Eveleen and the old mother had searched for me upon the heath, and having haled me head and foot to their tent, despatched a message to bring Kiomi down from London to aid them in their desperate shift.  They knew Squire Beltham’s temper.  He would have scattered the tribe to the shores of the kingdom at a rumour of foul play to his grandson.  Kiomi came in time to smuggle me through an inspection of the tent and cross-examination of its ostensible denizens by Captain Bulsted, who had no suspicions, though he was in a state of wonderment.  Hearing all this, I was the first to say it would be better I should get out of the neighbourhood as soon as my legs should support me.  The grin that goes for a laugh among gipsies followed my question of how Kiomi had managed to smuggle me.  Eveleen was my informant when the dreaded Kiomi happened to be off duty for a minute.  By a hasty transformation, due to a nightcap on the bandages about the head, and an old petticoat over my feet, Captain William’s insensible friend was introduced to him as the sore sick great-grandmother of the tribe, mother of Kiomi’s mother, aged ninety-one.  The captain paid like a man for doctor and burial fees; he undertook also to send the old lady a pound of snuff to assist her to a last sneeze or two on the right side of the grave, and he kept his word; for, deeming it necessary to paint her in a characteristic, these prodigious serpents told him gravely that she delighted in snuff; it was almost the only thing that kept her alive, barring a sip of broth.  Captain William’s comment on the interesting piece of longevity whose well-covered length and framework lay exposed to his respectful contemplation, was, that she must have been a devilish fine old lady in her day.  ‘Six foot’ was given as her measurement.

One pound of snuff, a bottle of rum, and five sovereigns were the fruits of the captain’s sensibility.  I shattered my ribs with laughter over the story.  Eveleen dwelt on the triumph, twinkling.  Kiomi despised laughter or triumph resulting from the natural exercise of craft in an emergency.  ’But my handsome gentleman he won’t tell on us, will he, when we’ve nursed him and doctored him, and made him one of us, and as good a stick o’ timber as grows in the forest?’ whined the old mother.  I had to swear I would not.

‘He!’ cried Kiomi.

‘He may forget us when he’s gone,’ the mother said.  She would have liked me to kiss a book to seal the oath.  Anxiety about the safety of their ‘homes,’ that is, the assurance of an untroubled reception upon their customary camping-ground, is a peculiarity of the gipsies, distinguishing them, equally with their cleanliness and thriftiness, from mumpers and the common wanderers.

It is their tribute to civilization, which generally keeps them within the laws.