nly _should_ have done so, but he _did_ so. My
ancestress was no fool. She was married by special license. I have the
license in a silver casket. It was the only heirloom she left her
descendants, and they have kept it in the family ever since. They had a
notion, I think, that there was wealth or honor hung on to it," laughed
the girl.

"Honor certainly, wealth possibly."

"Ha! ha! ha! I don't see how. Little good for one or the other, it ever
did us. My father was a tramp; my grandfather a tinker."

"But how was that? Your ancestress married a gentleman?"

"Yes, she married a gentleman, and her tribe discarded her when she
deserted them. They would have discarded her all the same, if she had
married a king who was not of her race. She went abroad with her
husband, and visited, I have heard, the four quarters of the globe. She
returned after two years, bringing with her a dark infant boy. She was
about to go with her husband on another long, long voyage. He refused to
allow her to take her child, but said, for the little lad's own sake, he
must be left at nurse in England. The only point she could get him to
yield was this, that the child should be left with her tribe until it
should be five years old, when they would reclaim it."

"That was a very strange disposition for a gentleman to make of his
son."

"It would have been, if he had cared a snap for his son, which he
didn't, as after events proved. The gipsy wife sought out her own old
grandmother, who was a famous doctress of the tribe. In the beldame's
care she left the babe. Then with her husband she slipped away to sea,
and neither the one nor the other was ever seen or heard of afterwards.
The boy, deserted by his father and his mother, grew up a poor degraded
little half-breed among the gipsies, scarcely tolerated by them, but
loved and petted by his foster-mother, whose great power in her tribe
only sufficed for his protection. When at length the old crone lay upon
her death-bed, she called the youth to her side, and placed in his hand
the silver casket, saying:

"Take it, my lad. It was put in my hands by your mother, when she left
you with me. Take it, then; guard it as the most sacred treasure of your
life; for it may bring you to wealth and honor yet.'

"And then she died, and the lad, with the casket for his only fortune,
left the tribe, and took to the road alone, mending pots and kettles for
a living, often suffering hunger and cold, but never,