“My hat and mantle off I threw,
       And scoured across the lea;
     Then cried the beng with loud halloo,
       ‘Where does the gipsy flee?’”

He continued playing and singing for a considerable time, the two younger females dancing in the meanwhile with unwearied diligence, whilst the aged mother occasionally snapped her fingers or beat time on the ground with her stick.  At last Antonio suddenly laid down the instrument, exclaiming:—­

“I see the London Caloro is weary; enough, enough, to-morrow more thereof.  We will now to the charipe.”

“With all my heart,” said I:  “where are we to sleep?”

“In the stable,” said he, “in the manger; however cold the stable may be, we shall be warm enough in the bufa.”

We remained three days at the gipsies’ house, Antonio departing early every morning on his mule, and returning late at night.  The house was large and ruinous, the only habitable part of it with the exception of the stable being the hall, where we had supped; and there the gipsy females slept at night, on some mats and mattresses in a corner.

“A strange house is this,” said I to Antonio, one morning as he was on the point of saddling his mule, and departing, as I supposed, on the affairs of Egypt; “a strange house and strange people.  That gipsy grandmother has all the appearance of a sowanee.”

“All the appearance of one!” said Antonio; “and is she not really one?  She knows more crabbed things and crabbed words than all the Errate betwixt here and Catalonia.  She has been amongst the wild Moors, and can make more draos, poisons, and philtres than any one alive.  She once made a kind of paste, and persuaded me to taste, and shortly after I had done so my soul departed from my body, and wandered through horrid forests and mountains, amidst monsters and duendes, during one entire night.  She learned many things amidst the Corahai which I should be glad to know.”

“Have you been long acquainted with her?” said I.  “You appear to be quite at home in this house.”

“Acquainted with her!” said Antonio.  “Did not my own brother marry the black Calli, her daughter, who bore him the chabi, sixteen years ago, just before he was hanged by the Busne?”

In the afternoon I was seated with the gipsy mother in the hall; the two Callees were absent telling fortunes about the town and neighborhood, which was their principal occupation.

“Are you married, my London Caloro?” said the old woman to me.  “Are you a ro?”

Myself—­Wherefore do you ask, O Dai de los Cales?

Gipsy Mother—­It is high time that the lacha of the chabi were taken from her, and that she had a ro.  You can do no better than take her for romi, my London Caloro.

Myself—­I am a stranger in this land, O mother of the gipsies, and scarcely know how to provide for myself, much less for a romi.