"Not to build up molehills out of dust and ashes!" said the gipsy.
"But how is he to defend himself, then, against the storm and the tempest?" demanded Manners; "against the midday heat of summer or the chill wintry wind?"
"He needs no defence!" answered the gipsy. "Were he not the creature of luxury rather than of God, the changing seasons would be as beneficial to his body as they are to those of the beasts of the field, and to the earth of which he and they are made. And as to storm and tempest, the searching blade of the blue lightning will strike him in the palace as surely as on the bare hill or the barren moor; and the hurricane that passes by the wanderer on the plain will cast down their painted rubbish on the heads of the dwellers in cities."
Manners saw that, as the lines of their ideas set out from the same point in directions diametrically opposite, they might be projected to all eternity without meeting; and therefore he at once brought the conversation nearer to the real subject of his thoughts. "We differ," he said, "and of course must differ, on every subject connected with the manners and habits of mankind; but there is one point on which, I trust, we shall not differ."
"I know none," said the gipsy, abruptly. "What is it?"
"It is, that the creatures of the same God," Manners exclaimed, "are bound to assist and comfort each other!"
"If such be your thoughts," answered the gipsy, turning round upon him--"if such be your opinions, then, why do you seek to torture me? Or is it that you think a gipsy not a creature of the same God as yourself?"
"I seek not to torture you," answered Manners. "Were I to see any one torture you, my hand would be the first raised to defend you. Nothing that you see of me now--nothing that you saw of me when last we met--should make you suppose that I would torture you, even if I had the power."
"I tell you," answered the gipsy, sternly, "that to live one day in the brightest saloon that the hands of folly ever decked for the abode of vice, would be torture to me! What, then, would be a prison?"
"Whatever your own feelings might make it," answered Manners. "My purpose in seeking to place you in one, could only be to fulfil the laws of my country, and to bring the guilty to justice; but not to torture you. Nor, in this, can you accuse me of looking upon you not as a fellow-creature; for, of whatever race the offender had been, you know I would have done the same under any circumstances; though your peculiar feeling respecting liberty might, indeed, make me more scrupulous in arresting you than I should be in regard to a person of another race."