third evening the girl reappeared, bringing me two cakes, one of which she offered to eat herself, if I would eat the other.  They were the gift to me of her grandmother, as a token of friendship.  Incautiously I ate a portion to please the maiden.  She eagerly watched as I did so.  But I paid dearly indeed for my simplicity.  I was in a short time seized with the most painful sensations, and was speedily prostrate in helpless agonies.

While I was in this alarming condition the grandmother appeared, and began to taunt me with the utmost malignity.  She was Mrs. Herne, “the hairy one,” who had conceived inveterate spite against me at the time when Petulengro had proposed that I should marry his wife’s sister.  This poison had been administered to inflict on me the vengeance she had not ceased to meditate.

My life was in real peril, but I was fortunately delivered by a timely and providential interposition.  The malignant old gipsy woman and her granddaughter were scared as they watched my sufferings by hearing the sound of travellers approaching.  Two wayfarers came along, one of whom happened to be a kind and skillful doctor.  He saved my life by drastic remedies.

The next that I heard of Mrs. Herne was, as Petulengro told me when we again met, that she had hanged herself, the girl finding her suspended from a tree.  That announcement was accompanied by an unexpected challenge from my friend Jasper to fight him.  He declared that as she was his relative, and I had been the cause of her destruction, there was no escape from the necessity of fighting.  My plea that there was no inclination on my part for such a combat was of no avail.  Accordingly we fought for half an hour, when suddenly Petulengro exclaimed:  “Brother, there is much blood on your face; I think enough has been done in the affair of the old woman.”

So the struggle ended, and my Romany friend once more pressed me to join his tribe in their camp and in their life.  I declined the offer, for I had resolved to practice yet another calling, the trade of a blacksmith.  I could do so, for amongst the stock-in-trade I had purchased from the tinker was a small forge, with an anvil and hammers.

It has always struck me that there is something poetical about a forge.  I believe that the life of any blacksmith, especially a rural one, would afford material for a highly poetical treatise.  But a rude stop was put to my dream.  One morning, a brutal-looking ruffian, whom I had met before and recognised as a character known as the Flaming Tinman, appeared on the scene, accusing me with fearful oaths of trespassing on his ground.  After volleys of abuse, he attacked me, and a fearful fight ensued, in which he was not the victor, for in one of his terrific lunges he slipped, and a blow which I was aiming happened to strike him behind the ear.  He fell senseless.  Two women were with him, one, a vulgar, coarse creature, his wife; the other a tall, fine young woman, who travelled with them for company, doing business of her own with a donkey and cart, selling merchandise.