"But where shall she look for you?" asked the tinker. "Though I dare say she knows well enough; for she knows everything."
"It is better to make sure," replied the young gentleman; "so let her know that I shall be at Lockwood's cottage to-night, and be gone by day-break. I shall then be at my place at Northferry, for a day or two, or between that and S----; and then, perhaps, over at Elmsly."
"I shan't see her to-night," said the tinker; "for she is a good way off; and Garon comes up when I am to go. After that I'll find her out.--But look, look--quietly, quietly! Don't you see a man in there, at the back of the little parlour--a man with a round face and a pair of green spectacles?"
"Yes, I do," said Chandos; "now that they have opened that window at the back to let the light in, I see a man there; but I cannot well see what he is like."
"Use your young eyes well," said the tinker; "and tell me if he has not a round, red face, and a pair of green spectacles on, and a flaxen wig, and a cravat high up about his chin--why, I can see the spectacles myself."
"So do I now," said Chandos. But the next moment the front window was shut, and all further view into the interior of the room cut off. Chandos mused. He had more than once, as a native of a well-wooded country greatly frequented by gipsies, remarked the extraordinary knowledge which that curious race of wanderers acquire of all that is passing in their neighbourhood, and had wondered how they arrived at their information. The uses which they put it to when gained was more evident; but he knew not till that night, and indeed few do know the marvellous pains which gipsies often take to find out minute and apparently insignificant facts, and the no less wonderful skill with which they combine them when obtained, and draw deductions from them, generally approaching very close to the truth. Sometimes they have an object, and sometimes none; for curiosity by habit becomes a passion with them. But in the present instance there was evidently some end in view; and Chandos, from various circumstances, felt inclined to inquire further ere he proceeded.
Following the same train of combinations which a gipsey would most likely have followed, suspicions were excited which he longed to turn into certainties; and after thinking over the matter for a time, he said, "And so, my good friend, the gentleman with the round, red face and green spectacles is hidden down here, is he?"
"I did not say he was hidden," answered the tinker, instantly upon his guard.
"You said what amounts to the same thing," replied Chandos; "for you told me he would not come out as long as you were here."
"Aye; that may be for fear of having his bones broke," said the other; "you know, we don't easily forgive them who offend us."