Such then are some of the humours of an amateur gipsy’s life.
Chapter Sixteen.
Sunny Memories of the Border-Land.
“Pipe of Northumbria, sound;
War pipe of Alnwicke,
Wake the wild hills around;
Percy at Paynim war.
Fenwicke stand foremost;
Scots in array from far
Swell wide their war-host.
“Come clad in your steel jack,
Your war gear in order,
And down hew or drive back
The Scots o’er the border.”
Old Ballad.
“I tell you what it is, my boy,” said a well-known London editor to me one day, shortly before I started on my long tour in the Wanderer,—“I tell you what it is, you’ll never do it.”
He was standing a little way off my caravan as he spoke, so as to be able to take her all in, optically, and his head was cocked a-trifle to one side, consideringly. “Never do what?”
“Never reach Scotland.”
“Why?”