I asked Mr. Pether if the gipsies were on the increase in the country so far as he knew. He answered—
“I should think they are very much. Gipsies seem to be in the lanes everywhere. I have seen as many as five hundred tents and vans in the forest before now at one time. There are not so many now, as you know; but they have spread all over the country, because the rangers would not allow the gipsies to stay upon the forest all night. Some of the gipsies have made heaps of money by fortune-telling. Lord bless you! I knew the family of gipsy Smiths, they seemed to have so much money that they did not know what to do with it. They seemed to have gold and diamond rings upon all their fingers. They took their money to America, and I have not heard what has become of them since. Some of the family are left about the forest now as poor as rats. The gipsies are a rum lot, I can assure you. I do not know a dozen gipsies to-day who can read and write, and none of them ever go, or think of going, to church or chapel.” “Have you ever been in a place of worship since you ran away from home?” “No,” said “Scare,” “except when I went with my old woman to be wed; and thank God I can show the ‘marriage lines.’ Not many of the gipsies can show their ‘marriage lines,’ I can assure you. I have not been in either church or chapel, except then, for nearly fifty years.” I said, “Did you ever pray?” “No,” said “Scare,” “but I swears thousands of times. Mother prays for me and that has to do. She’s a good old creature.”
I said, “Now Mr. Pether, from what cause did you receive the name of ‘Scare’?” “Well, to tell you the truth,” said Mr. “Scare,” “at the edge of the forest there was a little low public-house, kept by a man and his wife, which we gipsies used to visit. In course of time the man died, and the old woman used to always be crying her eyes up about the loss of her poor ‘Bill;’ at least, she seemed to be always crying about him, which I knew was not real—she did not care a rap about the old man—so I thought I would have a lark with the old girl. In the yard there were a lot of fowls, and just before the old girl went to bed—and I knew which bed she slept in—I put up the window and turned one of the fowls into the room and then pulled it gently down again, and I then stood back in the yard. Presently the old girl, I could see by the light, was making for her bedroom, which was on the ground floor. No sooner had the old girl opened the door than the fowl began ‘scare!’ ‘scare!’ ‘scare!’ ‘scare!’ and ‘flusker’ and ‘flapper’ about the room. The old lady was so frightened that she dropped the candle upon the floor and ran out in the yard calling out ‘Murder!’ ‘murder!’ ‘murder!’ Of course I dared not be seen and sneaked away. Early next morning I went to the house and called for some beer. No sooner had I entered than the old girl told me that she had seen her husband’s ghost on the bed, and it had almost frightened her wild. It had made every hair upon her head stand upright. It was her husband’s ghost, she was sure it was, she said; and nobody could make her believe it was not; and from that night the old woman would not sleep in the room again. She very soon left the public-house, and one of my friends took it. From this circumstance I have gone in the name of ‘Jack Scare.’” “Well, what have you to say about the name ‘Scarecrow,’ by which you are known?” “Scarecrow,” said Mr. Pether, “was given to me after I had fetched, in the dead of the night, a bough of the tree upon which a man had hung himself a few days before. It arose in this way. A man hung himself in a wood through some girl, and after he was cut down and buried a gipsy I knew begged or bought his clothes for a little—I could not say what the amount was, I think five shillings—and wore them. Chaff, jokes, and sneers with that gipsy for wearing the dead man’s clothes resulted in a bet being made for five shillings as to whether I dare, or dare not, visit the spot where the man was hung at midnight hour, and bring some token or proof from the place as having been there. I went and fetched a bough of the very same tree, and from that circumstance I have been called ‘scarecrow’ or ‘dare-devil.’ ‘Poshcard’ or ‘Shovecard’ was given to me because I was always a good hand at cheating with cards.” Posh among the gipsies and in Romany means “half,” and I suppose they really looked upon Pether as having half gipsy blood in his veins.
“Well, how are you getting on now?” “Well, I am getting on pretty well, thank God. I never work my horse on Sundays, and I do not cheat the same as I used to do. Some days I earn £6 or £7, and then again I shall be for days and days and not earn sixpence. I also go a rat-catching and butchering for people, and they pays me pretty well; and sometimes I fetches a hare or two. I am not particular if partridges or pheasants come in my way. If you will let me know the next time you are this way I will have a first-rate hare for you.” Of course I thanked him, but told my friend that I was not partial to hares.
“Well now, Mr. Pether, let us come back again to the time when you ran away, after felling the chap with the poleaxe. Did you kill the man?” “No,” said Pether, “I have found out since that I did not kill him, but I gave him a terrible scalp. He is dead now, poor chap. I have wished many thousands of times since that I had not struck him, though he did wrong in leathering me with a cow’s tongue.”
“How did your friends find you out at last?” “Well,” said Pether, “after I ran away from home my mother advertised for me all over the country, spending scores of pounds to no purpose. On account of my changing my clothes and name, and travelling with gipsies and tramps, and becoming as one of them, they could never find me out, till I had been away nearly eighteen years. How I was found out arose as follows. One day I was sitting in a beershop with some gipsies, when a man came in who knew me, and he seemed to look, and look and eye me over, head and foot, from top to bottom, as he never had done before. While he was looking at me, it seemed to strike me at once that I was at last found out for the murder I had always thought that I had committed. He went away for a little time out of the public-house, and as it has been told me since, he went to the telegraph office to send a telegram to my brother-in-law, who was in London, not many miles away, to come down by the next train, for they had found out who they thought to be their ‘Jack.’ He was not away very long, and I was in twenty minds to have run out of the house; but as he did not come back in a few minutes, I thought I was wrong in judging that I had been found out. Lord bless you, sir, did not I open my eyes when he came in again and brought one or two men with him, and sat down and called for some beer. My legs and knees began to knock together; I was all of a tremble, and I got up to go out of the house, but they called for some beer and would not let me leave the place. For the life of me I could not make it all out. Sometimes I imagined the new-comers were detectives in disguise. They joked and chaffed and seemed quite merry. I can assure you, sir, that I was not merry. I got up several times to try to get out of the house, and to sneak away. He ordered some dinner, and would have no ‘nay,’ but that I must join them. I tried to eat with them, but I can assure you, sir, it was not much that I could either eat or drink. Presently, after dinner, another man came into the room and sat down and called for some beer. I did not know the man. It has turned out since that the last comer was no other than my brother-in-law. It flashed across me that I was at last found out, and no mistake. I was a doomed man; and this surmise seemed to be doubly true when he took out of his pocket a newspaper and began to read an advertisement giving the description of me at the time I ran away. They now called me by my own name, and asked the landlord to allow me to have a wash, which he readily granted. When this was over and I was ready, they said, ‘Now, Jack, we shall want you to go with us.’ Of course there was nothing for it but to go. The worst was come, and I thought I must screw up courage and face it out as well as I could. On our way we called at the telegraph office, where one of the men sent something by telegraph. I did not know what. I have since heard that it was a telegram to my mother, stating that they had found her son ‘Jack,’ and they were on the way to her house with him. On the way through London to go, as I thought, to the police-station, we turned off the main street to go up a by-street. For the life of me I could not tell where this was, except that they were going to change my clothes, or put ‘steel buckles’ upon my wrists. We went into a tidy sort of a little house, which I thought was the home of one of the detectives who was with us. I was asked to sit upon the old sofa, and the men sat round the fire. For a little while all was as still as death. Presently I heard someone coming downstairs. The footstep did not sound like that of a man. In a minute there stood before me a woman between fifty and sixty years old. I thought I had seen the face somewhere, but could not tell where. The voice seemed to be a voice that I had heard somewhere, times back.
“The mystery was soon solved, the secret was soon out. As she looked into my face, she cried out, ‘Art thou my son John, who ran away from his place nearly twenty years ago, and for whom I have prayed every day since that the Lord would bring you back to me before I died?’ And then she came a little nearer, and looked into my face a little closer, and cried out, ‘Thou art my son, John; bless the dear good Lord for preserving thee all these years.’ I said, ‘Are you my mother?’ tremblingly. And she took hold of me and put her arms round me, and clasped me closely to her, and she cried and sobbed out for a minute or two, and then, with tears streaming down her face upon my shoulder, said, while trembling and almost fainting, ‘I am thy mother, my son John; let me kiss thee.’ And she kissed me, and I kissed her. I cried, and she cried; I thought we were not going to be parted again. We were in each other’s arms for a few moments, and the man who brought the newspaper to the public-house to recognize me, made himself known to me as my brother-in-law. Some of my brothers came in the evening—and an evening it was. I shall never forget our meeting while I live.” “And you could have sung from your heart, Pether, ‘Come let us be merry, for this my son was dead and is alive again, was lost and is found.’” “Yes I could. I always felt, and do so still feel, that when I am gipsying, as you sometimes see me at ‘Robin Hood,’ my mother’s prayers are heard by God. She is a good creature, and is alive and lives with my sister at Battersea. I often go to see her. She is a good creature.” Mr. Pether, while narrating his troubles, difficulties, hairbreadth escapes, broke out frequently into sobs and cries almost like a child.
I bade my friends the gipsies good-bye and, after giving the poor crippled boy something to please him, I started to go to the station, but found out that I should have an hour to wait. I therefore turned into a Wesleyan Chapel to enjoy a partial service, at the close of which the choir and the congregation, including a gipsy Smith and his wife, sung with tear-fetching expression and feeling—
“Jerusalem my happy home,
Name ever dear to me;
When shall my labours have an end,
In joy and peace with thee?”
After this impressive service time, steam and “shanks’s pony” carried and wafted me back to my friends in Victoria Park, none the worse for my Sunday ramble among the gipsies.