ber the siller ye once had. Weel, one day the man was surprised to
hear that his frien' the gypsy wanted to see him--interview, ye call it
in America. And the gypsy explained that, having been arrested, and
unfortunately detained, by some little accident, in preeson, he had na
been able to keep his engagement. 'If ye'll just gang wi' me,' said the
gypsy, 'aw'll mak' it all right.' 'Mon, aw wull,' said the
creditor,--they were Scotch, ye know, and spoke in deealect. So the
gypsy led the way to the house which he had inhabited, a cottage which
belonged to the man himself to whom he owed the money. And there he
lifted up the hearthstone; the hard-stane they call it in Scotland, and
it is called so in the prophecy of Thomas of Ercildowne. And under the
hard-stane there was an iron pot. It was full of gold, and out of that
gold the gypsy carle paid his creditor. Ye wonder how 't was come by?
Well, ye'll have heard it's best to let sleeping dogs lie."

"Yes. And what was said of the Poles who had, during the Middle Ages, a
reputation almost as good as that of gypsies? _Ad secretas Poli_, _curas
extendere noli_." (Never concern your soul as to the secrets of a Pole.)

Mr. Carlyle's story reminds me that Walter Simpson, in his history of
them, says that the Scottish gypsies have ever been distinguished for
their gratitude to those who treated them with civility and kindness,
anent which he tells a capital story, while other instances sparkle here
and there with many brilliant touches in his five hundred-and-fifty-page
volume.

I have more than once met with Romanys, when I was in the company of men
who, like Carlyle and Bilderdijk, "were also in the world of letters
known," or who might say, "We have deserved to be." One of the many
memories of golden days, all in the merrie tyme of summer song in
England, is of the Thames, and of a pleasure party in a little
steam-launch. It was a weenie affair,--just room for six forward outside
the cubby, which was called the cabin; and of these six, one was Mr.
Roebuck,--"the last Englishman," as some one has called him, but as the
late Lord Lytton applies the same term to one of his characters about the
time of the Conquest, its accuracy may be doubted. Say the last type of
a certain phase of the Englishman; say that Roebuck was the last of the
old iron and oak men, the _triplex aes et robur_ chiefs of the Cobbet
kind, and the phrase may pass. But it will only pass over in