etermined by Providence."

He says definitely in the appendix to "The Romany Rye," that he fled from
London and hack-authorship for "fear of a consumption." Walking on an
unknown road out of London the "poor thin lad" felt tired at the ninth
milestone, and thought of putting up at an inn for the night, but instead
took the coach to ---, _i.e._, Amesbury.

The remaining ninety chapters of "Lavengro" and "The Romany Rye" are
filled by the story of the next four months of Borrow's life and by
stories told to him during that period. The preceding fifty-seven
chapters had sufficed for twenty-two years. "The novelty" of the new
itinerant life, says Mr. Thomas Seccombe, {96} "graved every incident in
the most vivid possible manner upon the writer's recollection." After
walking for four days northwest from Salisbury he met an author, a rich
man who was continually touching things to avert the evil chance, and
with him he stayed the night. On the next day he bought a pony and cart
from the tinker, Jack Slingsby, with the purpose of working on the
tinker's beat and making horse-shoes. After some days he was visited
down in a Shropshire dingle by a Gypsy girl, who poisoned him at the
instigation of his enemy, old Mrs. Herne. Only the accidental appearance
of the Welsh preacher, Peter Williams, saved him. Years afterwards, in
1854, it may be mentioned here, he told a friend in Cornwall that his
fits of melancholy were due to the poison of a Gypsy crone. He spent a
week in the company of the preacher and his wife, and was about to cross
the Welsh border with them when Jasper Petulengro reappeared, and he
turned back. Jasper told him that Mrs. Herne had hanged herself out of
disappointment at his escape from her poison. This made it a point of
honour for Jasper to fight Borrow, whose bloody face satisfied him in
half an hour: he even offered Borrow his sister Ursula for a wife. Borrow
refused, and settled alone in Mumper's Dingle, which was perhaps Mumber
Lane, five miles from Willenhall in Staffordshire. {97} Here he fought
the Flaming Tinman, who had driven Slingsby out of his beat. The Tinman
brought with him his wife and Isopel Berners, the tall fair-haired girl
who struck Borrow first with her beauty and then with her right arm.
Isopel stayed with Borrow after the defeat of the Tinman, and their
companionship in the dingle fills a very large part of "Lavengro" and
"The Romany Rye," with interruptions and diversions