an did not mention the sound of his cracking
neck, but Borrow is reported to have said it was a shame to hang such a
man as Thurtell: "Why, when his neck broke it went off like a pistol."

Thurtell is the second of Borrow's friends who preceded him in fame.

During his school days under Valpy, Borrow met his sworn brother
again--the Gypsy Petulengro. He places this meeting at the Tombland Fair
at Norwich, and Dr. Knapp fixes it, precisely, on March 19, 1818.
According to Borrow's account, which is the only one, he was shadowed and
then greeted by Jasper Petulengro. They went together to the Gypsy
encampment on Household Heath, and they were together there often again,
in spite of the hostility of one Gypsy, Mrs. Herne, to Borrow. He says
that he went with them to fairs and markets and learnt their language in
spite of Mrs. Herne, so that they called him Lav-engro, or Word Master.
The mighty Tawno Chikno also called him Cooro-mengro, because of his
mastery with the fist. He was then sixteen. He is said to have stained
his face to darken it further, and to have been asked by Valpy: "Is that
jaundice or only dirt, Borrow?"

CHAPTER X--LEAVING SCHOOL

With so much liberty Borrow desired more. He played truant and, as we
have seen, was thrashed for it. He was soon to leave school for good,
though there is nothing to prove that he left on account of this
escapade, or that the thrashing produced the "symptoms of a rapid
decline," with a failure of strength and appetite, which he speaks of in
the eighteenth chapter of "Lavengro," after the Gypsies had gone away. He
was almost given over by the physicians, he tells us, but cured by an
"ancient female, a kind of doctress," with a decoction of "a bitter root
which grows on commons and desolate places." An attack of "the dark
feeling of mysterious dread" came with convalescence.

But "never during any portion of my life did time flow on more speedily,"
he says, than during the next two or three years. After some hesitation
between Church and Law, he was articled in 1819 to Messrs. Simpson and
Rackham, solicitors, of Tuck's Court, St. Giles', Norwich, and he lived
with Simpson in the Upper Close. As a friend said, the law was an
excellent profession for those who never intend to follow it. As Borrow
himself said, "I have ever loved to be as explicit as possible; on which
account, perhaps, I never attained to any proficiency in the law." Borrow
sat faithfully