nsisting of large hoops covered over
with tarpaulin_, _quite impenetrable to rain; hard by stands a small
donkey-cart_. _This is_ "_the tabernacle_" _of_ ISOPEL BERNERS. _A
short distance off_, _near a spring of clear water_, _is the encampment
of the Romany chals and chies--the Petulengres and their small clan_.

THE PLACE _is about five miles from Willenhall in Staffordshire_.

THE TIME _is July_ 1825.

CHAPTER I--THE SCHOLAR SAYS GOOD-BYE TO THE GYPSY, AND PITCHES HIS TENT
IN THE DINGLE.

[In May 1825 our autobiographer, known among the gypsies as the
word-master, decided to leave London, and travelled, partly on foot and
partly by coach, to Amesbury; and then, after two days at Salisbury,
struck northwards. A few days later, in a small beer-house, he met a
tinker and his wife; the tinker was greatly depressed, having recently
been intimidated by a rival, one Bosville, "the flaming tinman," and
forced by threats to quit the road. The word-master, who meditated
passing the summer as an amateur vagrant, and had some 15 or 16 pounds in
his pocket, conceived the idea of buying the pony-cart, the implements
and the beat of the tinker, one Jack Slingsby, whose face he remembered
having seen some ten years before. "I want a home and work," he said to
the tinker. "As for a home, I suppose I can contrive to make a home out
of your tent and cart; and as for work, I must learn to be a tinker; it
would not be hard for one of my trade to be a tinker: what better can I
do?" "What about the naming tinman?" said the tinker. "Oh, don't be
afraid on my account," said the word-master: "if I were to meet him, I
could easily manage him one way or the other: I know all kinds of strange
words and names, and, as I told you before, I sometimes hit people when
they put me out."

He accordingly purchases Slingsby's property, and further invests in a
waggoner's frock. To the pony he gives the name of Ambrol, which
signifies in gypsy a pear. He spends a first night under the hedge in a
drizzling rain, and then spends two or three days in endeavouring to
teach himself the mysteries of his new trade. While living in this
solitary way he is detected by Mrs. Herne, an old gypsy woman, "one of
the hairy ones," as she terms herself, who carried "a good deal of
devil's tinder" about with her, and had a bitter grudge against the word-
master. She hated him for having wormed himself, as she fancied, into
the confidence of the gyp