subsequently bring the artist as models for the picture
two very pretty rats, which he had quite tamed while catching them.

"But what does the picture mean, sir?" he inquired, with curiosity.

"Once upon a time," I replied, "there was a city in Germany which was
overrun with rats. They teased the dogs and worried the cats, and bit
the babies in the cradle, and licked the soup from the cook's own ladle."

"There must have been an uncommon lot of them, sir," replied the tinker,
gravely.

"There was. Millions of them. Now in those days there were no
Rommanichals, and consequently no rat-catchers."

"'Taint so now-a-days," replied the Gipsy, gloomily. "The business is
quite spiled, and not to get a livin' by."

"Avo. And by the time the people had almost gone crazy, one day there
came a man--a Gipsy--the first Gipsy who had ever been seen in _dovo tem_
(or that country). And he agreed for a thousand crowns to clear all the
rats away. So he blew on a pipe, and the rats all followed him out of
town."

"What did he blow on a pipe for?"

"Just for _hokkerben_, to humbug them. I suppose he had oils rubbed on
his heels. But when he had drawn the rats away and asked for his money,
they would not give it to him. So then, what do you think he did?"

"I suppose--ah, I see," said the Gipsy, with a shrewd look. "He went and
drew 'em all back again."

"No; he went, and this time piped all the children away. They all went
after him--all except one little lame boy--and that was the last of it."

The Gipsy looked earnestly at me, and then, as if I puzzled, but with an
expression of perfect faith, he asked--

"And is that all _tacho_--all a fact--or is it made up, you know?"

"Well, I think it is partly one and partly the other. You see, that in
those days Gipsies were very scarce, and people were very much astonished
at rat-drawing, and so they made a queer story of it."

"But how about the children?"

"Well," I answered; "I suppose you have heard occasionally that Gipsies
used to chore Gorgios' chavis--steal people's children?"

Very grave indeed was the assent yielded to this explanation. He _had_
heard it among other things.

My dear Mr Robert Browning, I little thought, when I suggested to the
artist your poem of the piper, that I should ever retail the story in
Rommany to a tinker. But who knows with whom he may associate in this
life, or whither he may drift on the great white rolling sea of humanit