and the ‘letter’ to perfection, till the ladies half believe, I doubt if they know much of true palmistry.  The magic of the past always had a charm for me.  I had learned to know the lines, from that which winds along at the base of the thumb-ball and if clear means health and long life, to that which crosses close to the fingers and indicates the course of love, and had traced them on many a delicate palm.  So that the ‘gips’ could tell me nothing new.

The women are the hardiest in the country; they simply ignore the weather.  Even the hedgers and ditchers and the sturdiest labourers choose the lee side of the hedge when they pause to eat their luncheons; but the ‘gips’ do not trouble to seek such shelter.  Passing over the hills one winter’s day, when the Downs looked all alike, being covered with snow, I came across a ‘gip’ family sitting on the ground in a lane, old and young exposed to the blast.  In that there was nothing remarkable, but I recollect it because the young mother, handsome in the style of her race, had her neck and brown bust quite bare, and the white snowflakes drove thickly aslant upon her.  Their complexion looks more dusky in winter, so that the contrast of the colours made me wish for an artist to paint it.  And he might have put the grey embers of a fire gone out, and the twisted stem of a hawthorn bush with red haws above.

A mile beyond the gipsy tents we entered among the copses:  scattered ash plantations, and hazel thickets with narrow green tracks between.  Further in, the nut-tree bushes were more numerous, and we became separated though within call.  Presently a low whistle like the peewit’s (our signal) called me to Orion.  On the border of a thicket, near an open field of swedes, he had found a hare in a wire.  It was a beauty—­the soft fur smooth to stroke, not so much as a shot-hole in the black-marked ears.  Wired or netted hares and rabbits are much preferred by the dealers to those that have been shot—­and so, too, netted partridges—­because they look so clean and tempt the purchaser.  The blacksmith Ikey, who bought our rabbits, used to sew up the shot wounds when they were much knocked about, and trimmed up the shattered ones in the cleverest way.

To pull up the plug and take wire and hare too was the first impulse; yet we hesitated.  Why did the man who set the snare let his game lie till that hour of the day?  He should have visited it long before:  it had a suspicious look altogether.  It would also have been nearly impossible to carry the hare so many miles by daylight and past villages:  even with the largest pockets it would have been doubtful, for the hare had stiffened as he lay stretched out.  So, carefully replacing him just as we found him, we left the spot and re-entered the copse.