And If Hard Want At Last Forces Him Away, And He Emigrates, He Would As Soon Jog To The Port In A Waggon, A Week On The Road, As Go By Steam; As Soon Voyage In A Sailing Ship As By The Swift Cunarder.

The swart gipsy, like the hawk, for ever travels on, but, like the hawk, that seems to have no

Road, and yet returns to the same trees, so he, winding in circles of which we civilised people do not understand the map, comes, in his own times and seasons, home to the same waste spot, and cooks his savoury - bouillon - by the same beech. They have camped here for so many years that it is impossible to trace when they did not; it is wild still, like themselves. Nor has their nature changed any more than the nature of the trees.

The gipsy loves the crescent moon, the evening star, the clatter of the fern-owl, the beetle's hum. He was born on the earth in the tent, and he has lived like a species of human wild animal ever since. Of his own free will he will have nothing to do with rites or litanies: he may perhaps be married in a place of worship - to make it legal, that is all. At the end, were it not for the law, he would for choice be buried beneath the 'fireplace' of their children's children. He will not dance to the pipe ecclesiastic, sound it who may - Churchman, Dissenter, priest, or laic. Like the trees, he is simply indifferent.

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