nes that they took the matter very
coolly; some were eating, others drinking, and some were talking about
their small affairs; there was one, however, who did not take the matter
so coolly, but took on enough for the whole family, sitting beside the
dead woman, tearing her hair, and refusing to take either meat or drink;
it was the child Leonora. I arrived at night-fall, and the burying was
not to take place till the morning, which I was rather sorry for, as I am
not very fond of them Hernes, who are not very fond of anybody. They
never asked me to eat or drink, notwithstanding I had married into the
family; one of them, however, came up and offered to fight me for five
shillings; had it not been for them I should have come back as empty as I
went--he didn't stand up five minutes. Brother, I passed the night as
well as I could, beneath a tree, for the tents were full, and not over
clean; I slept little, and had my eyes about me, for I knew the kind of
people I was among.

"Early in the morning the funeral took place. The body was placed not in
a coffin but on a bier, and carried not to a churchyard but to a deep
dell close by; and there it was buried beneath a rock, dressed just as I
have told you; and this was done by the bidding of Leonora, who had heard
her bebee say that she wished to be buried, not in gorgious fashion, but
like a Roman woman of the old blood, the kosko puro rati, {250a} brother.
When it was over, and we had got back to the encampment, I prepared to be
going. Before mounting my gry, {250b} however, I bethought me to ask
what could have induced the dead woman to make away with herself--a thing
so uncommon amongst Rommanies; whereupon one squinted with his eyes, a
second spirted saliver into the air, and a third said that he neither
knew nor cared; she was a good riddance, having more than once been
nearly the ruin of them all, from the quantity of brimstone she carried
about her. One, however, I suppose rather ashamed of the way in which
they had treated me, said at last, that if I wanted to know all about the
matter, none could tell me better than the child, who was in all her
secrets, and was not a little like her; so I looked about for the child,
but could find her nowhere. At last the same man told me that he
shouldn't wonder if I found her at the grave; so I went back to the
grave, and sure enough there I found the child Leonora, seated on the
ground above the body, crying and taking on; s