Oli Purum drove me to Corwen station, and by night I am at home again on the Wolds of Lincolnshire.
II
September 27.—We are at Sedbergh, a little grey town at the foot of the Yorkshire Fells. Stone walls, narrow streets, old inns—all have their outlines softened by the mellow shadows, half-golden, half-brown, stealing over the place this afternoon. Looking out from a tavern window I experience a thrill. There in the street stand two vehicles, a vâdo and a tilt-cart, with sleek horses between their shafts. That tilt-cart I should know anywhere, for under its weathered hood I have dreamt happy dreams.
“I say, pals, we must be stirring. Come along,” exclaims Gilderoy Gray, rising from his corner on the smooth-worn settle. We follow our leader into the street, and, boarding those vehicles, we are not long in getting clear of Sedbergh town. Bound for Brough Hill Horse-Fair, our party of six never had a gayer prospect. Here we are on the road again—Gil’roy, Merry Jim, Fred o’ the Bawro Gav, Oli Purum, his son Willy, and the Gypsy’s Parson. . . .
But even the brightest of September days must wane, and soon to right and left of us dark ridges lift themselves against the fading light. Our first stage is a short one. Nightfall sees us pull up at Cautley Crag, where we seek a stopping-place in the small croft adjoining the lonely white inn on the roadside. However, the gate proves too narrow to admit our carts, so we draw upon the wayside turf, under the shelter of a stone wall. Nimble as ever, Oli erects the red blanket tent in the croft, and Willy busies himself in building a good fire. When an abundance of brown bracken has been laid down in the tent (no fresh straw is to be had), the customary rugs are spread and we sit down to supper. Pipes and chatter make the evening hours fly. There is so much Gypsy news to talk over. At last, having placed a warning lantern, like a pendant star, on one of the carts, we tumble into our beds and quickly fall asleep.
September 28.—A keen, clear autumn morn making you feel how good it is to be alive. After pottering about the camp, Gilderoy and I wander along the bank of the roaring Rawthey, while Jim and Fred, lured by the shine and glamour of the sunlit mountains, set off across the dewy moor for a closer look at the “Spout,” as the waterfall up the dingle is described on the map. Down by the plank-bridge I stand and look at the fells all a-shimmer in the sun. Far up beyond the region of stone walls, built (says our Oli) in the days when labourers received a wage of a penny a day, one’s eye follows the forms of mountain ponies, horned sheep, and a couple of shepherds roaming with their dogs. Nearer, on the river-bank, are small companies of geese preening their feathers in the sunshine. I hear from our landlord that prowling hill-foxes sometimes snap up a goose on the moor. . . .
Breakfast over, we were busy packing when some of the Whartons (Oli’s relations) passed by in their light accommodation carts en route for Brough Fair, so Oli and Willy must needs rush out to gather the latest news of the road. This meant a trifling delay in our getting off, for Gypsies are loquacious. However, by 9.30 we were once more “on travel,” feeling blithe as larks. Rumble-rumble went the wheels on the road, and all was going as merry as a marriage bell until a single magpie flitted across our track. Observing the bird of ill-omen, I quoted the old-time ditty—
“One for sorrow, two for mirth,
Three for a wedding, four for a birth.”
“That’s only an old woman’s tale,” quoth the Gypsy, flicking the horse’s glossy back with the ends of the reins. Yet, a mile or so farther on, Oli was the first to discover that the horse had cast a shoe. Handing over the reins, the lithe Gypsy went off at a trot, and not long after he came up flaunting the lost shoe, just as the smith at Court Common was ready, tools in hand, to put it on.
