Then it was that Will, glancing out upon the Moor, observed a string of gypsy folk making slow progress towards Chagford.  Among the various Romany cavalcades which thus passed Newtake in summer time this appeared not the least strange.  Two ordinary caravans headed the procession.  A man conducted each, a naked-footed child or two trotted beside them, and an elder boy led along three goats.  The travelling homes were encumbered with osier-and cane-work, and following them came a little broken-down, open vehicle.  This was drawn by two donkeys, harnessed tandem-fashion, and the chariot had been painted bright blue.  A woman drove the concern, and in it appeared a knife-grinding machine and a basket of cackling poultry, while some tent-poles stuck out behind.  Will laughed at this spectacle, and called his wife’s attention to it, whereon Phoebe and Damaris went as far as the gate of the hayfield to win a nearer view.  The gypsies, however, had already passed, but Mrs. Blanchard found time to observe the sky-blue carriage and shake her head at it.

“What gwaines-on!  Theer’s no master minds ’mongst them people nowadays,” she said.  “Your faither wouldn’t have let his folk make a show of themselves like that.”

“They ‘m mostly chicken stealers nowadays,” declared Will; “an’ so surly as dogs if you tell ’em to go ’bout theer business.”

“Not to none o’ your name—­never,” declared his mother.  “No gypsy’s gwaine to forget my husband in his son’s time.  Many gude qualities have they got, chiefly along o’ living so much in the awpen air.”

“An’ gude appetites for the same cause!  Go after Tim, wan of ’e.  He’ve trotted down the road half a mile, an’ be runnin’ arter that blue concern as if’t was a circus.  Theer!  Blamed if that damned gal in the thing ban’t stoppin’ to let un catch up!  Now he’m feared, an’ have turned tail an’ be coming back.  ‘Tis all right; Ship be wi’ un.”

Presently the greater of Will’s two ricks approached completion, and all the business of thatch and spar gads and rush ropes began.  At his mother’s desire he wasted no time, and toiled on, long after his party had returned to Newtake; but with the dusk he made an end for that day, stood up, rested his back, and scanned the darkening scene before descending.

At eveningtide there had spread over the jagged western outlines of the Moor an orange-tawny sunset, whereon the solid masses of the hills burnt into hazy gold, all fairy-bright, unreal, unsubstantial as a cloud-island above them, whose solitary and striated shore shone purple through molten fire.