says; and he puts his hat and his
shoes and stockings on the ground, and stands up and folds his hands
behind his back, and repeats a large number of religious verses, with
the same readiness with which the young clergyman speaks out of a book.

"It partly went against me, my daughter, for I am not religious myself,
and he was always too fond of holy words, which I thinks brings
ill-luck. But his voice was as sweet as a thrush that sits singing in a
thorn-bush, and between that and a something in the verses which had a
tendency to make you feel uncomfortable, I feels more disturbed than I
cares to show. But oh, my daughter, how I loves him!

"'The blessing of an old gipsy woman on your young head,' I says. 'Fair
be the skies under which you wanders, and shady the spots in which you
rests!

"'May the water be clear and the wood dry where you camps!

"'May every road you treads have turf by the wayside, and the
patteran[B] of a friend on the left.'

"'What is the patteran?' he asks.

"'It is a secret,' I says, looking somewhat sternly at him. 'The roads
keeps it, and the hedges keeps it--'

"'I can keep it,' he says boldly. 'Pinch my finger, and try me!'

"As he speaks he holds out his little finger, and I pinches it, my
daughter, till the colour dies out of his lips, though he keeps them
set, for I delights to see the nobleness and the endurance of him. So I
explains the patteran to him, and shows him ours with two bits of
hawthorn laid crosswise, for I does not regard him as a stranger, and I
sees that he can keep his lips shut when it is required.

"He was practising the patteran at my feet, when I hears the cry of
'Christian!' and I cannot explain to you the chill that came over my
heart at the sound.

"Trouble and age and the lone company of your own thoughts, my daughter,
has a tendency to confuse you; and I am not by any means rightly certain
at times about things I sees and hears. I sees Christian's mother when
I knows she can't be there, and though I believes now that only one
person was calling the child, yet, with the echo that comes from the
quarry, and with worse than twenty echoes in my own mind, it seems to me
that the wood is full of voices calling him.

"In my foolishness, my daughter, I sits like a stone, and he springs to
his feet, and snatches up his things, and says, 'Good-bye, old gipsy
woman, and thank you very much. I should like to stay with you,' he
says, 'but Nurse is calling me, a