sure she had as much
for you as a Romany chi can have for a gorgio. I half expected to have
heard you make love to her behind the hedge, but I begin to think you
care for nothing in this world but old words and strange stories. Lor',
to take a young woman under a hedge, and talk to her as you did to
Ursula; and yet you got everything out of her that you wanted, with your
gammon about old Fulcher and Meridiana. You are a cunning one, brother."

"There you are mistaken, Jasper. I am not cunning. If people think I
am, it is because, being made up of art themselves, simplicity of
character is a puzzle to them. Your women are certainly extraordinary
creatures, Jasper."

"Didn't I say they were rum animals? Brother, we Romans shall always
stick together as long as they stick fast to us."

"Do you think they always will, Jasper?"

"Can't say, brother; nothing lasts for ever. Romany chies are Romany
chies still, though not exactly what they were sixty years ago. My wife,
though a rum one, is not Mrs. Herne, brother. I think she is rather fond
of Frenchmen and French discourse. I tell you what, brother, if ever
gypsyism breaks up, it will be owing to our chies having been bitten by
that mad puppy they calls gentility."

CHAPTER XXVIII.--THE DINGLE AT NIGHT--THE TWO SIDES OF THE QUESTION--ROMAN
FEMALES--FILLING THE KETTLE--THE DREAM--THE TALL FIGURE.

I descended to the bottom of the dingle. It was nearly involved in
obscurity. To dissipate the feeling of melancholy which came over my
mind, I resolved to kindle a fire; and having heaped dry sticks upon my
hearth, and added a billet or two, I struck a light and soon produced a
blaze. Sitting down, I fixed my eyes upon the blaze, and soon fell into
a deep meditation. I thought of the events of the day, the scene at
church, and what I had heard at church, the danger of losing one's soul,
the doubts of Jasper Petulengro as to whether one had a soul. I thought
over the various arguments which I had either heard, or which had come
spontaneously to my mind, for or against the probability of a state of
future existence. They appeared to me to be tolerably evenly balanced. I
then thought that it was at all events taking the safest part to conclude
that there was a soul. It would be a terrible thing, after having passed
one's life in the disbelief of the existence of a soul, to wake up after
death a soul, and to find one's self a lost soul. Yes, methought I