A cool rain in the early hours had given place to a hot July morning, as I entered the village of Seamer already astir with its horse-fair. Making my way between knots of colts and droves of ponies at whose heels Gypsy boys were waving pink glazed calico flags, I went to where one of the North-Country Smiths stood gesticulating before a group of prospective buyers of colts, and discovered in him Elias Petulengro’s son, Vanlo, whom I had known at Lincoln. Presently he walked across to me and held out a hand of friendship. All around us were Yorkshire travelling folk, and while chatting with Vanlo I witnessed a curious thing. Three policemen stood talking together, and one of them had his hands behind his back. A Gypsy, sidling up, slipped a half-crown into this policeman’s hand. I saw his fingers close over the coin, yet he never by the slightest sign betrayed this act of the Gypsy, which passed unobserved by the other constables. Petulengro, who witnessed it, explained that this sort of thing is not uncommon. It obtains little privileges. “The muskro” (policeman), said he, “will turn a blind eye to that Gypsy’s fire on some wayside to-night.”
Strolling through the fair, I spied old Clara Smith smoking a black clay under a stone wall, and by her side sat her daughter Tiena and one of her male relations, whom I had once met on a bleak fell in North-West Yorkshire. It was he who told me the following tale as he sat making pegs among the ling:—
“When I was a boy, I was taking puvengris (potatoes) from a field, and I looked up, and there stood a tall man staring at me over the hedge.
“‘You come along with me,’ he shouted, and, taking him for a policeman in plain clothes, I obeyed, and went with him to a big building which I thought was the Sessions House. There were many people inside, and a gentleman was talking to them. At last he looked hard at me, and said, ‘Thou art the man.’
“So I jumped up and said, ‘Yes, I know I am, but I didn’t mean to do it. It was my uncle as made me go. I’ll never steal potatoes no more.’ And because I would keep on talking like a Philadelphia lawyer, they turned me out without passing sentence on me. Next day I was walking with my uncle, and the tall man as took me off to the place, passed by. ‘That’s the policeman as arrested me,’ says I.
“‘Why, you silly boy,’ said my uncle, ‘that there man is the evangelist, and he took you to his chapel, he did.’”
CHAPTER XIV
A NIGHT WITH THE GYPSIES—THE SWEEP OF LYNN—LONDON GYPSIES—ON EPSOM DOWNS
“It ain’t fit to turn a dog out o’ doors, that it ain’t, so you’d better make up your mind to stop all night.”
Saying this, Gypsy Ladin closed the porch door, but not without difficulty, for a gale was battering upon the wayside bungalow. Half an hour ago, as I hurried along the willow-fringed “ramper” on my way to see this old Romany pal, black rain-clouds, bulging low over the fenland wapentake, had foretold an approaching storm; and now with the descent of the May night the tempest had burst in full fury upon the land. Torrential rain, swift swelling rushes of wind, and brilliant flashes of lightning made me glad to be housed with my friend in his fire-lit room.