me to go
on to Raxton Hall, which was so near. The fact that Sinfi was my
kinswoman opened up new and exciting vistas of thought.

I understood now what was that haunting sense of recognition which
came upon me when I first saw Sinfi at the wayside inn in Wales. Day
by day had proofs been pouring in upon me that the strain of Romany
blood in my veins was asserting itself with more and more force. Day
by day I had come to realise how closely, though the main current of
my blood was English, I was affined to the strange and mysterious
people among whom I was now thrown--the only people in these islands,
as it seemed to me, who would be able to understand a love-passion
like mine. And there were many things in the great race of my
forefathers which I had found not only unsympathetic to me, but
deeply repugnant. In Great Britain it is the Gypsies alone who
understand nature's supreme charm, and enjoy her largesse as it used
to be enjoyed in those remote times described in Percy Aylwin's poems
before the Children of the Roof invaded the Children of the Open Air,
before the earth was parcelled out into domains and ownerships as it
now is parcelled out. In the mind of the Gorgio, the most beautiful
landscape or the most breezy heath or the loveliest meadow-land is
cut up into allotments, whether of fifty thousand acres or of two
roods, and owned by people. Of ownership of land the Romany is
entirely unconscious. The landscape around him is part of Nature
herself, and the Romany on his part acknowledges no owner. No doubt
he yields to _force majeure_ in the shape of gamekeeper or constable,
but that is because he has no power to resist it. Nature to him is as
free and unowned by man as it was to the North American Indian in his
wigwam before the invasion of the Children of the Roof.

During the time that I was staying in Flintshire and near Capel
Curig, rambling through the dells or fishing in the brooks, it was
surprising how soon the companionship of a Gorgio would begin to pall
upon me. And here the Cymric race is just as bad as the Saxon. The
same detestable habit of looking upon nature as a paying
market-garden, the same detestable inquiry as to who was the owner of
this or that glen or waterfall, was sure at last to make me sever
from him. But as to Sinfi, her attitude towards nature, though it was
only one of the charms that endeared her to me, was not the least of
them. There was scarcely a point upon which she and I