I'm _tacho_. And
shut that door if there are any Gorgios about, for I don't want them to
hear our _rakkerben_. Let us take a drop of brandy--life is short, and
here's my bottle. I'm not English--I'm a _waver temmeny mush_ (a
foreigner). But I'm all right, and you can leave your spoons out.
Tacho."

"The boshno an' kani
The rye an' the rani;
Welled acai 'pre the boro lun pani.
Rinkeni juva hav acai!
Del a choomer to the rye!"

"_Duveleste_!" said the old fortune-teller, "that ever I should live to
see a rye like you! A boro rye rakkerin' Rommanis! But you must have
some tea now, my son--good tea."

"I don't pi muttermengri dye ('drink tea,' but an equivoque). It's
muttermengri with you and with us of the German jib."

"Ha! ha! but you must have food. You won't go away like a Gorgio without
tasting anything?"

"I'll eat bread with you, but tea I haven't tasted this five-and-twenty
years."

"Bread you shall have, rya." And saying this, the daughter spread out a
clean white napkin, and placed on it excellent bread and butter, with
plate and knife. I never tasted better, even in Philadelphia. Everything
in the cottage was scrupulously neat--there was even an approach to
style. The furniture and ornaments were superior to those found in
common peasant houses. There was a large and beautifully-bound
photograph album. I found that the family could read and write--the
daughter received and read a note, and one of the sons knew who and what
Mr Robert Browning was.

But behind it all, when the inner life came out, was the wild Rommany and
the witch-_aura_--the fierce spirit of social exile from the world in
which they lived (the true secret of all the witch-life of old), and the
joyous consciousness of a secret tongue and hidden ways. To those who
walk in the darkness of the dream, let them go as deep and as windingly
as they will, and into the grimmest gloom of goblin-land, there will
never be wanting flashes of light, though they be gleams diavoline,
corpse-candlelights, elfin sparkles, and the unearthly blue lume of the
eyes of silent night-hags wandering slow. In the forgotten grave of the
sorcerer burns steadily through long centuries the Rosicrucian lamp, and
even to him whose eyes are closed, sparkle, on pressure, phosphorescent
rings. So there was Gipsy laughter; and the ancient _wicca_ and Vala
flashed out into that sky-rocketty joyousness and Catherine-wheel gaiety,