hidden away. There was nothing to remind him of man; not even a waft of blue smoke curling up through the dark trees. When he lay back his full length he saw less of the woods but more of the sky, just where it was least robbed of its blue by haze or sun. His bed was strewn with odorous bracken; a grasshopper chirped at his feet, tunable wherewith a bunting reiterated its squeaky song; a rook drawled a slow caw, once, twice, from overhead; the spring under the bank rushed and prattled. A hart was somewhere in harbor among the trees; he could hear it pant with the heat. He lay awake long enough to feel the comfort of lying, then fell fast asleep.

When he awoke his brain was full of strange wild unseizable strains, and the after-consciousness came to him that his slumbers had been drenched in music. But while he expected a waking continuance of it it had ceased, though he could not say when it had ceased. Nevertheless he felt no break; the sounds, if they were real sounds, were perfectly at one with the silence that ensued, a pure white silence; even the grasshoppers were at rest.

The shade had left him and he lay in the sunshine, but the serener shine of evening; the sky above was bluer still. He lay and breathed the fragrance of his couch, and listened to that strange duet between the universal silence and the rhythmic reverberations of his dream-soaked brain. Presently he heard consciously but only by degrees a material sound, that of human voices close by, two of them, a man's and a woman's; the man's gravely musical, the woman's peevishly shrill. When he tried indolently to divide the sounds into meanings he found that he was listening to an unknown tongue. The surprise thoroughly roused him; he sat up. On the bank a little way downstream two rude tents were pitched which were not there when he went to

sleep, and near them some half-dozen beasts of burden, horses, ponies and asses, were tethered and grazed the herbage. He stood up and saw beneath him in the dell by the brook's side a man and a woman seated under a birch-tree, talking vehemently. Immediately they ceased talking and turned their heads his way. He walked down to them and bade them good-day, which they civilly returned.

The passage of all kinds of wanderers through the forest was frequent, and Roland at once knew these by their dark eyes, black hair and tawny skin to be Gipsies, a folk whose presence was tolerated rather than liked both by the forest officers and the general inhabitants. The woman rose, and that and the quick glance of her eyes drew Roland's attention first to her. She was of a buxom middle-age, but with a shrewish and dangerous cast of countenance only half covered up with a trade smile. She wore a bright yellow handkerchief on her head, thick shoes and a short scarlet gown. The ornaments in her ears and the rings on her hands were of gold. The man was of like age, but his handsome features were not marred by anything ill-natured or evil in their expression. He wore a broad-brimmed hat, dark green coat, scarlet waistcoat, leathern breeches and top-boots; and though the whole of his dress was much damaged by wear and weather it sat upon him with the grace of suitability.

"Why does the pretty gentleman look at us so," said the woman in a sort of whine; "as if he'd never seed poor wandering folk afore?"

"It's only," answered Roland, "because I'm surprised to see you here; for you're not allowed to camp i' this part o' the forest."

"Why?" said the woman, and her nasal whine became a guttural snarl. "Are they so nice here as they counts every blade o' grass the hosses eats?

Roland was going off, but stopped, and without turning round said over his shoulder, while pointing with his left hand to the right:

"You might try Thieves' Wood; yon patch o' measly oak. Mappen Jacob wouldn't interfere with you there."

"Is that where us travellers generally lies?"

"When there's only two or three of you you must go where you may; when there's a many you can sometimes pick and take."

"We've travelled in our twenties and thirties," snarled the woman; “ay, and our forties and fifties too. Whose fault is't that we go about now like mumping tinkers?"

"Peace, Zuba," said the man; "it's nobody's fault. For the fault o' fortune is nobody's fault. Would there be a deal o' harm, think ye-we're peaceful honest folk-if we just stopped where we was for one night?"

Roland found himself turning and facing the strangers after all. He had a keeper-like aversion to such intruders, but the man at least was goodlooking and well spoken.

"Our keeper's a good-natured man, but he has no great fancy for you Gipsies."

saived." The man's eyes had hitherto seemed hardly to take Roland in, but suddenly they lost a curious mistiness which had filmed them over and looked on him with a singularly searching gaze. "For instance, young man, judg ing of you by your color, who could tel whether you was clodhopper or gentleman? Judging by the color, who could tell whether yond flea-bitten hoss o' mine was worthy twenty pound or twenty shillings? Or them two tents, reckoning 'em by the color, which on 'em should you take to hold the thing o' the greatest vally?"

The Gipsy woman, who had been looking down, looked up with a keen quick flash of the eye, divided between speaker and spoken-to. Roland's indifferent glance hardly went so far as the tents and immediately returned, not to the speaker, whom he did not answer, but to pick his way among the rank bracken that encumbered his feet, for he began again to move off.

"Stop!" said the man; and Roland looked back, though he did not altogether stay the action of his feet. "If I was to say to ye, "Take one o' them two tents and all that's in't,' which on 'em would you choose?"

Said the woman with a strange oath, "What are you a-driving at?"

The man had spoken so earnestly that Roland stopped and answered, though he thought the question idle: "How could I say unless I looked nigher?"

"Look."

"It's hardly worth my while." "Again you're a-judging by the color."

Roland's careless glance went to the tents, just to and fro.

"I don't see much difference, even in color."

"Look nigher."

"I think I'll be saying good-day." Roland moved away as if for the Mosley hills and home, but his steps,

As

perhaps unwittingly, took more and more an eastward bent; so that presently he was making straight for the tents. Then the two Gipsies began to walk in the same direction, but in the hollow below beside the stream. they went words passed between them in their own tongue; the woman's many and vehement and evidently expostulatory; the man's few and in tone rather apologetic than explanatory. Meanwhile Roland had reached the tents, and looking at them with an afternoon curiosity saw that the nearer was much the larger and better, the brown blankets which composed its outer covering being new and weather-proof in every part. He saw so much and barely more, the gaping door not tempting him to peep in, as he kicked away a snarling dog and passed carelessly on to the farther tent, the smaller and worse. Its threadbare blankets had many a train, many a patch and here and there a rent; the curtain was dropped over its entrance; it seemed to have even less than the other to attract his attention. He thought that he was passing on as carelessly as ever, until he found that he had stopped by the door. With hardly any hesitation he drew the blanket aside and peeped in. Such was the difference between the outer sunshine and the dusky interior, that he saw nothing beyond the trodden turf about the entrance, save where a shaft of sunlight flashed through a rent in the wall and alighted on a hand small and adorned with a glittering gold ring, and on the surrounding portion of a blue cloth garment; both evidently belonging to a human being, presumably female and recumbent. He knew he was being watched from behind; he felt a shyness of going further and at the same time a great curiosity. After the gift to the former feeling of a few seconds of delay he said:

"Is anybody in?"

The hand was withdrawn, there was

a stirring of the blue garment. What was recumbent apparently sat up, so that the shaft of light fell upon a head instead of a hand, a quite girlish head of a singular dusky beauty and set about with an abundance of glossy black hair in long plaits. There were

small ear-rings in her just peeping ears and a triple necklet of gold coins about her neck. That was all he could see, the head and the neck. Her dark eyes were fixed on him; the sleep had not quite left them and their gleaming humidity was troubled by a certain wonderment. The man and woman stood a little way off and watched him with a dissembled eagerness. To the door of the other tent had come a young man of a somewhat paler complexion than true-bred Gipsies usually have, and he too was following Roland's movements, with an evil eye in which the curiosity was less than the malignancy.

"Why do you come here to me, pretty gentleman?" said the girl in the singsong of a musical surprise.

"The Gipsy man invited me to come." "My father, Basil Lee?" "May be."

"Why did he send you?"

""Twas a fancy of his to try me, how I should choose."

The oc

He stood in the sunshine. cupant of the gloomy interior could see, framed by the narrow doorway, a tall strong comely youth, fair and blue-eyed, in a plain fustian suit. His long yellow hair was tied with a black rit bon. She rose and came into the half-light about the tent mouth. It could then be seen how gracefully slim and supple she was; and tall toɔ though evidently not far advanced in her teens. Her blue skirt of a fine camlet cloth fell but little below her knees; there was no concealment of her dark blue silk stockings flowered with a scarlet thread nor of the large silver buckles to her small shoes. The young man came forward

from the other tent. His dress was similar to the older Gipsy's, but if not of better materials was much newer or better kept. His brown coat with large silver buttons, his red waistcoat, yellow breeches and high-crowned hat with a crimson ribbon offered a wider mixture of colors. He had lace ruffles to his shirt at the breast and wrists, wore silver spurs, carried a heavy silver-mounted riding-whip, and altogether had an air of greater prosperity than his fellow. But his gloomy sallow visage had somehow an unhealthy as well as an evil look, though he was strongly built and not unshapely. Between each ear and glittering eye a long black lock of hair hung down to his shoulder. The girl stood but a moment, then came out to Roland, put forth her hand and said:

"I'm willing. If you'll be my rom I'll be your romi, true and faithful, to foller you all the world over."

The younger Gipsy man uplifted his hands and shrieked something in his own tongue; the woman Zuba too cried out.

"She has spoke," said the father in English; "the word must bide; I can't do noat. It lays now with the young ria."

The younger man burst in upon the girl with words apparently of expostulation, entreaty, even threat, in the same dark language, but receiving no answer, no sign even that he was heard, suddenly broke off and turned upon Roland a look of such malignity as no words could have made better or

worse.

"Cease, Ethan," said the older man, still in English. "What's offered can't be withdrawed. It's for him ayther to take or to leave."

Roland understood by their eager looks rather than their words that he was expected to speak.

"It's thus," said the father; "this maid o' mine, Alfa Lee by name, being of the age to choose, offers hersen to you for to be your wife."

In his surprise Roland took a step or two backwards, would indeed have been glad to get away without a word; but four pairs of glittering eyes were fastened on him and held hi.n from the disgrace of flight. He said shamefacedly:

"We are neither of us old enough to think of marriage."

The woman laughed, a laugh of evil sound; the young man's scowl of pure malignity changed to one mixed with contempt.

"You're mista'en," said the father; "my daughter is turned fourteen, and you as I take it are three years older; old enough and to spare."

"Besides"-the youth blurted it, addressing the man rather than the girl"besides I'm an English gentleman, and she's-"

"What, English gentleman?"
"A Gipsy girl."

From one of the three adults behind Roland came a peculiar low gurgling laugh apparently hysterical but quickly suppressed, which he hardly heard and marked not at all; for his eyes were following the girl. She had darted but one angry glance at him-and it was wonderful how her wrath enhanced her beauty, even as the sunset owes its pride of coloring to the storm-then turning abruptly went back into her tent and dropped the blanket that covered its mouth.

"What have ye to say again Gipsies, if Gipsies we be, English gentleman?" said her father.

said.

to friend nor enemy."

"And mark my words, my pretty fellow," said Zuba in a furious scream, "the time'll come when you'd be thankful of a Romany chal to stand atween you and the gallows. You've lost that, throwed it clean away, as if it was dirt; and I for one am glad on't, for I don't like ayther the cut of your face or your manners or your Gaujo speech. But when you want help most I'll be there, don't fear, to dance a merry jig and shake my tomtom to the time of And my lad your gallow-tree's dance. Ethan will be there too without fail to fiddle to it; there'll be that much tendance on ye besides the sheriff and the pretty hangman. Your future shall be as black as the looks you gives the Romany is black; your course shall be as cross as the words you says to them is cross, and the Romany chals and chies shall have laughing enough if they only laughs once every time you cries."

Having ranted this forth with a wild overstrained passion, she suddenly fell silent for mere want of breath. Then Basil said turned Roland and sternly:

to

"What more d'ye wait for? She has telled you your fortune, and without charging for it."

"I'll not be beholden to her," said the boy with a hot disdain; "there's a shilling more than it's worth."

Down on the green at her feet he threw a shilling, which Ethan straightway pounced upon and pocketed.

"It's well," said Basil; "dukker that's bought is nought. I wish ye no such black ending as that, though like all the Gaujo rias you're proud-snouted and mighty self-consated."

Of which Roland heard little or nothing, for he had at once turned his back and stridden rapidly away. He had not however gone many yards, before he was stopped by a young man crossed who his and path said roughly:

business here?"

Roland might have anwered that it was no concern of his lordship's, seeing that he was then twenty yards on the right side of the Newstead boundary. But in those days a peer was privileged not only at Westminster but on common English ground; therefore he did well to restrain himself somewhat and say:

"None, my lord; I am taking my pleasure."

"Then I'll lessen it if you come trespassing here again."

With that his lordship walked on past the Gipsies, of whom he took no notice whatever, to the sensible increase of Roland's mortification.

To his mother Roland never said anything about that encounter, but thenceforward, out of pride rather than fear, he took care never to stray on the Newstead estates and the Newstead walk of the forest beyond the undoubted rights of way. Lord Byron met him but seldom, and then went by him down-looking without a without recogniword, apparently tion.