observed, when
she saw them setting fire to the stake, "Le jeu n'en vaut pas la
chandelle." It is possible, nay probable (their chiefs remaining
unknown), that the wholesale contractors in the trade were rich. After
the lapse of two centuries, it would be difficult to throw any light on
this point.

It was, as we have said, a fellowship. It had its laws, its oaths, its
formulae--it had almost its cabala. Any one nowadays wishing to know all
about the Comprachicos need only go into Biscaya or Galicia; there were
many Basques among them, and it is in those mountains that one hears
their history. To this day the Comprachicos are spoken of at Oyarzun, at
Urbistondo, at Leso, at Astigarraga. _Aguardate nino, que voy a llamar
al Comprachicos_--Take care, child, or I'll call the Comprachicos--is
the cry with which mothers frighten their children in that country.

The Comprachicos, like the Zigeuner and the Gipsies, had appointed
places for periodical meetings. From time to time their leaders
conferred together. In the seventeenth century they had four principal
points of rendezvous: one in Spain--the pass of Pancorbo; one in
Germany--the glade called the Wicked Woman, near Diekirsch, where there
are two enigmatic bas-reliefs, representing a woman with a head and a
man without one; one in France--the hill where was the colossal statue
of Massue-la-Promesse in the old sacred wood of Borvo Tomona, near
Bourbonne les Bains; one in England--behind the garden wall of William
Challoner, Squire of Gisborough in Cleveland, Yorkshire, behind the
square tower and the great wing which is entered by an arched door.

VI.

The laws against vagabonds have always been very rigorous in England.
England, in her Gothic legislation, seemed to be inspired with this
principle, _Homo errans fera errante pejor_. One of the special statutes
classifies the man without a home as "more dangerous than the asp,
dragon, lynx, or basilisk" (_atrocior aspide, dracone, lynce, et
basilico_). For a long time England troubled herself as much concerning
the gipsies, of whom she wished to be rid as about the wolves of which
she had been cleared. In that the Englishman differed from the Irishman,
who prayed to the saints for the health of the wolf, and called him "my
godfather."

English law, nevertheless, in the same way as (we have just seen) it
tolerated the wolf, tamed, domesticated, and become in some sort a dog,
tolerated the regular vagabond, bec