"No; the cruel laws do not trouble us in this corner of the land, but this very year, twenty of our men were burned in Haddington, and as many women hanged."
"Had they been sheep-stealing?"
"Their only crime was their gipsy blood. They were condemned 'for being Egyptians.' And just now we are being harried in Durham and in Yorkshire. You don't know your law, justice of the peace that you would have been, if you had come to be squire of Temple."
"In truth, I don't, if this be law. Are you sure on't?"
"I have seen a woman of our own tribe flogged along the streets, half naked, with her baby at her breast, sheltering its little body from the lash of the scourge with her bare and bleeding arms, and, after the flogging, she was branded in the cheek with a hot iron 'for being an Egyptian.'"
"Why do your people abide in England, then?"
"Because it is worse for them elsewhere."
"If ever I come to be in any kind of authority, things shall be so far better in England as one man can make them, that I swear."
"God be with you, your Shield and Preserver, and bring you home again to your own country, able and willing to keep your vow."
So we clasped hands and parted.