oaring torrents, drawn all the while by the neck, as a Turcoman pulls a
Persian prisoner on an "alaman," with a rope, into captivity, and finally
of being sold unto the Egyptians. I drew near a tent: all was silent, as
it always is in a _tan_ when the foot-fall of the stranger is heard; but
I knew that it was packed with inhabitants.

I called in Romany my greeting, and bade somebody come out. And there
appeared a powerfully built, dark-browed, good-looking man of thirty, who
was as gypsy as Plato himself. He greeted me very civilly, but with some
surprise, and asked me what he could do for me.

"Ask me in out of the rain, pal," I replied. "You don't suppose I've
come four miles to see you and stop out here, do you?"

This was, indeed, reasonable, and I was invited to enter, which I did,
and found myself in a scene which would have charmed Callot or Goya.
There was no door or window to the black tent; what light there was came
through a few rifts and rents and mingled with the dull gleam of a
smoldering fire, producing a perfect Rembrandt blending of rosy-red with
dreamy half-darkness. It was a real witch-aura, and the denizens were
worthy of it. As my eyes gradually grew to the gloom, I saw that on one
side four brown old Romany sorceresses were "_beshing apre ye pus_"
(sitting on the straw), as the song has it, with deeper masses of
darkness behind them, in which other forms were barely visible. Their
black eyes all flashed up together at me, like those of a row of eagles
in a cage; and I saw in a second that, with men and all I was in a party
who were anything but milksops; in fact, with as regularly determined a
lot of hard old Romanys as ever battered a policeman. I confess that a
feeling like a thrill of joy came over me--a memory of old days and
by-gone scenes over the sea--when I saw this, and knew they were not
_diddikais_, or half-breed mumpers. On the other side, several young
people, among them three or four good-looking girls, were eating their
four-o'clock meal from a canvas spread on the ground. There were perhaps
twenty persons in the place, including the children who swarmed about.

Even in a gypsy tent something depends on the style of a
self-introduction by a perfect stranger. Stepping forward, I divested
myself of my Ulster, and handed it to a nice damsel, giving her special
injunction to fold it up and lay it by. My _mise en scene_ appeared to
meet with approbation, and I stood forth a