused.”
+
+“A thousand pieces of gold!” Sava repeated incredulously.
+
+“A thousand pieces of gold,” Mincu asserted without flinching.
+
+“And are you her father or her slave?” Sava questioned, looking the
+older man in the eyes.
+
+“Her father,” Mincu answered. “But a woman like Tira should have her
+word in the choice of a husband.”
+
+Sava looked at him, shrugged his shoulders, and rose to his feet. The
+dance had already begun. He walked slowly up to Tira and extended his
+right arm for her left one, to join with her in the circle that was
+already turning around to slow music, gathering speed for the whirl in
+which it should end.
+
+With all her plumpness, she was as light as a feather. And her feet
+executed quick movements in the air before they were brought down
+again to the earth, as they turned around and around while the men
+were yelling “Hi! Hey!” from the fullness of their throats. At the
+completion of the circle one of the women was called upon to step out
+into the center of the circle to do a solo dance while the others
+turned around and around and clapped their hands:
+
+“Mara! Mara! Mara! Mara!”
+
+And Mara stepped out and danced. When Mara had returned to join arms
+with her partner another one was called. The young men and women of the
+other tribe were given first call, so that they might show the mettle
+of which they were made.
+
+After the fourth round, the youth of Sava’s tribe began to call on Tira
+to step out and dance:
+
+“Tira! Tira! Tira! Tira!”
+
+Like a tiger Tira leaped into the center of the circle. Spinning like a
+top with her arms extended in front of her, she came to a dead stop,
+only to begin the same spin in the opposite direction. Her feet hardly
+touched the ground, while her head turned this side and that, looking
+at all of them provokingly, tantalizingly. When the music slowed up,
+she clasped her hands at her back, bringing her shoulders forward,
+and glided snakewise along the inner rim of the circle, measuring and
+weighing with her eyes the men of the other tribe.
+
+When she reached Sava, she looked at him longer than at the others, and
+spinning around once more, she leaped as vigorously back to her place
+as she had broken out of it. There was no fatigue in her eyes. They
+were more luminous than before. Only the bosom rose and fell a little
+faster and the veins of her throat thickened.
+
+There was a loud cry of admiration. Even the older men and women,
+forming an outer ring about the young people, were clapping their hands
+and calling loudly her name: “Tira! Tira! Tira!”
+
+When the dance was over Sava tugged at Tira’s father’s coat.
+
+“That we drink a glass of wine together, _cumetru_, father-in-law. Come
+where the wine is served.”
+
+Mincu looked into Sava’s eyes as he rose to follow him.
+
+“It is about Tira that I want to speak,” Sava said, after clinking
+glasses.
+
+“What can you tell me of her that I do not already know?” the girl’s
+father laughed.
+
+“You spoke of a thousand gold pieces, Mincu. But you meant silver
+pieces, did you not?”
+
+“I spoke of a thousand gold pieces, which I have refused,” Mincu
+answered, putting down the empty glass.
+
+“Maybe another glass of wine will teach you the difference between gold
+and silver,” Sava replied, winking at his men as he poured more wine
+for Mincu.
+
+“The difference, my son, is the difference between you and me,” Mincu
+rejoined, while the people called out with admiration:
+
+“Hey, Mincu! That’s Mincu!”
+
+The two tribes assembled about the two bargaining men. They forgot
+even what the bargaining was about. It was just a contest of wits. The
+two men were looking at each other silently, each one watching for the
+other to make an opening.
+
+“Where is blind Jorga, that he tell me a story?” Mincu called
+mockingly, having lost patience.
+
+“Leave blind Jorga out of that,” Sava answered in anger.
+
+Mincu caught the eye of his daughter.
+
+“If you talk about silver you will drain the wine of the country before
+I say another word.”
+
+“Gold! Gold!” called Mincu’s men.
+
+“Then gold it shall be,” Sava answered, and taking from his belt a
+heavy purse he tendered it to Mincu. “There are a hundred pieces of
+gold here. What say you?”
+
+In answer to Sava’s offer Mincu turned his back and spoke to his men.
+
+“Harness up. Another few hours we shall reach Ploesti and be received
+by our own people.”
+
+Sava looked at Tira, who returned his glance without flinching.
+
+“And so a thousand gold pieces were offered and you refused?”
+
+“It was the man I refused and not the gold,” Tira answered angrily.
+“You should have come to me first.”
+
+She turned her back and left him.
+
+Sava sat down on his heels and watched how Mincu and his men were
+harnessing their horses. Sava’s men were happy to see him so interested
+in a woman. They were anxious to see him settled with a family. It was
+no good having a chief without a wife and not knowing where his eyes
+might cast about for one.
+
+Sava called the oldest men of his tribe and spoke to them softly. The
+old men approached Mincu with great ceremony.
+
+“Pass this night with us, pray. It is too late to reach Ploesti before
+nightfall. There have been heavy rains in the mountains, and the ground
+is still soggy. There is meat aplenty here, and wine, and the strings
+of the fiddles have not all snapped.”
+
+Mincu resisted, claiming that he could reach Ploesti with the kind of
+horses he had, no matter what the roads were. But ultimately the old
+men and the people of Sava’s tribe prevailed upon the guests to stay
+overnight.
+
+Mincu unbuttoned his coat in preparation for the new glass of wine.
+Tira was sitting at the end of her wagon, her legs dangling.
+
+“To show that I am grateful that you have remained here with us, Mincu,
+I will offer you two hundred gold pieces,” Sava said.
+
+Mincu shook his head and answered in reproachful accents, “I have
+remained as a guest and not as a trader.”
+
+“Three hundred,” Sava called out, to the amazement of his men.
+
+And then, as Mincu still shook his head, Sava called out in quick
+succession: “Four hundred. Five hundred.”
+
+Mincu turned around and looked at his daughter, who shook her head
+negatively.
+
+“That is not half enough. I would willingly take it if it were my
+daughter’s will. It would be worth the difference between that and a
+thousand for me for the happiness of my daughter. But she is unwilling,
+Sava.”
+
+Sava moved away from the chief and sat down near Tira. Never before had
+he been so electrified as he was by the nearness of that woman beside
+him.
+
+“And so you urge your father to refuse five hundred gold pieces that
+you become my wife,” he asked, looking into her eyes.
+
+“I would tell him to refuse a thousand,” Tira answered calmly. “You
+should have spoken to me first,” she added.
+
+Sava left her and went to talk with his men. The night was long. If her
+father was a trader, he, too, was one. No one should be able to say,
+“Mincu has bested Sava in a bargain!” He knew that his people would ply
+Mincu with wine to soften him into a better bargain.
+
+Late that night Tira was still dangling her feet from the rear end of
+the wagon. She was talking to her father. Sava could not hear what she
+said to him, but he heard Mincu argue with her heatedly.
+
+It looked as though his men had brought Mincu to reason. He regretted
+he had offered five hundred gold pieces for the girl. Perhaps if he had
+stopped at four hundred! Or even three hundred! It was not only the
+money, but to be beaten in a bargain by another man!
+
+Mincu was half drunk now. He put his two hands on Sava’s shoulders and
+said:
+
+“I talked to Tira. She says she won’t have you, that I should not sell
+her to you. And I so much want to have you for my son, Sava. But she
+won’t have you. Oh, women! Who can ever tell what is in their hearts.
+Who can? Fill my glass, men; fill it.”
+
+“What kind of a father are you?” Sava questioned.
+
+“Yes, what kind of a father are you that you cannot tell her what to
+do?” Sava’s people shouted. “Tell us! Are you her slave or her master?”
+
+“It is not only that,” Mincu rejoined. “But if it is to get her a
+husband she does not want I can turn around and get the thousand gold
+pieces the Cherkess has offered, or the two horses I wanted so much.”
+
+He had sobered up the moment he was again bargaining. Drunk or sober,
+he was a trader.
+
+“I have offered you five hundred. I am offering six hundred now,” Sava
+called out.
+
+Mincu’s eyes brightened, but he still shook his head.
+
+“Seven hundred,” called out Sava, after a brief moment. “It is all I
+have!”
+
+“Then wait a few more years,” Mincu answered jestingly. “Don’t give
+away all you have!”
+
+Sava sank into himself. It really was all he possessed. He would
+willingly have offered more. What did money count against the
+possession of such a woman as Tira? Her pale, round face shamed the
+moon. Her eyes gave more warmth than the fire that was burning and
+crackling.
+
+Blind Jorga edged up to Sava. “When I last saw thee thou wert no higher
+than my knees. But I know thee and have listened to thy voice during
+all the years. Take this.” And he put his purse into Sava’s hands. “It
+is all I have. Offer that also for the woman thou lovest.”
+
+Sava’s friends saw Jorga put his purse into their chief’s hands and
+were now ready to give all they possessed that he buy himself the woman
+he loved.
+
+“Silence!” blind Jorga called. “He has offered seven hundred. He can
+now offer a hundred more gold pieces. And by my beard, he will not
+offer more! Mincu! Where is Mincu!”
+
+“If it is to marry her to a man she does not want why should I take
+eight hundred when a thousand has been offered to me?” Mincu answered.
+
+Another gypsy put his purse into Sava’s hands. “It is fifty gold
+pieces. All I have.”
+
+And those fifty were offered to Mincu.
+
+Then one after another the other men gave, each one everything he
+possessed, until the full sum of a thousand gold pieces was reached.
+
+“There is a thousand,” Jorga called out joyfully, for he was conducting
+the deal.
+
+At the loud huzzas of the people, Tira joined the circle.
+
+“It is a thousand gold pieces they have offered for you, Tira, and I
+have accepted.”
+
+Sava looked at her. He was happy, not only because he had bought
+her for a thousand gold pieces, but also because his people had so
+self-sacrificingly offered of their own free will the money they had
+saved in long years of dangerous toil. He was proud of their love for
+him. He felt stronger than he had ever felt before--as if all their
+strength had joined his. He looked at them with tears in his eyes. He
+looked at her. She was angry, defiant. She could not understand that if
+she was worth a thousand gold pieces to him she was worth all the gold
+in the world to his people, and they to him more than that.
+
+Screaming at the top of her voice, Tira threw herself at her father’s
+chest beating with her two fists.
+
+“Oh! To have sold me to a man I do not want! Oh! Oh! Oh! Against my
+will. Against my will. He should have spoken to me first. To me. To me.”
+
+She tore her hair and clawed her breasts and face. That a daughter
+should dare so to behave toward her father! But Sava’s whip will cow
+her into a dutiful wife!
+
+They looked at Sava, expecting to see the joy of the prospective taming
+of such a woman. But he stood with his eyes closed, and his face became
+sadder and sadder as Tira’s rage grew.
+
+His mind climbed over the mountains to that other woman, to the young
+widow whose love for him was so intense, who made him feel so sure of
+himself. She was always waiting for him.
+
+What sort of woman would be waiting for him on his return from a
+dangerous journey if he were to marry Tira? True, he could beat Tira
+into submission. But he could not force love from her; not the kind of
+love the other woman had for him. And he weighed and measured. Was the
+nearness of the one who loves you not dearer than the nearness of the
+one who does not?
+
+Meanwhile, Tira’s rage grew and grew. She clawed and cried and cursed.
+Oh, it would be pleasant to tame her! The desire to tame her was
+growing in him every second. He would have liked to begin right then
+and there. But she was still Mincu’s daughter. She was not yet his
+wife.
+
+She did not love him. He could see that. What kind of woman would await
+his return from the other side of the mountains? He would come to
+her with a heart full of love, tired, hungry, wounded. How would she
+receive him? Marga, the widow, would be waiting for him--expecting him.
+
+The poet of the tribe, old Jorga, was chanting: “A thousand gold pieces
+Sava pays for the woman he desires! That is the kind of men we have.
+They pay everything they possess for the women they love. That is the
+kind of men we are. When a man does not have all the money, all the
+gold, we give it to him, that he purchase his heart’s desire.”
+
+They had meanwhile dragged Tira to the wedding rug. She had suddenly
+quieted down and was awaiting Sava in the center of the weave. She had
+dried her tears and was straightening her hair while the men and women
+shouted and laughed.
+
+“Sava, give Mincu your purse that he give you the hand of his
+daughter,” Jorga asked, fumbling for Sava’s hand.
+
+Sava remained silent. His eyes had a far-away look.... Suddenly he
+looked with searching eyes into the face of Tira.
+
+“Bring me my horse,” he called to one of his men. “Let her marry the
+man she loves. I am going to fetch here the woman who loves me!”
+
+And, throwing the purse into Jorga’s hands, he turned to Mincu and
+called: “It is a bad bargain you have driven, Mincu. A woman like her
+is worth ten times a thousand gold pieces--to the man she loves. But
+she will only be anguish and death to the man she does not love! If you
+hate the Cherkess, sell her to him.”
+
+And Sava sped his way across the mountains to the woman who was ever
+waiting for him.
+
+
+
+
+                          Transcriber’s Notes
+
+
+  Hyphenation has been retained as in the original publication.
+  p.28: “though” --> “thought” (he thought how).
+  p.28: “Petrinau” --> “Petrianu” (hard man, Petrianu was...).
+  p.42: “she bear” has been retained as in the original publication
+          (she bear).
+  p.47: “understod” --> “understood” (They let it be understood).
+  p.58: “loked” --> “looked” (turned around and looked).
+  p.59: “he” --> “be” (but to be beaten).
+  p.62: “Meanwhile.” --> “Meanwhile,” (Meanwhile, Tira’s rage).
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78341 ***
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+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78341 ***</div>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</span></p>
+
+
+<p class="center noindent">LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. <b>1492</b><br>
+Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius</p>
+
+<h1 class="center">Stories of Gypsy Life</h1>
+
+<p class="center"><b>Konrad Bercovici</b></p>
+
+<p class="center">HALDEMAN-JULIUS PUBLICATIONS<br>
+GIRARD, KANSAS</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</span></p>
+
+
+<p class="center">Copyright, 1929,<br>
+Doubleday, Doran Co.<br>
+Published by Arrangement</p>
+
+<p class="center">PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak">
+    CONTENTS
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<table>
+<tr>
+  <th> </th>
+  <th>Page</th>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td>The Mill on the River</td>
+  <td class="right"><a href="#THE_MILL_ON_THE_RIVER">5</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td>Ripe Wheat</td>
+  <td class="right"><a href="#RIPE_WHEAT">20</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td>Sava</td>
+  <td class="right"><a href="#SAVA">42</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_4"></a><a id="Page_5"></a>[Pg 5]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak">
+    STORIES OF GYPSY LIFE
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_MILL_ON_THE_RIVER">
+    THE MILL ON THE RIVER
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>It was an old mill, Dimitru’s mill on the Bistritza
+River. It had been run by the family of
+Dimitru long before any other mills had ever
+been put on either side of the river, all through
+the Moldavia country. The dykes and the
+water wheels were of old oak, cut from trees
+in the forest when the country paid yearly
+tribute to Turkey and was ruled by the Fanariots
+of Stamboul.</p>
+
+<p>Within the mill were fifty pairs of millstones
+which, grinding wheat and corn, had themselves
+been ground so thin that they had no
+weight to mill any more the hard grain growing
+in that part of Roumania. These old millstones
+were the pride of the family, for not
+another mill in the country could show so
+many.</p>
+
+<p>When anybody said anything about Dimitru’s
+mill or the manner in which he milled, the tall,
+black-bearded, wide-chested, brown-eyed miller
+would stretch to his full height, and pounding
+the left side of his chest with his right hand,
+he would cry:</p>
+
+<p>“Look at these stones! Fifty pair of stones
+have ground flour in this mill. I myself have
+used five pair. This is the sixth one on the
+shaft.”</p>
+
+<p>Those millstones were like arms of the
+escutcheon of a nobleman, which no man was
+allowed to impugn.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</span></p>
+
+<p>At the inn Dimitru was looked upon with
+respect by the peasants. He was one of the
+oldest inhabitants of the village. Indeed, the
+village itself, clustered as it was about the
+mill, was known as Dimitru’s Mill Village. For
+not only did they mill flour there, but they cut
+logs that were let down from the heights of
+the Carpathians early every spring, and they
+pressed oil out of pumpkin seeds, and carded
+wool, and even worked things out at a lathe
+which Dimitru himself had installed there; at
+first merely to satisfy a whim he had had after
+he had first seen a lathe work in another village,
+and then, as he grew more proficient, to
+make furniture for most of the people in the
+village. Back of the mill there was a shop in
+which carts and wheels were made, and chairs
+and tables; and even small husking machines,
+patterned after one that had been bought in
+Austria. The water wheel provided the power
+for all the work.</p>
+
+<p>The inn, the church, the school, the mayor’s
+office, the situation of every building was
+reckoned by its distance from the mill. During
+the winter, when there was only little work to
+do, the elders of the village would assemble in
+the mill, and watching the still in which the
+mash of plums and pears, grown in the neighborhood,
+was distilled into spirits, watching
+the drops fall into the receptacle that sat under
+the long copper worm, they would tell the
+tales they had heard from their mothers and
+grandmothers, who in turn had heard them
+from their parents and grandparents—stories
+of visitations of wolves; tales of sorceries, of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</span>witches which had risen up riding in the air
+on broomsticks, and of horses that could run
+so fast they disappeared from sight in less
+time than it takes to blink an eye. They recalled
+the different battles—battles with the
+Turks, battles with the Russians, battles with
+the Hungarians; births of five-legged calves
+and two-headed chickens, and the reappearances
+of deceased men whose ghosts were forever
+roaming about this, that and the other
+place.</p>
+
+<p>Dimitru repeated an old tale of his own family,
+of how the stones of his mill had stopped
+once by themselves while some corn was being
+ground. From behind the stones groaned a
+voice which was recognized as being the voice
+of Vasili, Vasili Yoan Stefans, who had died
+only a few months before.</p>
+
+<p>“Mill not this corn,” the voice had called.
+“It has been stolen from my granary by Panait,
+the Greek. Give it back to my wife lest my
+children starve this winter.”</p>
+
+<p>The millstones refused to budge or turn until
+every grain of flour which had already been
+ground was swept out clean and returned to
+the bag from which the corn had been taken.
+And even then the stones would not move,
+although the water wheels turned and everything
+else was in motion. The wool was being
+carded, the logs were being sawn; only the
+millstones refused to turn. Not until the
+widow had been called and the corn belonging
+to her had been returned, and not until Panait
+had confessed to stealing the grain, had the
+stones turned again.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</span></p>
+
+<p>And there were many tales, similar to that
+one, centered about the mill. For the mill had
+also refused to grind grain when the Russians
+had invaded the country a century ago, and
+had refused to grind when the Turks had come.
+It was the mill on the Bistritza that ground
+wheat and corn and pressed oil and sawed logs
+and turned the lathe only for those belonging
+to the land. And Dimitru was the owner of
+that mill.</p>
+
+<p>Dimitru had a son, and a daughter whom he
+had married off when very young. The son,
+like all the sons back in the family, was preparing
+himself to take over the mill of his
+father when the time should come. For even
+if he were to take a wife while his father was
+yet alive, there was enough room for him and
+his wife in the house. And even if he were to
+raise a family, there was enough room and
+enough field for him to pasture his dowry of
+cows and sheep, and to raise enough fodder
+for them. He had indeed already taken off a
+good deal of the burden of his father, for while
+the old man busied himself with his cart shop,
+preferring the lathe to the mill, George was in
+complete charge of the stones. And he was as
+good a miller as his father.</p>
+
+<p>But although he joked and played around
+with most of the young girls who came to the
+mill, although he danced with all of them at
+the inn, teasing, singing, joking with them,
+there was not one who could say that he was
+giving her preference over the others. Tall,
+dark, with big brown eyes, the lashes of which
+were always covered with a thin white powder,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</span>the dark, tufty brows looking like those of an
+old man because of a fine flour powder always
+on them, he was a good dancer, and his voice
+rose above the voices of the others when any
+singing was being done at the inn. At the
+wrestling matches on Sunday there were few
+youngsters who dared to match him. And he
+was gay and always happy. And it was known
+that although he was allowed to take one-tenth
+of the flour he milled, in payment for
+milling it, from everybody, he took only half
+that amount, and sometimes not even that
+from the poor and the widows of the country.
+Indeed, many a widow had brought half a bag
+of corn and returned home with a full bag of
+corn flour, George yelling at the top of his
+voice, when the widow claimed there had been
+some mistake, that he was an honest miller.</p>
+
+<p>“You have brought one bag of corn and not
+two, widow of Jorga,” he would silence the
+protesting woman, not giving her any chance
+or time to explain herself.</p>
+
+<p>“You have brought one bag, and I know you
+have brought only one bag! Am I a miller, or
+a thief, or what?” he would shout, and show
+great anger, as he would push her out of the
+mill.</p>
+
+<p>One winter night, while the wind was howling,
+and the water wheel, raised from the
+frozen river, was squeaking and groaning, and
+the storm was beating savagely against the
+windows and doors of the mill, one of the villagers
+sitting about the walled-in stove, in the
+ashes of which the potatoes were being baked,
+asked:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</span></p>
+
+<p>“George, whom are you going to marry?”</p>
+
+<p>Dimitru gave his son no time to answer. “He
+will marry the one who will bring him a good
+enough dowry,” he answered, instead of his
+son.</p>
+
+<p>One by one they passed in review all the
+marriageable daughters of the village. They
+knew all of them. And when Dimitru had
+shaken his head to the last one, the <i lang="ro">staroste</i>—the
+elder of the village—trembling and with
+shaking fists, thundered into the face of the
+man:</p>
+
+<p>“Is it, then, the death of one of the married
+men that you are waiting for, to marry your
+son?”</p>
+
+<p>George had been making fun of all that was
+said. He had taken it all as a joke. But to
+the thundering voice of the <i lang="ro">staroste</i> he replied:</p>
+
+<p>“I wish everyone long life in this village, and
+in every other one. When I am ready to
+marry, I shall make my own choice.”</p>
+
+<p>“Indeed, my son wants to get married to
+some pauper. I have given six pair of oxen as
+dowry to my daughter, six pair of oxen and
+one hundred gold pieces. But he may want
+to marry some pauper!”</p>
+
+<p>“A time will come,” George answered. “My
+time will come. But it shall be of my own
+choice, not of anybody else’s.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well said,” spoke the gray-bearded <i lang="ro">staroste</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Old Dimitru remained silent.</p>
+
+<p>Then they all sat down to sample the new
+prune juice that was dripping from the copper
+worm. It was better that such discussion end
+in joy, so they sang their saddest songs.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</span></p>
+
+<p>Finally George remarked, on looking toward
+the idle stones, “It is a pity they should be
+idle so long.”</p>
+
+<p>George was never happy but when the stones
+turned around.</p>
+
+<p>“This is a water mill,” his father answered.
+“When the Bistritza freezes, the mill freezes.”</p>
+
+<p>“I know, Father.” He was a miller and lived
+only when the mill lived. “But it is a pity that
+the stones should not be turning when the
+Bistritza freezes.”</p>
+
+<p>“If it were a windmill, you would be saying
+half the time the same thing,” another man of
+the group mused.</p>
+
+<p>“If it were a horse mill, the mill would not
+be turning at night,” another man said in jest.</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon one of the men, who had served
+in the army, and had been far away in a large
+city, began to speak about a large, steam-power
+mill which he had seen on his travels.
+A steam mill. One prepared logs to fire the
+engine during the summer, and then in winter
+one had the mill go whether the river was
+frozen or not.</p>
+
+<p>George mused impatiently, “What a pity the
+Bistritza freezes!”</p>
+
+<p>During the first month of the winter, after
+the river had frozen, he had had some work to
+do. He had sharpened every tooth and
+smoothed out the grain of the stones, until the
+teeth were as sharp as steel edges. He had
+cleaned and adjusted and readjusted everything.
+He had made it all ready to go, and
+now he was anxious to hear the whirl and turn
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</span>of the mill, grinding and crunching all that
+was shoved into it.</p>
+
+<p>“What a pity the Bistritza freezes!”</p>
+
+<p>His father looked at him and then replied:
+“It is a thing I am going to put into my will,
+that this is a water mill and it shall remain
+so. This mill has ground fifty pair of stones.”</p>
+
+<p>George was tired of always hearing the same
+thing. He left the company to go to his own
+room above the shaft.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after, the peasants tightened their wolf-fur
+coats about them and returned to their
+homes, after wishing one another good luck.
+It was snowing and storming. Wolves were
+prowling on the road.</p>
+
+<p>Dimitru still pottered about in the cart shop,
+working on a new corn-husking machine he
+was trying to perfect; then, tired, he, too, went
+to his room, where he lay wondering what was
+to become of the mill after he was no longer
+there. Was it to be desecrated? Was it to be
+forever forgotten as the water mill on the Bistritza?
+Was all the pride of generations to be
+sacrificed to that new thing of which the returned
+soldier had spoken? Outside the wind
+was howling, the lugubrious plaint of the hungry
+wolves was coming near and nearer, the
+wheel was creaking on its axle, straining the
+ropes that held it to the thick iron staples embedded
+in the stone of the walls. Whom was
+that son of his to marry if he wanted to marry
+of his own choice? It had not been so with
+him. His father had chosen him a bride, decided
+on the dowry, and married him off. Yet
+he had been happy! George should do as he
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</span>had done. He was the father, the master....
+With these thoughts the old man fell asleep.</p>
+
+<p>Early that spring, after the river had broken,
+and the logs began to descend to the mill, and
+the wheel had begun again to turn, George,
+very busy and very happy, forgot all about the
+frozen months.</p>
+
+<p>At the inn Dan, Petru’s son, whose farm was
+across the river and who was reputed to be
+very wealthy, came to meet Dimitru, the miller,
+to talk over matters of matrimony between his
+daughter Veta and George. After the bottle of
+wine was between them, Dan opened the conversation.</p>
+
+<p>“There is no other man would offer the dowry
+I offer. What say you?”</p>
+
+<p>“I say that my son George must receive as
+much as I have given my daughter as dowry.
+Six pair of great oxen, one hundred gold
+pieces, and all the other things.”</p>
+
+<p>Dan, red-haired and easily excited, rose from
+his chair. “Is my Veta a cripple?”</p>
+
+<p>Dimitru answered calmly: “She is not ...
+but George is a better man than the one who
+married my daughter.”</p>
+
+<p>They both sat down again. It was not fitting
+they should be heard quarreling by the
+others.</p>
+
+<p>“Am I a miller to be able to give such dowry?”
+Dan remonstrated. Then, as an afterthought,
+he added, “One should be able to accumulate
+wealth by building a mill the other
+side of the river so people won’t have to lose
+time rowing back and forth.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</span></p>
+
+<p>“The mill is on this side,” Dimitru answered.
+“It is on this side.”</p>
+
+<p>“Since millers ask such dowry, it may come
+to pass that there will be a mill on the other
+side also.”</p>
+
+<p>Upon that the two men left the inn.</p>
+
+<p>On reaching the mill Dimitru asked his son,
+“What say you about Veta, Dan’s daughter?”</p>
+
+<p>George was busy cleaning the flour funnels.
+He was as if snow-clad. He wiped his face
+with his sleeve and answered: “It is long
+since I have seen her. They have their own
+inn on the other side. I remember her well,
+however, beautiful and strong.”</p>
+
+<p>“You will marry her,” Dimitru announced
+briefly.</p>
+
+<p>“Who says I will?” yelled George. He was
+furious.</p>
+
+<p>“I say so. I have talked to her father about
+dowry and things.”</p>
+
+<p>“Marry her, then, yourself. I shall do my
+own choosing when I am ready.”</p>
+
+<p>“You will do what I say, George.”</p>
+
+<p>“In the mill, because the mill is yours.”</p>
+
+<p>“And do you know what will happen if you
+don’t marry Veta? Dan will put up a mill on
+the other side and starve our stones. Do you
+understand?”</p>
+
+<p>George paled. But the next instant he stopped
+the whirr of the mill to be better heard
+and said to his father:</p>
+
+<p>“Even though she be the fairest on earth, I
+say ‘no.’ I am not a horse or an ox to be marketed
+that way. Let him build ten mills.”</p>
+
+<p>Upon that he returned to his work, while the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</span>old man muttered, “You will do as I say,” and
+went to his shop.</p>
+
+<p>A few days later, bricks were being brought
+in big carts and deposited on the other side of
+the river. Bricks and beams and lumber, and
+gypsies came to dig the foundation of a large
+building.</p>
+
+<p>Dimitru’s heart stopped beating when he saw
+that Dan really intended to build a mill. He
+sent word he wanted to speak to him, but
+Veta’s father refused to come. The old miller
+could not sleep nights, nor could he work at
+his lathe. The noise of the work across the
+river maddened him. Another mill was rising.
+Another mill, and his son seemed not to care.
+He asked George to go to the dance across
+the river and get better acquainted with Veta....
+The mill had to be stopped. George refused.
+He would not be traded away. He
+would take a wife of his own choice, mill or
+no mill. Veta was out of the question.</p>
+
+<p>When the foundation had risen above a
+man’s height from the ground, Dimitru, compelling
+his son to come along, rowed across the
+Bistritza to have a talk with Dan. He found
+the man busily engaged in giving orders,
+flushed by the activity about him.</p>
+
+<p>“What is it you are doing, Dan, Petru’s
+son?” Dimitru asked, as if he did not know.</p>
+
+<p>“As you see, my neighbor across the water—putting
+up a mill for the people on this side
+of the river, so that they shall not have to row
+across to your mill.”</p>
+
+<p>“But a good half of my milling comes from
+your side of the river,” Dimitru answered.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</span></p>
+
+<p>“That is just why I am putting up the mill,”
+Dan replied sarcastically.</p>
+
+<p>“But that is impossible! My mill has been
+there for over a hundred years,” remonstrated
+Dimitru. “Are you going to starve the stones?”</p>
+
+<p>“To each one his own way of doing,” replied
+the would-be miller. “But young men demand
+such dowries, nowadays, they can only be made
+by milling and not by farming.”</p>
+
+<p>“But we have been millers for hundreds of
+years,” Dimitru insisted.</p>
+
+<p>“I hope my grandchildren will be able to say
+the same thing about this mill,” Dan retorted.
+“Perhaps things will change, and people will
+begin to row from your side of the river to
+this mill, for I shall mill cheaper than you do.”</p>
+
+<p>“So that is what you want to do,” cried Dimitru.
+“Starve me out!”</p>
+
+<p>“You see,” Dan retorted, “I have only daughters
+in my house. And the young men about
+this place want big dowries, which only millers
+can give to their daughters.”</p>
+
+<p>While the two men were speaking, Veta,
+Dan’s daughter, came riding upon a small
+horse. George raised his fur cap as he saw
+her, and approached to help her from the saddle.
+Instantly the two older men looked at each
+other with a look of understanding. Perhaps
+the problem was nearer a solution than they
+had just thought. The conversation between
+them lost its acridity as they saw the two
+youngsters together, Dimitru saying:</p>
+
+<p>“It is not a mill that I should like for my
+son as dowry. He already has one.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</span></p>
+
+<p>To which Dan answered, “I have not offered
+the mill as dowry, have I?”</p>
+
+<p>They tried conversation on other subjects,
+but it always reverted to what one had to offer
+as dowry, and what the other one would be
+willing to accept for his son. In the midst of
+that, Dimitru, having remarked a too great
+interest in his son for the girl, abruptly decided
+to leave for the other shore.</p>
+
+<p>“Go on and work your mill, son. This is no
+time to idle. Come.”</p>
+
+<p>“Come dance at our inn,” George urged Veta,
+as he jumped into the boat.</p>
+
+<p>“There is a big dance at our inn tomorrow,
+Sunday,” the girl answered.</p>
+
+<p>Then the oars splashed in the water, and the
+boat was rowed across with vigorous strokes
+by father and son.</p>
+
+<p>Late that night, as the two men were anchoring
+the water wheel over Sunday, the father
+said to his son:</p>
+
+<p>“I shall ask as dowry that he stop working
+on his mill.”</p>
+
+<p>Instantly George rose to his full height and
+looked his father straight in the eye.</p>
+
+<p>“You might have asked me,” George remonstrated,
+“for I happen not to wish to marry
+Veta.”</p>
+
+<p>“You do not?” Dimitru asked furiously.
+“But I do want you to marry her, and marry
+her you will. I shall not live to see the stones
+of my mill idle when they should be milling—live
+to see how the corn is rowed across the
+river to be milled in the other mill, led by ungodly
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</span>German wheels turning of themselves.
+For it is a steam mill he is putting up.”</p>
+
+<p>“This is certain,” George answered, “you
+cannot make me marry her.”</p>
+
+<p>Then he left his father and went to his room.
+He was furious. Because his father had spoken
+so compellingly, Veta, of whom he had thought
+rather agreeably, had lost her favor in his eyes.
+He was going to marry whom he pleased, and
+not because of fifty pair of dead stones that lay
+around there, requesting him to do otherwise.</p>
+
+<p>The following day, Sunday, he went to the
+inn on his side of the river, in his best clothes,
+looking around for any likely girl whom he had
+not previously remarked, so that he could make
+love to her, knowing full well that his father
+was watching his every movement. In the
+midst of the dance Veta arrived. She was fairer
+than most of them, and she had put on her
+best garb. Upon her bare, full neck she wore
+the gold necklace, her white silk shawl hung
+down from the comb in her hair, and her high,
+well-modeled boots, that reached to her knees,
+were decorated with veins of red and green
+leather.</p>
+
+<p>The old man smiled to himself when he saw
+her, sure that George could not resist her: she
+was so beautiful. He was also certain that she
+had come to dance with his son, sent probably
+by Dan, her father, who already regretted what
+he had done. Ah! He was not going to let
+Dan off so easily if he saw Veta loving his
+son.</p>
+
+<p>But the girl seemed to pay no attention to
+George after a perfunctory greeting. At the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</span>dance she locked her arm into the arm of the
+son of the blacksmith and danced with him
+in the second, and third, and fourth dances,
+avoiding dancing with George. It enraged the
+old man. Seating himself near his son, who
+was resting between dances, he said:</p>
+
+<p>“That shrew is trying to play with you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Nobody can play with me,” George answered.</p>
+
+<p>“She thinks that if she can make you love
+her, her father will get off with less dowry
+than he should pay.”</p>
+
+<p>“Who says I want her?” George answered.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of the fourth dance Veta beckoned
+to George to come outside; she wanted to
+talk to him. He followed her out quickly.</p>
+
+<p>Once outside, the girl told him rapidly:</p>
+
+<p>“My father wants to compel me to marry
+you. I don’t want to.”</p>
+
+<p>“And mine wants to compel me to marry you,
+and I don’t want to,” George answered.</p>
+
+<p>“Then it is understood,” Veta replied, after
+looking the boy straight in the face. “Are we
+cattle to be married against our will? We do
+not want it. I always knew you to be a man,
+George.”</p>
+
+<p>“No, we do not want it.” And they shook
+hands on that.</p>
+
+<p>They reentered the inn as unobtrusively as
+they had gone out. George watched her walk
+ahead of him and thought:</p>
+
+<p>“What a spirited girl! And that fool of a
+father thinks he can compel her to marry somebody
+she does not want to!”</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="RIPE_WHEAT">
+    RIPE WHEAT
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The wheat blades, heavy with the large
+berry nests, swayed golden in the light of the
+setting sun. The bells of the little church
+tolled the call to prayers. God had been good
+to the peasants of the Dobrudja land. There
+had been rain in time, and the locusts had kept
+away from the marshlands of Tcherna. The
+peasants, accompanied by their wives and children,
+all in their Sunday clothes—the embroidered
+waists with the red-and-green skirts
+and the high boots with the vamps of colored
+leather—crowded the road leading to the house
+of God.</p>
+
+<p>They had been going to that church every
+evening while their wheatfields ripened. They
+were praying that no calamity overtake them;
+for they had already suffered enough the previous
+three years. Two years of drought had
+robbed them of all their labor, and on the
+third clouds of buzzing locusts had suddenly
+settled upon their fields and devoured all,
+leaving only dry stalks, before moving on, flying
+lower, because heavier, to other fields to
+do the same work of destruction.</p>
+
+<p>But now all seemed past danger. They offered
+thanks to the Lord and promised gifts
+of candles and oil for the lamps under the
+icons of the church. On the morrow, they were
+to begin harvest. Returning from the church,
+talking softly among themselves, still awed
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</span>by the sacred ritual, they looked over the
+scythes to see if they were sharp enough and
+the curved handles strong enough.</p>
+
+<p>It was only after the evening was over that
+gaiety entered the square, thatched mud huts
+of the Roumanian peasants. A lone gypsy fiddler
+had appeared at the inn. It was One-Eyed
+Naie, who traveled from one village to another
+without ever remaining anywhere more
+than a night. Some people said it was because
+of an oath he had taken. Others said that he
+was continually running away from a curse
+which followed him for a sinful deed in his
+youth. But it did not matter. Naie was a
+good fiddler. Already the villagers were assembling
+at the inn.</p>
+
+<p>Tomorrow they were going out to harvest
+their fields. Many brought their curved long-handled
+scythes to the inn to show them to one
+another, and to whet them still sharper with
+the oilstones they carried in their belts while
+talking to friends. They had had their first
+meal in more than two weeks; for they had
+kept “post”—had abstained from eating meat
+while they were praying God’s mercy.</p>
+
+<p>Now Naie was playing. The young men and
+the girls were ready for the dance. Two of
+the older men, Stan and the blacksmith Gavril,
+sat down near Naie to beat the rhythm with
+their palms while he was playing the dance
+tunes. There were song and dance and loud
+laughter before the night was very old. Arms
+were locked in arms—the sinewy brown, hairy
+ones of the young men on the velvet-white,
+delicately veined ones of the girls.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</span></p>
+
+<p>Gay scarfs flashed in the air as they were
+turning round and round the fiddler sitting
+on top of an overturned barrel. Heels were
+thumping the ground so hard the windows
+shook and the rafters of the low ceiling trembled.
+And they laughed and sang and yodeled.</p>
+
+<p>In the midst of all the gaiety appeared Boyar
+Robu. The youngsters continued to dance at
+his approach, but the older men became silent.
+Even the two old men who had been beating
+the rhythm with their palms ceased to do so.
+He was a tall man, Boyar Robu, and thin and
+wiry. A curly black beard framed his strong
+brownish face. He was a man of about thirty.
+He was dressed half peasant and half European.</p>
+
+<p>He greeted everybody in a friendly manner,
+calling each one by name. But the answers to
+his greeting were, though respectful, anything
+but cordial or receptive on the part of the
+peasants. The priest, Popa Stancu, was standing
+talking to a peasant.</p>
+
+<p>“Good evening, Popa,” Boyar Robu called
+out, and kissed the extended hand of the man
+of God, as he walked up to him. The priest
+followed almost reluctantly the Boyar to the
+table.</p>
+
+<p>“And do please serve everybody,” the Boyar
+called to the innkeeper. “This has been a
+good year.”</p>
+
+<p>The peasants were not much pleased by the
+Boyar’s generosity, and when he noticed their
+refusal a wild rage overpowered him. Standing
+up he smashed his empty glass on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>Instantly Naie ceased playing. The Boyar
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</span>stood and narrowed his eyes until they looked
+more like two slits from under which shot
+dark fire, as he called out:</p>
+
+<p>“Am I a heathen that you refuse me? It is
+on my land that your wheat has grown! On
+mine! And it has been so for generations and
+generations. And while peasants were flogged
+daily, and beaten and robbed by other boyars
+a few miles from here your fathers and grandfathers
+and yourselves have lived freely on
+my land, long before the laws of the country
+had given you freedom!”</p>
+
+<p>“It is not that, Boyar,” Stan, the oldest of
+the peasants, spoke up, after looking around
+to the other men. “But we do know what you
+want. None of the men would put their oxen
+or drive your oxen to these ungodly machines
+that you have brought from Nemtzia, or from
+other countries, to do the work God made man
+to do.”</p>
+
+<p>“We’ll talk about that afterward,” the Boyar
+called.</p>
+
+<p>Instantly glasses clinked. Blessings and good
+wishes were proffered. They were his friends;
+his peasants. He was their master. Their
+good master. But those machines ... that
+was a different story ... those things were
+the work of the devil.</p>
+
+<p>The dance having stopped, some of the
+young people went out in couples to speak of
+things more important to them than what was
+being discussed at the inn. Naie hung his violin
+on the button under his coat, ready to go
+to sleep in the barn of the inn. The Boyar
+stopped him and called to the innkeeper.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Give Naie food. I may want him to play
+tonight for us.”</p>
+
+<p>The gypsy was served at the end of the
+room, while the peasants, standing on their
+feet, assured the Boyar of their devotion.
+When they had convinced him of that, they all
+sat down to talk. Gavril leaned over with his
+two hands on the table, and sticking his bearded
+face right under the eyes of the Boyar, said:</p>
+
+<p>“We all love you. And your grandfather and
+father and you, yourself, have always been the
+best of Boyars to us. The rent of your land is
+cheaper than anywhere, and you have always
+been kind to us. But we would not, any of us,
+come near to any of the machines you have
+brought. This land here has been plowed with
+the plow pulled by oxen. We have sown the
+wheat with our own hands. We have harvested
+it with our scythes and threshed it on the
+threshing floor with our horses. That is what
+peasants are born for. To do all this work.
+It has been so since Adam. And if the Nemtzia
+Germans or the people from another part of
+the world want to do otherwise, let them do it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Have I spoken right?” Gavril turned around,
+looking at the other peasants.</p>
+
+<p>“He has spoken right,” they answered, nodding
+their heads. “He has spoken our own
+hearts.”</p>
+
+<p>The whole night long Boyar Robu tried to
+convince his men that the binding machines
+he had from America, and which were rusting
+in the shed, were not the work of the devil,
+but the work of man’s brains. He explained
+to them how they worked, how the steel fingers
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</span>of the binding apparatus were catching
+the Manila thread, and bringing it around the
+sheaf after it had been lifted from the cutting
+platform on the rolling canvas.</p>
+
+<p>But it was all in vain. Stolid, obstinate, the
+men refused to believe it was so simple. The
+priest was silent, but the peasants knew he
+sided with them. And even after the Boyar had
+explained that their poverty was due to the
+fact that wheat and corn were sown and harvested
+in other countries in different ways,
+they refused to understand. If it was God’s
+will that they live in poverty it was God’s will.</p>
+
+<p>Without the help of the peasants on his
+enormous wheatfields the Boyar’s desire to expand
+by cultivating all the land he owned was
+an empty dream. The peasants were tenants.
+They paid the rent for their land by so many
+days of work in the Boyar’s fields. He could
+not ask more days than was the custom for
+each acre. If one took more land he needed
+more time for his own fields. If one cultivated
+only a little land, he owed him fewer days.</p>
+
+<p>Their own fields being comparatively small,
+it was easy for them to harvest their wheat in
+a few days, and thresh it leisurely on their
+threshing floors. But it was not so with his
+fields. The locusts not having spared him, he,
+too, had had many bad years.</p>
+
+<p>Attracted by the odor of ripe wheat, the locusts
+might arrive before he had had a chance
+to harvest his 400 acres of wheat. He had
+sown so much, hoping to recoup his losses of
+former years. He had bought the machines to
+save himself from ruin. The only thing that
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</span>could save him was speedy work. And yet he
+could not ask the peasants to go in with their
+scythes in his field before they had cut theirs.
+With the machines the work could be done in
+a few days.</p>
+
+<p>But they were unwilling, and even when in
+the stress of pleading with them he, Robu, the
+son of the oldest of the Boyars in the neighborhood,
+cried before them, they wept together
+with him, but would not do as he asked them
+to.</p>
+
+<p>“Why,” he said, “I’ll lend you my machines.
+They will cut your wheat, all of yours, in two
+days without much trouble. I can thresh your
+wheat and get half as much more out of the
+sheaves than you would get on the threshing
+floors. You would get more time and more
+money. More wheat.”</p>
+
+<p>But the peasants shook their stubborn heads.
+Machines were the work of the devil. All the
+diseases and all the ills of the world were
+caused by the machines with which men
+wanted to do more work than God had ordained
+should be done.</p>
+
+<p>Unable to convince them, although he had
+used the arguments that had been made to him
+at the time he had bought the machines at
+the capital of the country, Boyar Robu called
+Naie to him.</p>
+
+<p>“Go to your homes. Leave me alone here
+with Naie.”</p>
+
+<p>In the dim light of the oil lamp hanging
+from the low-beamed ceiling, the air heavy
+with the odors of boots and quarters of meat
+and blankets and chains and plowshares, the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</span>Boyar and the gypsy remained the whole night
+long.</p>
+
+<p>The peasants were already going out into
+the fields singing the harvest song, holding the
+glittering blue steel of the scythes to the sun,
+with the girls beating the bottoms of empty
+pots and throwing water, from the pails they
+were carrying, at one another, when the Boyar
+and the gipsy went up the road toward his
+<i lang="ro">curte</i> at the end of the village.</p>
+
+<p>Boyar Robu still repeated:</p>
+
+<p>“Fools! Fools! You don’t want to work with
+my machines!”</p>
+
+<p>Later, Boyar Robu rode out on his horse to
+see how the harvesting in the peasants’ fields
+was going on. The work was being done very
+rapidly. Everybody from every hut had turned
+out. Backs bent roundly as the swishing
+scythes rose and fell and left broad paths of
+gold on the ground. The smell of the wheat
+and the song of sharp steel against dried
+blades mingled with the chant of the men and
+the cuckoo calls from the forest.</p>
+
+<p>Everywhere there was song. And everywhere
+Boyar Robu was greeted, “We shall get
+into your field tomorrow morning, Boyar. We’ll
+cut it ere the locusts will come, never fear!”</p>
+
+<p>For they all loved him, though they regretted
+that he wanted to do what nobody had ever
+done before. It was all because of John Petrianu,
+the cruel Petrianu, whose fields were
+a few miles away. He had bought machines
+and compelled his men to work them at the
+point of a pistol.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</span></p>
+
+<p>The Boyar nodded his head, accepting their
+generosity and their mirthfulness. Yet, as he
+looked at the fields, <span id="TN1">he thought how</span> easily the
+whole thing could be done with his two machines.</p>
+
+<p>Having made the rounds, he returned to the
+shed to look at the rusting monsters on which
+the name of the harvesting company was lettered
+with gold upon red boards. It amused
+him to read the words in English and their
+translation below into Roumanian, “Harvesting
+Machine Company,” and, underneath, “Chicago,
+Illinois.”</p>
+
+<p>He mused about the country they came from
+as he looked at them. He had seen such machines
+work in the fields of Petrianu, his
+neighbor. How pretty it was to see them run
+through and cut and bind and drop the sheaves
+of equal thickness, file by file, one after the
+other. How had Petrianu succeeded to get his
+men to work them? He was a <span id="TN2">hard man,
+Petrianu was...</span>. He had ordered and it was
+done. Boyar Robu had heard tales of brutalities
+he did not believe ... yet.... It was
+all so simple! Why should these fools think
+there was any ungodly thing that made this
+iron and steel work?</p>
+
+<p>Early the following morning, as soon as the
+heat of the sun had dried up the dew of the
+night on the fields, the peasants came singing
+down the road. Ranging themselves up on
+the outside of Boyar Robu’s wheatfield, they
+crossed themselves; then, bending their backs,
+their hundred or more glistening hard-steel
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</span>scythes came down obliquely in one large
+movement into the wheatfield.</p>
+
+<p>“Heigh! Ho! Heigh! Ho!” they sang loudly,
+marking the rhythm of the first strokes as
+they advanced breast deep into the gold. The
+women, their skirts held upon the side by the
+narrow red sash, followed in their bare feet,
+to glean and bind into sheaves what fell behind
+their men.</p>
+
+<p>Boyar Robu arrived on horseback. The devotion
+of his peasants moved him deeply. His
+ancestral worship of field work stirred within
+him. There were several scythes lying idle
+at the edge of the field, prepared in case one
+should break or some mishap should happen
+to a handle. He threw off his black coat, the
+only garb that distinguished him from the
+peasants, and, taking one of the scythes after
+passing the oilstone over its edge, he went to
+work amongst his men.</p>
+
+<p>They kept on working until late after sundown.
+Then they measured what they had
+done. It would take from eight to ten days to
+complete the harvest.</p>
+
+<p>On arriving home, Boyar Robu, who was living
+alone with his sister and several house
+servants, found a slim young man sitting on
+his porch peacefully smoking a short pipe. The
+man was dressed in European garb, and because
+his face was cleanly shaven, a thing
+never seen in that part of the country, Boyar
+Robu was uncertain as to the age or the business
+of the man.</p>
+
+<p>Ileana, Boyar Robu’s sister, twenty, full-bosomed
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</span>and long-limbed, with big brown eyes
+and long black straight hair, rushed out to
+meet her brother.</p>
+
+<p>“He came hours ago,” she told him, “this
+man there. And he asked about you in a language
+I do not understand, but which I think
+is English. He sits there and waits and waits.”</p>
+
+<p>He smiled and remembered the “Ta Ra Ra,
+Boom De Ay” song, with “Oh, yes, Oh, yes.”
+These were the only English words, except
+“Mister,” he had ever heard. He approached,
+the man stood up, very much at his ease, and
+offered his hand saying, “James Allison.”</p>
+
+<p>The two shook hands. Boyar Robu asked,
+“Oh, yes? Oh, yes?”</p>
+
+<p>“You speak English?” James Allison wondered,
+hearing the two words.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, yes. Oh, yes,” Boyar Robu answered,
+and laughed broadly.</p>
+
+<p>The clean-shaven man smiled at him and
+patted him patronizingly on the shoulder, and
+then launched into a long, loud speech, which
+the other did not understand, to explain that
+he was the demonstrator of the machines
+Boyar Robu had bought the year before.</p>
+
+<p>The Boyar listened politely to the end and
+then raised his hands over his head and bowed
+as a sign that he had not understood a word.
+But he did manage to ask Mr. James Allison
+whether he was hungry and thirsty. James
+Allison understood. He was famished, having
+arrived hours before, after a long journey from
+the Constanza branch of the company, to find
+out why they had never heard from the Boyar
+after he had bought the machines.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</span></p>
+
+<p>The Boyar, his sister, and the stranger sat
+down at the table to eat. They ate in silence,
+the Boyar being too polite to talk to his sister
+in a language the other man did not understand.
+Finally Boyar Robu asked James Allison,
+“Français?”</p>
+
+<p>The other man shook his head. “American.”</p>
+
+<p>That single word shed considerable light on
+the situation. “Harvesting Machine Company,
+Chicago?” Robu Boyar questioned, mispronouncing
+every word.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” James Allison answered gaily. “Harvesting
+Machine Company.”</p>
+
+<p>Then they looked at one another and the
+three burst out in loud laughter. They sat on
+the veranda, laughing, smiling, with the tacit
+mutual understanding that the morrow was to
+bring some explanation between them.</p>
+
+<p>Peasants passed back and forth, seemingly
+to say good evening or to report something to
+the Boyar, but in reality to have a look at this
+strange man of whose appearance they had
+heard at the inn.</p>
+
+<p>When the village had quieted, the Boyar
+looked at his guest and looked at Ileana.</p>
+
+<p>With sign language, he then turned to his
+guest and asked him whether he was ready to
+sleep. Allison picked up his big brown bag
+he had left outside the door and nodded his
+head. He was ready. He was shown to his
+room. Ileana remained on the veranda, thinking
+of the distant land from where that man
+came; a land where men sheared off the glory
+of their faces. And yet that face had clean
+lines of chin and nose, and the lips were firm.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</span></p>
+
+<p>How did he compare with John Petrianu?
+She was waiting for him. She expected him.
+He had been coming to see her almost daily
+and would tell her of the lands he had been in
+and the countries he had visited all over the
+continent. He had seen much. He knew much,
+Petrianu did.</p>
+
+<p>John Petrianu was of a different kind from
+Boyar Robu. The Petrianus were not of peasant
+stock as the Robus were. Therefore, they
+did not have the same attitude toward the
+peasants. For generations the peasants had
+been serfs. Ordinarily they had been treated
+little better than cattle and, regarded as such,
+they were expected to do the bidding of a
+Boyar. It was one of the things Ileana held
+against Petrianu. He never spoke with love
+of his people.</p>
+
+<p>Presently Ileana heard the gallop of his
+horse. It stopped in front of the house, and
+he came down to sit near her.</p>
+
+<p>“John,” Ileana said, as soon as the greetings
+were over, “there is a man upstairs with a
+clean-shaven face who comes from America,
+from the land where they make the machines
+that are rusting in our shed. He does not
+understand our language. We do not understand
+his. We do not know what to make of
+the reason for his coming. Do talk to him in
+the morning, if you have time to come here.”</p>
+
+<p>John was anxious to have occasion to prove
+his superiority. He knew a little English, having
+lived in England a short while.</p>
+
+<p>“I shall come over in the morning,” John
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</span>assured Ileana, “and I shall help that brother
+of yours come to his senses. There is no other
+way of dealing with peasants than forcing
+them to do what you want. Afterward they
+understand. Look at your farm! With three
+times as much ground as I cultivate, you do
+not produce half the amount. Just because
+Robu wants to be good to the peasants.”</p>
+
+<p>They talked long into the night. John was
+explaining how one should deal with peasants
+in order to gain ascendancy over them. And
+as he talked and Ileana defended her people he
+slowly gained over her. His strength, his purpose,
+his decision were compelling. While he,
+realizing how he grew in her eyes, became
+stronger and more decided. It was not that
+he loved her so much. He needed someone of
+the other sex on whom to exercise his superiority.
+She became dearer to him when he felt
+he was convincing her.</p>
+
+<p>When Boyar Robu arose the following morning
+he found James Allison in a pair of overalls
+and a cap which he wore with the visor on
+his neck. He had already found out the shed
+in which the two harvesting machines were
+housed and was pottering around them.</p>
+
+<p>The two men greeted one another, each in
+his language. They smiled in understanding.
+Meanwhile, the peasants passed them by, going
+out to the distant fields. The scythes were
+hanging from their shoulders. And as he saw
+them, Boyar Robu raged that he shouldn’t be
+able to use the machines.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment John Petrianu, dressed in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</span>his best riding garb, with waxed mustache,
+freshly shaven face, and oiled hair, came trotting
+down on his proudest horse. Ileana had
+heard him and was herself presently down
+among the three men. James Allison was so
+happy to find someone who understood him,
+he shook John Petrianu’s hand with both of
+his.</p>
+
+<p>“Finally someone I can talk to,” he repeated
+over and over again. “Now tell me what is
+the trouble here. Why don’t they use these
+machines?”</p>
+
+<p>“It is because his peasants refuse to handle
+them,” Petrianu answered. “I have some on
+my farm from your company, and they work
+well. I have had my troubles with them, but
+it is all over now.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why,” Allison said, “all we have to do is
+to prove to them that they are easy to handle
+and more economical.”</p>
+
+<p>He was a demonstrator, James Allison, and
+he had come down to demonstrate. Should he
+succeed in changing the opinion of the peasants,
+hundreds and hundreds of machines could
+be sold in that territory.</p>
+
+<p>Petrianu, Ileana and James Allison looked at
+one another. Suddenly Petrianu spoke to Robu.</p>
+
+<p>“You have been too soft with your men. It
+is why they would not listen to you. Go back
+to your room. Let them not see you at all.
+Let me deal with them.”</p>
+
+<p>He stretched to his full height and looked
+for approval on Ileana’s side. He knew by the
+gesture of Robu that he had won him over.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</span>She looked admiringly at John. Yet, after a
+few moments, she paused to say:</p>
+
+<p>“On condition, John Petrianu, that you
+should not be brutal to them. We have been
+hearing of the way you deal with your people
+occasionally.”</p>
+
+<p>“It takes a strong hand; it takes a strong
+hand to handle them,” he answered, still
+flushed and drunk by his anticipation of being
+able to show his power over men.</p>
+
+<p>Allison had been measuring up Ileana. In
+spite of the proffered assistance from Petrianu
+there was something about the man he did not
+like; a harshness of tone that went against
+the American’s grain.</p>
+
+<p>Allison had seldom before seen the kind of
+beauty Ileana possessed. Strong, robust, kind,
+with brown eyes and a milky white face, the
+head set perfectly on wide shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>“We go to the field,” Petrianu said.</p>
+
+<p>Then he called to one of the servitors of the
+house, who had come with Ileana, to saddle two
+horses: one for the American and one for
+Ileana. Had Robu asked his man for a similar
+service he would have added some polite words.
+Petrianu’s words were shot out like crisp whip
+lashes. When the horses had been brought out
+saddled, and they were mounted, Petrianu
+again turned to the servitors.</p>
+
+<p>“And let four oxen be yoked to each of the
+two machines in the shed,” he ordered.</p>
+
+<p>The two servitors crossed themselves and
+bowed deeply, but they made no movement to
+execute the orders. They looked appealingly
+in the direction where Robu had disappeared.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Do not look there!” Petrianu thundered. “I
+am the master here now! Do what I tell you!”</p>
+
+<p>Ileana began to tremble. She looked with
+appealing eyes to James Allison, who did not
+understand what she meant, except that he
+knew that she was afraid something dreadful
+might take place. Petrianu was standing before
+the men with his nervous hand upon the
+short handle of the braided whip, forcing them
+to put the yokes on the necks of the oxen.</p>
+
+<p>James Allison was mad with rage. But he
+had been sent there as a demonstrator. That
+man was helping him. If it needed a show of
+force to convince the peasants, well, let it be
+used.</p>
+
+<p>Trembling and crossing themselves over and
+over again, the two servitors yoked the oxen.
+Still walking after them with his horse broadwise,
+Petrianu pushed oxen and men to the
+machines.</p>
+
+<p>“Drive on!” Petrianu ordered.</p>
+
+<p>The spiked wheels of the machines began to
+clatter down the road, one after the other, with
+Petrianu, Jim Allison, and Ileana riding back
+of them. Occasionally Petrianu would drive
+alongside of the men and talk to them harshly,
+twisting the lash of his whip as he talked.</p>
+
+<p>Rumbling and clattering, the machines arrived
+at the wheatfield. The two drivers had
+no sooner seen their people than they plunged
+amongst them, crossing themselves and weeping.
+Instantly the song of the scythe against
+the ripe wheat ceased. The gleaning women,
+the colored beetles in the gold stubble, unbent
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</span>their backs. There was silence. Why was Petrianu,
+the cruel Petrianu, of whom they had all
+heard, and this American, come with these machines
+now to the fields they were harvesting?
+And where was Boyar Robu?</p>
+
+<p>Petrianu advanced toward the two men, who
+had abandoned the machines. Without a word
+his whip came down upon the shoulder of the
+first man, an elderly white-bearded peasant.</p>
+
+<p>The peasant screamed in horror and withdrew
+a few paces. Petrianu’s whip had already
+come down upon the other man, and he
+raised it for the third time. Ileana cried out
+in anguish.</p>
+
+<p>Jim Allison forgot that he was there to demonstrate
+the working of his machines. Suddenly,
+although the other man was much the
+heavier and taller, he sprang upon him like a
+cat. With one well-directed blow he sent him
+sprawling on the ground. Petrianu rolled over
+and, reaching into his riding boot, he jumped
+up with an open drawn dagger in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>Jim Allison forgot everything. The sight of
+the weapon in the other man’s hand drove him
+almost insane with fury. He felt the warm
+drip of blood from a gash in his face; and, as
+they were fighting, he felt blood dripping down
+from the upper part of his arm.</p>
+
+<p>Ileana screamed. The unarmed man, the
+boy from the other seas, faced the big and
+powerful Petrianu, who had a knife in his
+hand. The peasants stood aside watching the
+contest, all siding with the stranger, for they
+understood he had jumped to the rescue of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</span>one of their men. And they wondered how
+so light a man should dare fight so powerful
+a man who had a knife in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>The two men were rolling over each other.
+Allison’s hands were not free to hit, for he
+was holding the wrist of the other man’s dagger
+hand. And as the fight went on an unspeakable
+hatred for Petrianu rose in the
+hearts of the peasants. Allison had succeeded
+in taking the weapon out of the other man’s
+hand. Petrianu lay there, bruised and beaten,
+fumbling in his hip pocket. Taking their
+scythes in hand the peasants advanced toward
+the man who was now slowly getting to his
+feet.</p>
+
+<p>As readily as he had come to the rescue of
+the peasants, Jim, throwing the knife at a distance
+over his head, interposed his body in
+protection of the man he had beaten. And then
+Jim spoke to them in feverish language, calling
+them brothers and asking them to be men
+and understand. In his ardor he had forgotten
+they were people of another language.</p>
+
+<p>But the men listened. The women seemed
+to understand.</p>
+
+<p>“Get up, you coward!” Jim turned around
+to Petrianu, who had risen to his feet. “Get
+up, and on your horse!”</p>
+
+<p>And when the men seemed appeased, Jim,
+with his bleeding arm and the blood dripping
+from his cheek, put his arms around the necks
+of the two men who had driven the oxen.</p>
+
+<p>“Come. Come,” he urged them.</p>
+
+<p>He looked around to see Ileana. She was
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</span>gone. What mattered it? He was a demonstrator.
+And the men were in a mood to do
+what he asked. They turned around to the
+other peasants, who made a passage for the
+machines. Jim seated himself on the seat of
+one while the man was driving the oxen.</p>
+
+<p>The machine started its grumbling movement.
+The cutters sheared the wheat blades
+low. The peasants ran after the machine to
+watch how it operated. See, there a sheaf was
+piled up, the cord was passed around it by the
+two steel fingers. The needle passed across
+and twisted the cord into a knot. Another
+sheaf and another sheaf. Five. And then
+they were all dropped softly to the ground.</p>
+
+<p>They had finished the first row when Boyar
+Robu arrived, riding near his sister, who had
+gone to call him, afraid lest some mishap was
+to befall Jim Allison.</p>
+
+<p>“He has killed him! He has killed him!”
+she cried.</p>
+
+<p>They found Jim peacefully starting the second
+row. He had tied a handkerchief around
+the wound on his arm to stop its bleeding; and
+he was continually staunching the wound on
+his cheek with the sleeve he had torn off his
+shirt. It was his opportunity now. He had
+won the confidence of the men. They were
+willing. He had been sent as a demonstrator
+and he was demonstrating. He was demonstrating
+the harvesting machine.</p>
+
+<p>Robu rode after him, and Ileana put her
+arms around him to get him off the seat of the
+machine. He would not leave. The wound did
+not matter.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</span></p>
+
+<p>But they did not understand. Ileana was
+deeply concerned about the wounds he had
+received. She put her hands on his arm and
+her fingers trembled as she touched him. His
+whole body trembled in response. But he drove
+on to finish the other row.</p>
+
+<p>On returning to where the idle machine
+stood, with the oxen still yoked to the pole,
+he motioned to Robu to sit down on the seat
+and set it in movement. The two machines
+rode side by side, with the peasants jumping
+from one to the other, looking and giving soft
+cries of wonderment at the regularity with
+which the sheaves were bound and dropped
+steadily, steadily. At the end of the row stood
+Ileana with a pail of water. And this time she
+put her arms firmly around the stranger and
+almost lifted him off the seat. She washed his
+wounds.</p>
+
+<p>Jim was happy. Not a muscle of his face
+moved as she cleaned the gaping flesh of the
+deep knife wound in the upper part of his arm.
+Jim was happy. For one of the younger peasants,
+who had watched the machine while it
+had been pulled twice the length of the field,
+had now jumped on the seat in his place and
+was driving forward, onward, with the peasants
+and their wives running after it as the
+golden sheaves fell and fell to the ground.
+They were all with their backs toward Jim
+and Ileana.</p>
+
+<p>And then Jim in great joy jumped to his feet
+and, without knowing exactly what he was doing,
+he threw his arms about the girl’s neck
+and drew her to him and kissed her long upon
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</span>the lips. She encircled his waist with her
+arms and pressed him to herself.</p>
+
+<p>The following day Jim Allison wrote to the
+manager of his company:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>We are cutting four hundred acres of wheat
+with two machines Boyar Robu bought last
+year. Please send immediately six pieces X-34
+and 8 L-56.</p>
+
+<p>I shall, however, remain a little longer here
+than I expected at first, as I am marrying Boyar
+Robu’s sister.</p>
+
+<p class="right p4">Yours,</p>
+<p class="right p2">James Allison.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="SAVA">
+    SAVA
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>There were twenty men in Sava’s band:
+twenty resolute, black-bearded, lean, hard men,
+each one capable of doing whatever was demanded
+of him under any circumstances. Each
+one could ride a horse until the animal fell
+down exhausted; each one could negotiate
+twenty miles of hills and mountains in torrential
+rain or heavy snowstorm, and swim
+across a river with a gun so fastened on the
+back of the head that the powder in the barrels
+remained dry. Twenty men who could
+stand their ground against forty, against fifty,
+against a hundred, and disappear in the batting
+of an eye at a given signal, in as many
+different directions, and know where and when
+to meet again in the crevice of a rock in the
+mountains, or in the abandoned dugout of a
+<span id="TN3">she bear</span>!</p>
+
+<p>For years Sava and his men had been peacefully
+smuggling silks from the Hungarian side
+of the Carpathians over into Roumania, and
+tobacco and linens from Roumania into Hungary.
+They carried the contraband on their
+backs or strapped the packs on the saddles of
+the small Moldavian ponies they rode. Customs
+guards and gendarmes on both sides had
+watched them closely for years without ever
+catching them.</p>
+
+<p>Big Sava, the leader, was only thirty. And
+although his gait was as young as that of a
+man of twenty, the steadiness of his eye and
+the slowness of his speech gave his lean, dark,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</span>smooth face a much older stamp. He could
+outdo his men at anything, although they were
+the pick of the gypsy manhood of Roumania.</p>
+
+<p>Sava was the only unmarried man of his
+band. He danced with all the maidens on
+Sunday at the inn when he was at home. He
+laughed and danced and joked and sang with
+all of them. Many a time when the older men
+had gone to sleep and the younger ones were
+yet too full of the joy of life to go home or
+to leave the circle of dancers, Sava would remain
+with two of the most beautiful girls of
+his tribe, one at his right and the other at
+his left, and amuse himself watching the two
+women trying to outdo each other in the game
+of husband catching.</p>
+
+<p>When the game had lasted long enough, he
+would tap his open palms and tell them to
+run to their homes ere misfortune overtook
+them. For it would be misfortune to marry
+a man who did not love them. The women
+gone, Sava would sit alone somewhere under a
+tree and wonder when he would feel what love
+really was like. He would pass in review all
+the girls of his tribe. They were all beautiful,
+but there was not one he preferred to another
+one—not one he longed to see when he was
+away, not one whose nearness made him want
+to stay....</p>
+
+<p>His own men watched and hoped every
+spring. They loved him and desired to see
+him happy with a woman of their tribe.</p>
+
+<p>That winter Sava and his men had been detained
+on the Hungarian side of the Carpathians
+by a terrific snowstorm that lasted
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</span>two weeks. During those two weeks they
+stayed at “Marga’s,” the inn of a young widow
+who kept the only place of its kind in fifty
+miles around.</p>
+
+<p>When the storm had abated, the gendarmes
+learned that Sava and his men were at Marga’s.
+They drew a cordon around them, firmly decided
+to catch the gypsies red-handed in the act
+of smuggling. Sava resolved to outpatience
+the gendarmes. He did not explain anything
+to his men. He just remained there and slept
+and drank and danced and sang as he had
+never done before.</p>
+
+<p>Somehow Marga, and even Sava’s own men,
+interpreted his actions according to their own
+lights. Marga was convinced he remained
+there because of her. As she was very much in
+love with the young gypsy she began to cover
+him with little attentions and whisper in his
+willing ears all the little gossip she could find
+out about the gendarmes. At first there were
+twenty. Then she reported a hundred. In a
+few days she reported the forest was full of
+them, two behind every tree. Sava listened
+quietly and smiled at her.</p>
+
+<p>Besides Sava and his men, there were twenty
+other men staying at the inn. There were
+heavy-bearded shepherds with sheepskin coats
+reaching to their soles, itinerant peddlers with
+feet wrapped in red rags, and two gypsy fiddlers
+who had stumbled into the inn early one
+morning, stiff and frozen, as if they had ridden
+on top of the storm to Marga’s door.</p>
+
+<p>After the storm abated, the guests began to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</span>depart one by one. Ultimately only Sava and
+his men remained with the two gypsy musicians,
+the gendarmes still watching.</p>
+
+<p>Daily Sava’s men awaited orders from their
+chief. But Sava seemed to have forgotten their
+existence and forgotten everything about the
+gendarmes watching him. With the two musicians
+at his side, with the buxom blue-eyed
+widow looking into his eyes as she filled his
+cup of wine, he was oblivious of everything.
+Never before had he felt so warm inside and
+out. He had no love for Marga, and he knew
+that. But he knew that she felt for him what
+he had once felt for another woman, whom he
+had been compelled to forget. He gloated in
+that bitter-sweet of being loved without loving,
+as if he were avenging his soul for what had
+happened once, many years before. He could
+order Marga around as he wished without fear
+of losing her. He was master of her soul
+because he was master of his own.</p>
+
+<p>His men came in and watched the spectacle.
+The glowing, full-bosomed, round-armed young
+widow was holding a foaming pitcher to his
+empty glass, while leaning her cheek against
+his.</p>
+
+<p>The younger gypsies proposed that they overcome
+the gendarmes and bind them and tie
+up the widow or take her along with them, if
+Sava must have her near him. They were long
+overdue at home. Their wives and their children
+were weeping for them. Who knew but
+that Mara and Pania and Fanutza had already
+married former lovers or other men!</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</span></p>
+
+<p>It was the beginning of March. Soon the
+melting of the snows would not only make the
+underground passages impossible but even the
+paths in the woods. The wolves and the bears
+were traveling in enormous packs. And the
+gendarmes now entered the inn daily.</p>
+
+<p>One day Sava ordered the gypsy fiddlers to
+play in the center of the room instead of playing
+right near him. The gendarmes, half intoxicated,
+mingled freely with his men, talking
+and laughing. The carbines of the men of the
+law were stacked in a corner.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Sava snapped his fingers. In a
+leap, each of his men possessed himself of one
+of the weapons and at the same time directed
+it against one of the gendarmes. Sava’s hands
+were the only ones free of any weapons. While
+his men held the gendarmes at the points of
+the guns, Sava paid his bill to Marga, whispering
+a few love words to her. And then, turning
+around to the gendarmes, he said:</p>
+
+<p>“If you stay here quietly for an hour, one
+hour by my watch, you will find all your guns
+stacked up at the foot of the mountain near
+the big white boulder. And no one will know
+anything about it. If you come after us, we’ll
+have to use the carbines, and you’ll lose them—and
+lose other things besides. Remember,
+there are wives and children waiting for you
+at home, but there are also wives and children
+waiting for my men.”</p>
+
+<p>They placed the carbines near the white
+boulder as promised, then they disappeared
+from the surface into a secret tunnel a hundred
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</span>feet away from the place where the gendarmes
+had camped without knowing that it
+led through the mountains to the other side.</p>
+
+<p>There were loud huzzahs and hurrahs when
+Sava and his men returned early one morning
+to their village. They had been overdue two
+months. Pania was already allowing Yorga to
+come much nearer to her tent. Fanutza and
+Mara were being considered young widows.</p>
+
+<p>And now Sava and his men were back, the
+men looking up at him with even greater love
+and devotion than they had ever done before.
+It had to be celebrated—with the best wine,
+the loudest shouting, the wildest dancing.</p>
+
+<p>They were not ready to tell the story of how
+Sava had taken them away from among the
+gendarmes. They interrupted themselves in
+the middle of a tale with: “Oh, that can never
+be told!”</p>
+
+<p>It was a trick of theirs they had for effect,
+to tell one-half of the tale. <span id="TN4">They let it be
+understood</span> Sava was a supernatural being who
+could do things no one else could do, things
+they could not even tell about.</p>
+
+<p>They feasted and celebrated for a whole
+month. There were many dances. And many
+were the women who turned about Sava, trying
+to captivate him. Whenever Sava would be
+near one of the girls who had forced her attentions
+upon him, he would be waiting for
+that pleasant glow which he experienced when
+in the nearness of Marga, the widow innkeeper.
+She was not as beautiful as many of the girls
+of his own tribe, but he did not feel in their
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</span>presence what he felt in hers. She loved him
+for what he was, not what he did. He felt
+they were giving him counterfeit instead of the
+clink of real gold.</p>
+
+<p>When the wind and the sun had dried the
+roads a Turkish merchant, coming from the
+other side of the Danube, brought them a load
+which he wished carried across into Hungary.
+Sava and half of his men, loaded with heavy
+packs, disappeared early one morning in different
+directions. And though the place where
+they had to deliver the merchandise was miles
+away from the inn of the widow, Sava found
+himself quite involuntarily stepping in the
+direction of Marga’s inn.</p>
+
+<p>He told himself repeatedly he did not love
+her, that he went there only because he knew
+she was waiting for him—for him only....</p>
+
+<p>His men thought it was useless audacity to
+go to Marga, with gendarmes watching about
+her place. At one point of the road a riding
+gendarme whizzed by. The gypsies looked at
+one another and looked at their chief. He answered
+with a broad smile and a nod of his
+head. He knew that gendarme was riding at
+top speed to warn the others of their coming.
+But the merchandise had already been delivered.</p>
+
+<p>They were all in the inn when he opened
+the door. He greeted them with loud laughter.
+His running away had been a game. He and
+his men had won. Sava offered them wine.</p>
+
+<p>“Let us drink like friends. What has been
+has been. Wine, Marga.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</span></p>
+
+<p>The gendarmes refused. Yet they were unwilling
+to pick a fight with the gypsy, fearing
+that a far greater number than those who had
+come into the inn were outside ready to pounce
+upon them if they should attack Sava. They
+left the inn cursing and swearing.</p>
+
+<p>When they had gone, Sava leaned over the
+counter and spoke to Marga:</p>
+
+<p>“I have come to bid you good-morning. I had
+no time to bid you good-bye last time. Let’s
+drink a glass together if you have forgiven
+me.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, Sava!” the widow answered, happy to
+touch his hand. “Let me drink from your
+glass. Sava! Sava!”</p>
+
+<p>He looked deeply into her eyes as he held
+the glass to her lips, and asked:</p>
+
+<p>“And if I had told you to come along with
+me, would you have come?”</p>
+
+<p>She raised her eyes to his and he read the
+answer: “To the end of the world!”</p>
+
+<p>He remained leaning over the counter, looking
+at her. The warmth emanating from her
+was so pleasant! Why did he not love her?
+What was it that prevented him from loving
+her as she loved him? She was young. She
+was beautiful! He did not love her. Yet he
+liked to be near her. Why?</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Marga awoke from her reverie.
+She bent Sava’s head to her lips and whispered
+in his ear:</p>
+
+<p>“They have found out the underground passage.
+They have hidden a number of gendarmes
+within the tunnel.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</span></p>
+
+<p>Sava looked at her gratefully, and called his
+men to him for a short conversation. One by
+one they went out. Sava was the last one to
+leave. He kissed the widow’s lips before going.</p>
+
+<p>The gypsy smugglers disappeared in different
+directions. But they met a few minutes
+later near the narrow opening of the underground
+tunnel in which the gendarmes were
+hidden. One by one, they crawled in, under
+the eyes of Sava, who remained the last. Then
+he, too, crawled in and disappeared in the black
+hole.</p>
+
+<p>Sava had hardly crawled in when gendarmes
+who had been hiding behind trees followed the
+gypsies, crawling cautiously after them.</p>
+
+<p>The gypsies did not remain underground
+very long. They climbed out from a side entrance
+to the tunnel a hundred paces from
+the first. Then they blocked it up. And while
+half of Sava’s men were running at top speed
+over the forest to close up the other end of the
+subterranean passage, Sava and the others
+were hastily rolling huge boulders and stones
+to close up the entrance into which the gendarmes
+had just disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>Leisurely, carrying the bags of contraband
+which had lain hidden in the forest, the gypsies,
+headed by loud-singing Sava, marched
+single file over the broad road across the border.
+The gendarmes were all safely bottled
+up.</p>
+
+<p>When they reached their village, Sava’s men
+were prouder of their leader than they had
+ever been, and told how he had tricked the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</span>gendarmes and extricated them from their
+clutches. There were dances on the fresh
+green grass, while the fiddlers, sitting on
+empty barrels, were playing until their strings
+snapped and were singing at the top of their
+voices.</p>
+
+<p>When the gaiety was at its height a tribe of
+horse-dealing gypsies joined the merriment.
+They were from the Dobrudja, from the other
+side of the Danube, where they had earned
+much gold in trading horses.</p>
+
+<p>The welcome to the guest tribe knew no
+bounds. The men threw their arms about one
+another and patted one another’s shoulders.
+The women climbed down from the tent
+wagons, helped by the women of Sava’s tribe,
+while the young men watched them, and made
+comments as each one went down.</p>
+
+<p>“Hey, you black-tressed, long-faced beauty!
+Where did you get your earrings?”</p>
+
+<p>“Hey, you! Did you steal your eyes from
+the night?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, there another one climbs down backward
+from the wagon, as if she were an old
+woman. Are your feet of glass or are your
+kneecaps of porcelain?”</p>
+
+<p>The young women of Sava’s tribe received
+their blood sisters with much noise, fingered
+their dresses, looked at their jewels and inspected
+their bracelets and anklets, their bejeweled
+fingers and necklaces. They tugged at
+one another’s handkerchiefs and waved the
+fringes of the shawls. The children of one
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</span>tribe began to get acquainted with the children
+of the other, vying with each other as to who
+could turn more somersaults at a stretch. The
+dogs barked and nosed at the newcomers’ dogs,
+then went out side by side to inspect the camp,
+for the odor of broiled meats was rising in
+the air, mingling with the odor of fried oil
+and garlic in which the tenderer morsels were
+already being stewed.</p>
+
+<p>Sava was standing near his men, occasionally
+smiling at a clever sally, but never saying
+anything himself. When Tira, Chief Mincu’s
+daughter, jumped down from the rear end of
+her father’s wagon there was a cry of wonder
+from the throats of many men. She was no
+longer very young, as gypsies go, perhaps
+twenty-five. Her face was round and full and
+quiet. Her body, without being supple, was
+sinuous. Her movements were slow and stately.
+Her big eyes looked the men over quietly
+and appraisingly without any haste. Many a
+man lowered his head as she looked at him.
+Her glance rested a little longer on Sava than
+it did upon the other men. But it was only
+a fraction of a second that their eyes met.</p>
+
+<p>The other young men looked at Sava to see
+the effect of the woman upon him, and realizing
+he had singled her out of all the women,
+they went about to take part in the general
+gaiety that was being staged. A little later,
+while the smoke was rising from the fire, and
+the savour of steam from the pots, the two
+tribes mingled freely, the young men from
+Chief Mincu’s tribe were already on terms of
+friendship with the girls from Sava’s tribe,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</span>while Sava’s young men were joking and
+laughing with the women of Mincu’s tribe.</p>
+
+<p>Sava approached the chief and, greeting, sat
+down near him, saying, “I am Sava.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, you are Sava?” Mincu answered, shaking
+his hand vigorously again. “They have
+just told me how you bottled the gendarmes
+up.”</p>
+
+<p>And the shrewd old gypsy trader shook with
+laughter as he thumped Sava’s shoulder vigorously.
+Defeating the men of the law was
+great fun for all gypsies.</p>
+
+<p>“And your daughter, what is her name?”
+Sava asked.</p>
+
+<p>“Tira,” Mincu answered. “And though there
+have been five hundred and fifty men who
+have offered me wealth and riches that I
+should marry her to them, she has so far chosen
+to remain alone.”</p>
+
+<p>He waxed enthusiastic. “In the Dobrudja a
+Tatar chief wanted to buy her from me, offering
+all his sheep, a thousand in number, for
+her. A Cherkess in Russia offered me, not
+very long ago, two of his best blood horses,
+for which I had offered him a thousand pieces
+of gold, that I should give her to him in marriage.
+She refused.”</p>
+
+<p>“A thousand pieces of gold!” Sava repeated
+incredulously.</p>
+
+<p>“A thousand pieces of gold,” Mincu asserted
+without flinching.</p>
+
+<p>“And are you her father or her slave?”
+Sava questioned, looking the older man in the
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Her father,” Mincu answered. “But a
+woman like Tira should have her word in the
+choice of a husband.”</p>
+
+<p>Sava looked at him, shrugged his shoulders,
+and rose to his feet. The dance had already
+begun. He walked slowly up to Tira and extended
+his right arm for her left one, to join
+with her in the circle that was already turning
+around to slow music, gathering speed for the
+whirl in which it should end.</p>
+
+<p>With all her plumpness, she was as light as a
+feather. And her feet executed quick movements
+in the air before they were brought
+down again to the earth, as they turned around
+and around while the men were yelling “Hi!
+Hey!” from the fullness of their throats. At
+the completion of the circle one of the women
+was called upon to step out into the center of
+the circle to do a solo dance while the others
+turned around and around and clapped their
+hands:</p>
+
+<p>“Mara! Mara! Mara! Mara!”</p>
+
+<p>And Mara stepped out and danced. When
+Mara had returned to join arms with her partner
+another one was called. The young men
+and women of the other tribe were given first
+call, so that they might show the mettle of
+which they were made.</p>
+
+<p>After the fourth round, the youth of Sava’s
+tribe began to call on Tira to step out and
+dance:</p>
+
+<p>“Tira! Tira! Tira! Tira!”</p>
+
+<p>Like a tiger Tira leaped into the center of
+the circle. Spinning like a top with her arms
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</span>extended in front of her, she came to a dead
+stop, only to begin the same spin in the opposite
+direction. Her feet hardly touched the
+ground, while her head turned this side and
+that, looking at all of them provokingly, tantalizingly.
+When the music slowed up, she clasped
+her hands at her back, bringing her shoulders
+forward, and glided snakewise along the inner
+rim of the circle, measuring and weighing
+with her eyes the men of the other tribe.</p>
+
+<p>When she reached Sava, she looked at him
+longer than at the others, and spinning around
+once more, she leaped as vigorously back to
+her place as she had broken out of it. There
+was no fatigue in her eyes. They were more
+luminous than before. Only the bosom rose
+and fell a little faster and the veins of her
+throat thickened.</p>
+
+<p>There was a loud cry of admiration. Even
+the older men and women, forming an outer
+ring about the young people, were clapping
+their hands and calling loudly her name:
+“Tira! Tira! Tira!”</p>
+
+<p>When the dance was over Sava tugged at
+Tira’s father’s coat.</p>
+
+<p>“That we drink a glass of wine together,
+<i lang="ro">cumetru</i>, father-in-law. Come where the wine
+is served.”</p>
+
+<p>Mincu looked into Sava’s eyes as he rose to
+follow him.</p>
+
+<p>“It is about Tira that I want to speak,” Sava
+said, after clinking glasses.</p>
+
+<p>“What can you tell me of her that I do not
+already know?” the girl’s father laughed.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</span></p>
+
+<p>“You spoke of a thousand gold pieces, Mincu.
+But you meant silver pieces, did you not?”</p>
+
+<p>“I spoke of a thousand gold pieces, which I
+have refused,” Mincu answered, putting down
+the empty glass.</p>
+
+<p>“Maybe another glass of wine will teach you
+the difference between gold and silver,” Sava
+replied, winking at his men as he poured more
+wine for Mincu.</p>
+
+<p>“The difference, my son, is the difference
+between you and me,” Mincu rejoined, while
+the people called out with admiration:</p>
+
+<p>“Hey, Mincu! That’s Mincu!”</p>
+
+<p>The two tribes assembled about the two
+bargaining men. They forgot even what the
+bargaining was about. It was just a contest
+of wits. The two men were looking at each
+other silently, each one watching for the other
+to make an opening.</p>
+
+<p>“Where is blind Jorga, that he tell me a
+story?” Mincu called mockingly, having lost
+patience.</p>
+
+<p>“Leave blind Jorga out of that,” Sava answered
+in anger.</p>
+
+<p>Mincu caught the eye of his daughter.</p>
+
+<p>“If you talk about silver you will drain the
+wine of the country before I say another word.”</p>
+
+<p>“Gold! Gold!” called Mincu’s men.</p>
+
+<p>“Then gold it shall be,” Sava answered, and
+taking from his belt a heavy purse he tendered
+it to Mincu. “There are a hundred pieces of
+gold here. What say you?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</span></p>
+
+<p>In answer to Sava’s offer Mincu turned his
+back and spoke to his men.</p>
+
+<p>“Harness up. Another few hours we shall
+reach Ploesti and be received by our own people.”</p>
+
+<p>Sava looked at Tira, who returned his glance
+without flinching.</p>
+
+<p>“And so a thousand gold pieces were offered
+and you refused?”</p>
+
+<p>“It was the man I refused and not the gold,”
+Tira answered angrily. “You should have come
+to me first.”</p>
+
+<p>She turned her back and left him.</p>
+
+<p>Sava sat down on his heels and watched how
+Mincu and his men were harnessing their
+horses. Sava’s men were happy to see him so
+interested in a woman. They were anxious
+to see him settled with a family. It was no
+good having a chief without a wife and not
+knowing where his eyes might cast about for
+one.</p>
+
+<p>Sava called the oldest men of his tribe and
+spoke to them softly. The old men approached
+Mincu with great ceremony.</p>
+
+<p>“Pass this night with us, pray. It is too late
+to reach Ploesti before nightfall. There have
+been heavy rains in the mountains, and the
+ground is still soggy. There is meat aplenty
+here, and wine, and the strings of the fiddles
+have not all snapped.”</p>
+
+<p>Mincu resisted, claiming that he could reach
+Ploesti with the kind of horses he had, no
+matter what the roads were. But ultimately
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</span>the old men and the people of Sava’s tribe
+prevailed upon the guests to stay overnight.</p>
+
+<p>Mincu unbuttoned his coat in preparation
+for the new glass of wine. Tira was sitting at
+the end of her wagon, her legs dangling.</p>
+
+<p>“To show that I am grateful that you have
+remained here with us, Mincu, I will offer you
+two hundred gold pieces,” Sava said.</p>
+
+<p>Mincu shook his head and answered in reproachful
+accents, “I have remained as a
+guest and not as a trader.”</p>
+
+<p>“Three hundred,” Sava called out, to the
+amazement of his men.</p>
+
+<p>And then, as Mincu still shook his head,
+Sava called out in quick succession: “Four
+hundred. Five hundred.”</p>
+
+<p>Mincu <span id="TN5">turned around and looked</span> at his daughter,
+who shook her head negatively.</p>
+
+<p>“That is not half enough. I would willingly
+take it if it were my daughter’s will. It would
+be worth the difference between that and a
+thousand for me for the happiness of my
+daughter. But she is unwilling, Sava.”</p>
+
+<p>Sava moved away from the chief and sat
+down near Tira. Never before had he been
+so electrified as he was by the nearness of
+that woman beside him.</p>
+
+<p>“And so you urge your father to refuse five
+hundred gold pieces that you become my wife,”
+he asked, looking into her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>“I would tell him to refuse a thousand,” Tira
+answered calmly. “You should have spoken to
+me first,” she added.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</span></p>
+
+<p>Sava left her and went to talk with his men.
+The night was long. If her father was a
+trader, he, too, was one. No one should be
+able to say, “Mincu has bested Sava in a
+bargain!” He knew that his people would ply
+Mincu with wine to soften him into a better
+bargain.</p>
+
+<p>Late that night Tira was still dangling her
+feet from the rear end of the wagon. She was
+talking to her father. Sava could not hear
+what she said to him, but he heard Mincu
+argue with her heatedly.</p>
+
+<p>It looked as though his men had brought
+Mincu to reason. He regretted he had offered
+five hundred gold pieces for the girl. Perhaps
+if he had stopped at four hundred! Or even
+three hundred! It was not only the money,
+<span id="TN6">but to be beaten</span> in a bargain by another man!</p>
+
+<p>Mincu was half drunk now. He put his two
+hands on Sava’s shoulders and said:</p>
+
+<p>“I talked to Tira. She says she won’t have
+you, that I should not sell her to you. And
+I so much want to have you for my son, Sava.
+But she won’t have you. Oh, women! Who
+can ever tell what is in their hearts. Who
+can? Fill my glass, men; fill it.”</p>
+
+<p>“What kind of a father are you?” Sava questioned.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, what kind of a father are you that you
+cannot tell her what to do?” Sava’s people
+shouted. “Tell us! Are you her slave or her
+master?”</p>
+
+<p>“It is not only that,” Mincu rejoined. “But
+if it is to get her a husband she does not want
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</span>I can turn around and get the thousand gold
+pieces the Cherkess has offered, or the two
+horses I wanted so much.”</p>
+
+<p>He had sobered up the moment he was again
+bargaining. Drunk or sober, he was a trader.</p>
+
+<p>“I have offered you five hundred. I am
+offering six hundred now,” Sava called out.</p>
+
+<p>Mincu’s eyes brightened, but he still shook
+his head.</p>
+
+<p>“Seven hundred,” called out Sava, after a
+brief moment. “It is all I have!”</p>
+
+<p>“Then wait a few more years,” Mincu answered
+jestingly. “Don’t give away all you
+have!”</p>
+
+<p>Sava sank into himself. It really was all he
+possessed. He would willingly have offered
+more. What did money count against the
+possession of such a woman as Tira? Her pale,
+round face shamed the moon. Her eyes gave
+more warmth than the fire that was burning
+and crackling.</p>
+
+<p>Blind Jorga edged up to Sava. “When I last
+saw thee thou wert no higher than my knees.
+But I know thee and have listened to thy voice
+during all the years. Take this.” And he put
+his purse into Sava’s hands. “It is all I have.
+Offer that also for the woman thou lovest.”</p>
+
+<p>Sava’s friends saw Jorga put his purse into
+their chief’s hands and were now ready to
+give all they possessed that he buy himself
+the woman he loved.</p>
+
+<p>“Silence!” blind Jorga called. “He has offered
+seven hundred. He can now offer a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</span>hundred more gold pieces. And by my beard,
+he will not offer more! Mincu! Where is
+Mincu!”</p>
+
+<p>“If it is to marry her to a man she does
+not want why should I take eight hundred
+when a thousand has been offered to me?”
+Mincu answered.</p>
+
+<p>Another gypsy put his purse into Sava’s
+hands. “It is fifty gold pieces. All I have.”</p>
+
+<p>And those fifty were offered to Mincu.</p>
+
+<p>Then one after another the other men gave,
+each one everything he possessed, until the full
+sum of a thousand gold pieces was reached.</p>
+
+<p>“There is a thousand,” Jorga called out joyfully,
+for he was conducting the deal.</p>
+
+<p>At the loud huzzas of the people, Tira joined
+the circle.</p>
+
+<p>“It is a thousand gold pieces they have offered
+for you, Tira, and I have accepted.”</p>
+
+<p>Sava looked at her. He was happy, not only
+because he had bought her for a thousand gold
+pieces, but also because his people had so self-sacrificingly
+offered of their own free will the
+money they had saved in long years of dangerous
+toil. He was proud of their love for
+him. He felt stronger than he had ever felt
+before—as if all their strength had joined his.
+He looked at them with tears in his eyes. He
+looked at her. She was angry, defiant. She
+could not understand that if she was worth a
+thousand gold pieces to him she was worth all
+the gold in the world to his people, and they
+to him more than that.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</span></p>
+
+<p>Screaming at the top of her voice, Tira threw
+herself at her father’s chest beating with her
+two fists.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh! To have sold me to a man I do not
+want! Oh! Oh! Oh! Against my will. Against
+my will. He should have spoken to me first.
+To me. To me.”</p>
+
+<p>She tore her hair and clawed her breasts
+and face. That a daughter should dare so to
+behave toward her father! But Sava’s whip
+will cow her into a dutiful wife!</p>
+
+<p>They looked at Sava, expecting to see the
+joy of the prospective taming of such a woman.
+But he stood with his eyes closed, and his face
+became sadder and sadder as Tira’s rage grew.</p>
+
+<p>His mind climbed over the mountains to that
+other woman, to the young widow whose love
+for him was so intense, who made him feel so
+sure of himself. She was always waiting for
+him.</p>
+
+<p>What sort of woman would be waiting for
+him on his return from a dangerous journey
+if he were to marry Tira? True, he could beat
+Tira into submission. But he could not force
+love from her; not the kind of love the other
+woman had for him. And he weighed and
+measured. Was the nearness of the one who
+loves you not dearer than the nearness of
+the one who does not?</p>
+
+<p><span id="TN7">Meanwhile, Tira’s rage</span> grew and grew. She
+clawed and cried and cursed. Oh, it would be
+pleasant to tame her! The desire to tame her
+was growing in him every second. He would
+have liked to begin right then and there. But
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</span>she was still Mincu’s daughter. She was not
+yet his wife.</p>
+
+<p>She did not love him. He could see that.
+What kind of woman would await his return
+from the other side of the mountains? He
+would come to her with a heart full of love,
+tired, hungry, wounded. How would she receive
+him? Marga, the widow, would be waiting
+for him—expecting him.</p>
+
+<p>The poet of the tribe, old Jorga, was chanting:
+“A thousand gold pieces Sava pays for
+the woman he desires! That is the kind of
+men we have. They pay everything they possess
+for the women they love. That is the
+kind of men we are. When a man does not
+have all the money, all the gold, we give it
+to him, that he purchase his heart’s desire.”</p>
+
+<p>They had meanwhile dragged Tira to the
+wedding rug. She had suddenly quieted down
+and was awaiting Sava in the center of the
+weave. She had dried her tears and was
+straightening her hair while the men and
+women shouted and laughed.</p>
+
+<p>“Sava, give Mincu your purse that he give
+you the hand of his daughter,” Jorga asked,
+fumbling for Sava’s hand.</p>
+
+<p>Sava remained silent. His eyes had a far-away
+look.... Suddenly he looked with
+searching eyes into the face of Tira.</p>
+
+<p>“Bring me my horse,” he called to one of his
+men. “Let her marry the man she loves. I
+am going to fetch here the woman who loves
+me!”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</span></p>
+
+<p>And, throwing the purse into Jorga’s hands,
+he turned to Mincu and called: “It is a bad
+bargain you have driven, Mincu. A woman
+like her is worth ten times a thousand gold
+pieces—to the man she loves. But she will
+only be anguish and death to the man she does
+not love! If you hate the Cherkess, sell her
+to him.”</p>
+
+<p>And Sava sped his way across the mountains
+to the woman who was ever waiting for him.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="transnote">
+  <h2>Transcriber’s Notes</h2>
+  <br>
+<ul>
+  <li>Hyphenation has been retained as in the original publication.</li>
+  <li><abbr title="page">p.</abbr>28: “though” —&gt; “thought” (<a href="#TN1">he thought how</a>).</li>
+  <li><abbr title="page">p.</abbr>28: “Petrinau” —&gt; “Petrianu” (<a href="#TN2">hard man, Petrianu was...</a>).</li>
+  <li><abbr title="page">p.</abbr>42: “she bear” has been retained as in the original publication (<a href="#TN3">she bear</a>).</li>
+  <li><abbr title="page">p.</abbr>47: “understod” —&gt; “understood” (<a href="#TN4">They let it be understood</a>).</li>
+  <li><abbr title="page">p.</abbr>58: “loked” —&gt; “looked” (<a href="#TN5">turned around and looked</a>).</li>
+  <li><abbr title="page">p.</abbr>59: “he” —&gt; “be” (<a href="#TN6">but to be beaten</a>).</li>
+  <li><abbr title="page">p.</abbr>62: “Meanwhile.” —&gt; “Meanwhile,” (<a href="#TN7">Meanwhile, Tira’s rage</a>).</li>
+</ul>
+</div>
+
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78341 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for eBook #78341
+(https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78341)