I think I
never saw you look so pretty as you do now; but who told you?"

"My mother, Mrs. Herne, told it me one day, brother, when she was in a
good humour, which she very seldom was, as no one has a better right to
know than yourself, as she hated you mortally: it was one day when you
had been asking our company what was the word for a leaf, and nobody
could tell you, that she took me aside and told me, for she was in a good
humour, and triumphed in seeing you balked. She told me the word for
leaf was patteran, which our people use now for trail, having forgotten
the true meaning. She said that the trail was called patteran, because
the gypsies of old were in the habit of making the marks with the leaves
and branches of trees, placed in a certain manner. She said that nobody
knew it but herself, who was one of the old sort, and begged me never to
tell the word to any one but him I should marry; and to be particularly
cautious never to let you know it, whom she hated. Well, brother,
perhaps I have done wrong to tell you; but, as I said before, I likes
you, and am always ready to do your pleasure in words and conversation;
my mother, moreover, is dead and gone, and, poor thing, will never know
anything about the matter. So, when I married, I told my husband about
the patteran, and we were in the habit of making our private trail with
leaves and branches of trees, which none of the other gypsy people did;
so, when I saw my husband's patteran, I knew it at once, and I followed
it upwards of two hundred miles towards the north; and then I came to a
deep, awful-looking water, with an overhanging bank, and on the bank I
found the patteran, which directed me to proceed along the bank towards
the east, and I followed my husband's patteran towards the east; and
before I had gone half a mile, I came to a place where I saw the bank had
given way, and fallen into the deep water. Without paying much heed, I
passed on, and presently came to a public-house, not far from the water,
and I entered the public-house to get a little beer, and perhaps to tell
a dukkerin, for I saw a great many people about the door; and, when I
entered, I found there was what they calls an inquest being held upon a
body in that house, and the jury had just risen to go and look at the
body; and being a woman, and having a curiosity, I thought I would go
with them, and so I did; and no sooner did I see the body than I knew it
to be my husband's; it was