sies strew in the roads as they travel, to give information to any of
their companions who may be behind, as to the route they have taken. The
gypsy patteran has always had a strange interest for me, Ursula."

"Like enough, brother; but what does patteran mean?"

"Why, the gypsy trail, formed as I told you before."

"And you know nothing more about patteran, brother?"

"Nothing at all, Ursula; do you?"

"What's the name for the leaf of a tree, brother?"

"I don't know," said I; "it's odd enough that I have asked that question
of a dozen Romany chals and chies, and they always told me that they did
not know."

"No more they did, brother; there's only one person in England that
knows, and that's myself--the name for a leaf is patteran. Now there are
two that knows it--the other is yourself."

"Dear me, Ursula, how very strange! I am much obliged to you. 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, and 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, aw