"I do not fear, in the least," answered Manners: "I knew perfectly that you would keep your promise, and confidently assured the family at Morley House that you would lead me to De Vaux this night. I need hardly tell you how much joy that assurance gave them, and how much gratitude they felt to him who made the promise."
"Speak not of gratitude!" answered the gipsy--"speak not of gratitude! I only regret that from the first I had not foreseen what pain might fall on some of the good and kind, and that I did not assure myself of how I ought to act. But if you knew, gentleman, what a life I have led for the last three days, you would easily make excuse for some forgetfulness of others--a life so different from that to which we are accustomed. We come in sunshine, and pitch our dwelling in the warm bosom of nature, with beauty all round us, and neither care nor strife among ourselves; but now we have been hunted, and sought, and had to change our dwellings from place to place; and in order to provide that we left no traces of our way, we have been forced to double like a poor hare before the accursed hounds, to think every footstep the signal of an enemy, and every rustle of the leaves to look upon as the indication of an ambush. I fear me, too, I fear me that their persecutions are not yet over. But let us on: here lies our road."
"I trust," said Manners, following him--"I trust that as you are able to clear yourself in this business of my friend De Vaux, all the other suspicions against you will be found equally groundless; and then you may follow your way of life once more in peace."
"No, no," answered the gipsy, "he would persecute me still. Once he has made a false accusation against me, and he will never abandon it as long as he and I are on the face of the same earth--never, never! I know him too well."
"I do not clearly understand of whom you speak," answered Manners, keeping by the side of the gipsy, although the pace at which he had set off seemed accelerated at every step by the angry feelings that he was stirring up in his own bosom. "You do not name the person. Whom do you mean?"
"Whom should I mean?" answered the gipsy, sharply. "Whom but him who, born with violent passions and a haughty nature, was bred a lawyer, in order that dark cunning should be added to a bold spirit and a shrewd mind. I speak of Lord Dewry; and I tell you that he will never cease to persecute me. Does he not now hold in fast confinement a boy of our people whom he well knows to be innocent?"
"There is, certainly," answered Manners, "a gipsy-boy confined at Dimden, for I saw him there this morning; but Lord Dewry, as well as all the people of the neighbourhood, informed me that he had been taken in an attempt to steal the deer in the park."
"He was not present," said the gipsy: "he saw not the beast slaughtered by the mad-headed fools that did it, any more than I did. But he keeps him because he is a gipsy-boy, not that he thinks him guilty. And so, you saw him, did you?" continued Pharold, striving, with a slight mingling of the artful cunning of his people, to discover what Manners knew of the situation of the young gipsy--"so, you saw him? and, doubtless, he is to be sent soon to the county-jail, to die of imprisonment and despair at losing his blessed freedom."
"I did not hear any mention of such an intention," answered Manners. "Every one present joined in accusing the youth of direct participation in the deer-stealing; and he himself kept so obstinate a silence, that there was no possibility of drawing from him even a word that might exculpate himself."
"And do you call it obstinate silence to refuse to answer either the subtle or the idle questions of his enemies?" demanded the gipsy.