life of these ex-contadine seemed to wake like unholy fire, and answer sympathetically to the Gipsy wizard-spell.  Over mountain and sea, and through dark forests with legends of streghe and Zingari, these semi-outlaws of society, the Neapolitan and Rommany, recognised each other intuitively.  The handsomest young gentleman in England could not have interested these handsome young sinners as the dark-brown, grey-haired old vagabond did.  Their eyes stole to him.  Heaven knows what they talked, for the girls knew no English, but they whispered; they could not write little notes, so they kept passing different objects, to which Gipsy and Italian promptly attached a meaning.  Scolding them helped not.  It was “a pensive sight.”

To impress me with a due sense of his honesty and high character, the professor informed me one day that he was personally acquainted, as he verily believed, with every policeman in England.  “You see, rya,” he remarked, “any man as is so well known couldn’t never do nothing wrong now,—­could he?”

Innocent, unconscious, guileless air—­and smile!  I shall never see its equal.  I replied—­

“Yes; I think I can see you, Puro, walking down between two lines of hundreds of policemen—­every one pointing after you and saying, ’There goes that good honest —–­ the honestest man in England!’”

“Avo, rya,” he cried, eagerly turning to me, as if delighted and astonished that I had found out the truth.  “That’s just what they all pens of me, an’ just what I seen ’em a-doin’ every time.”

“You know all the police,” I remarked.  “Do you know any turnkeys?”

He reflected an instant, and then replied, artlessly—­

“I don’t jin many o’ them.  But I can jist tell you a story.  Once at Wimbledown, when the kooroo-mengroes were odoi (when the troopers were there), I used to get a pound a week carryin’ things.  One day, when I had well on to two stun on my dumo (back), the chief of police sees me an’ says, ’There’s that old scoundrel again! that villain gives the police more trouble than any other man in the country!’ ’Thank you, sir,’ says I, wery respectable to him.  ‘I’m glad to see you’re earnin’ a ‘onest livin’ for once,’ says he.  ‘How much do you get for carryin’ that there bundle?’ ‘A sixpence, rya!’ says I.  ’It’s twice as much as you ought to have,’ says he; ‘an’ I’d be glad to carry it myself for the money.’  ‘All right, sir,’ says I, touchin’ my hat and goin’ off, for he was a wery nice gentleman.  Rya,” he exclaimed, with an air of placid triumph, “do you think the head-police his selfus would a spoke in them wery words to me if he hadn’t a thought I was a good man?”

“Well, let’s get to work, old Honesty.  What is the Rommanis for to hide?”

“To gaverit is to hide anything, rya. Gaverit.”  And to illustrate its application he continued—­

“They penned mandy to gaver the gry, but I nashered to keravit, an’ the mush who lelled the gry welled alangus an’ dicked it.”