d some person who would consider the
disadvantage of selling him a horse for less than it is worth, as
counterbalanced by the honour of dealing with a lord, which I should
never do; but I can't be wasting my time here. I am going back to the . . .,
where if you, or any person, are desirous of purchasing the horse,
you must come within the next half-hour, or I shall probably not feel
disposed to sell him at all.' 'Another word, young man,' said the
jockey; but without staying to hear what he had to say, I put the horse
to his best trot, and re-entering the town, and threading my way as well
as I could through the press, I returned to the yard of the inn, where,
dismounting, I stood still, holding the horse by the bridle."

As no one else troubled to paint Borrow either at Horncastle or any other
place, and as he took advantage of the fact to such purpose, I must leave
this portrait as it is, only I shall remind the reader that it is not a
photograph but a portrait of the painter. A little time ago this painter
was a consumptive-looking literary hack, and is still a philologist, with
eyes a bit dim from too much reading, and subject to frantic
melancholy;--a liker of solitude and of men and women who do not disturb
it, but a man accustomed to men and very well able to deal with them.

CHAPTER XVI--THE VEILED PERIOD

The last words of "The Romany Rye" narrative are: "I shouldn't wonder if
Mr. Petulengro and Tawno Chikno came originally from India. I think I'll
go there." This is his way of giving impressiveness to the "veiled
period" of the following seven or eight years, for the benefit of those
who had read "The Zincali" and "The Bible in Spain," and had been allured
by the hints of earlier travel. In "The Zincali" he has spoken of seeing
"Gypsies of various lands, Russian, Hungarian and Turkish; and also the
legitimate children of most countries of the world": of being "in the
shop of an Armenian at Constantinople," and "lately at Janina in
Albania." In "The Bible in Spain" he had spoken of "an acquaintance of
mine, a Tartar Khan." He had described strange things, and said: "This
is not the first instance in which it has been my lot to verify the
wisdom of the saying, that truth is sometimes wilder than fiction;" he
had met Baron Taylor and reminded the reader of other meetings "in the
street or the desert, the brilliant hall or amongst Bedouin haimas, at
Novgorod or Stambul." Before 1833 he had been i