ith holy words, which I thinks brings ill-luck.

"You has the advantages of silver and gold, to make a fine gentleman of
him, but the blood that flies to his face when he hears the words of
insult is gipsy blood, and he comes back to the woods where he was born.

"Let me be, my daughter, I say I will speak--(Heaven keep my head
cool!)--it's good for such as them to hear the truth once in a way.
She's a dainty fine lady, and she taught him many fine things, besides
religion, which I sets my face against. Tell her she took mighty good
care of him--Ha! ha! the old tinker-woman had only one chance of
teaching him anything--_but she taught him the patteran_!"

The clergywoman had never moved, except that when the tinker-mother
shook off her hand she locked her white fingers in front of her as
before, and her eyes wandered from the old woman's face, and looked
beyond it, as if she were doing what I have often done, and counting the
bits of blue sky which show through the oak-leaves before they grow
thick. But she must have been paying attention all the same, for she
spoke very earnestly.

"Good mother, listen to me. If I bought him, you sold him. Perhaps I did
wrong to tempt you--perhaps I did wrong to hope to buy for myself what
GOD was not pleased to give me. I was very young, and one makes
many mistakes when one is young. I thought I was childless and unhappy,
but I know now that only those are childless who have had children and
lost them.

"Do you know that in all the years my son was with me, I do not think
there was a day when I did not think of you? I used to wonder if you
regretted him, and I lived in dread of your getting him back; and when
he ran away, I knew you had. I never agreed with the lawyer's plans--my
husband will tell you so--I always wanted to find you to speak to you
myself. I knew what you must feel, and I thought I should like you to
know that I knew it.

"Night after night I lay awake and thought what I would say to you when
we met. I thought I would tell you that I could quite understand that
our ways might become irksome to Christian, if he inherited a love for
outdoor life, and for moving from place to place. I thought I would say
that perhaps I was wrong ever to have taken him away from his own
people; but as it was done and could not be undone, we might perhaps
make the best of it together. I hope you understand me, though you say
nothing? You see, if he is a gipsy at heart, he has also be