om the exercise of fishing had not been without its
effect, began to get excessively tired. We pushed on, however, with an
occasional halt, till we could calculate that half our journey was
accomplished; when having arrived at a comfortable-looking village inn,
we carried our fish into the tap-room, and had them cooked for dinner.
They were excellent, and sufficed not only for ourselves, but for the
landlord and the whole of his family, whose mittagsmahl, as the Germans
call it, had, by some extraordinary accident, been delayed full two
hours beyond the customary period of noon.

We found our village innkeeper, as, indeed, was the case with almost
all persons of his rank and calling, a good-humoured, obliging, and
intelligent man. He had been twice married, was the father of five
sons, from one of whom, a jager in the Austrian service, he had just
received a letter, which, as it happened to be written remarkably well,
he showed us with all a father's pride. He gave us, likewise, as much
information touching the local affairs of the neighbourhood as we
considered it worth while to require, and spoke freely about the
Torpindas, with whom he seemed to be well acquainted. The prevalent
tales of their blood-thirstiness he entirely confirmed, though he
seemed to insinuate that they were more free with the lives of one
another, than with those of strangers; and he warned us that we should
look in vain for a camp. Nothing of the kind existed, nor was permitted
by the police to exist, in this quarter of Austria. "As to the people
themselves," continued he, "they are an idle, good-for-nothing set,
exceedingly fond of money, and great hoarders of it when they can get
it. I have seen, in this room, a Torpinda produce as many as a hundred
guldens; and yet he would not disburse a single kreutzer for straw to
sleep upon." We were more mortified by this man's account of the
gypsies than by any which we had yet received; for it bore about it a
greater air of truth, and, as a necessary result, tended more than any
thing which we had yet heard, to dissipate into thin air the visions of
gypsy life which up to that moment we continued to cherish.

Having rested an hour in the inn, we set out again, accompanied by our
host, who volunteered to show us both a shorter and more pleasant path
than that which we had heretofore followed. This was the more
acceptable by reason of the discovery which we made, that in speaking
of Aderspach as only fo