He would not give up the hunt without a struggle.
Twice a day Gabriel Druse had placed food and water inside the door of the hut and locked him fast again, but had not spoken to him save once, and then but to say that his fate had not yet been determined.

Jethro's reply had been that he was in no haste, that he could wait for what he came to get; that it was his own--'ay bor'! it was his own, and God or devil could not prevent the thing meant to be from the beginning of the world.
He did not hear Fleda approach the hut; he was singing to himself a song he had learned in Montenegro.

There the Romany was held in high regard, because of the help his own father had given to the Montenegrin people, fighting for their independence, by admirable weapons of Gipsy workmanship, setting all the Gipsies in that part of the Balkans at work to supply them.
This was the song he sang "He gave his soul for a thousand days, The sun was his in the sky, His feet were on the neck of the world He loved his Romany chi.
"He sold his soul for a thousand days, By her side to walk, in her arms to lie; His soul might burn, but her lips were his, And the heart of his Romany chi." He repeated the last two lines into a rising note of exultation: "His soul might burn, but her lips were his, And the heart of his Romany chi." The key suddenly turned in the lock, the door opened on the last words of the refrain, and, without hesitation, Fleda stepped inside, closing the door behind her.
"'Mi Duvel', but who would think--ah, did you hear me call then ?" he asked, rising from the plank couch where he had been sitting.

He showed his teeth in a smile which was meant to be a welcome, but it had an involuntary malice.
"I heard you singing," she answered composedly, "but I do not come here because I'm called." "But I do," he rejoined.

"You called me from over the seas, and I came.
I was in the Balkans; there was trouble--Servia, Montenegro, and Austria were rattling the fire-irons again, and there was I as my father was before me.