Imagine three wild gypsy faces, all turned on you at the same moment—and with oh, such eyes! such awful eyes!
“Don’t kill me! don’t kill me!” I shrieked.
The gypsies, who had been almost as startled as I, burst out laughing, and one of them said:
“You young scamp, you can boast that you gave us a nice scare!”
When I found they could laugh and talk like myself, I took courage, and noticed at the same time what a good smell came from their pot.
They made me get down from my perch and demanded where I came from, to whom I belonged, why I was there, and a string of other questions.
Satisfied at length of my identity, one of the robbers—for they were robbers—said to me:
“Since you are playing truant, I suppose you are hungry. Here, eat this.”
And he threw me a shoulder of lamb, half cooked, as though I were a dog. I then noticed they had just been roasting a young lamb, stolen probably from some fold.
After we had, in this primitive fashion, all made a good meal, the three men rose, collected their traps and in low tones took counsel together; then one of them turned to me: