I crept stealthily after him.
With his spines laid flat to his sides, and his legs well under him, he
ran at a good round pace, and as he did not look back I followed him
with impunity. By and by he climbed a bank and then crept into a furze
bush, whose prickles were no match for his own. I dared not go right
into the bush for fear he should see me, but I settled myself as well as
I could under shelter of a furze branch, and looked down on to the other
side of the bank, where my father's nose was also directed. And there I
saw my three cousins, tethered as he had said, and apparently very busy
over-eating themselves on food which they had not had the trouble of
procuring.

If I had heard less about the cooking, I might have envied them; as it
was, that somewhat voracious appetite characteristic of my family
disturbed my judgment sufficiently to make me almost long to be flitted
myself. I fancy it must have been when I pushed out my nose and sniffed
involuntarily towards the victuals, that the gipsy man heard me.

He had been lying on the grass, looking much lazier than my
cousins--which is saying a good deal--and only turning his swarthy face
when the gipsy girl, as she moved about and tended the fire, got out of
the sight of his eyes. Then he moved so that he could see her again;
not, as it seemed, to see what she was doing or to help her to do it,
but as leaves move with the wind, or as we unpacked our noses against
our wills when my father said he smelt valerian.

She was very beautiful. Her skin was like a trout pool--clear and yet
brown. I never saw any eyes like her eyes, though our neighbour's--the
Water Rat--at times recalls them. Her hair was the colour of ripe
blackberries in a hot hedge--very ripe ones, with the bloom on. She
moved like a snake. I have seen my father chase a snake more than once,
and I have seen a good many men and women in my time. Some of them walk
like my father, they bustle along and kick up the leaves as he does; and
some of them move quickly and yet softly, as snakes go. The gipsy girl
moved so, and wherever she went the gipsy man's eyes went after her.

Suddenly he turned them on me. For an instant I was paralyzed and stood
still. I could hear my father bustling down the bank; in a few minutes
he would be at home, where my brother and sisters were safe and sound,
whilst I was alone and about to reap the reward of my disobedience, in
the fate of which he had warned me--to be taken by