“Then, take that!”—and the Devil struck Charley a smart blow on the cheek, twisting the poor fellow’s head on one side, and so it ever remained. After that, he was always known as “Wry-necked” Charley.
As the clock was striking the hour of ten, the rural tavern’s closing-time, my Gypsy friends stepped out into the night.
All through the long hours the wind howled in the chimney and rattled the casements, and one traveller at least slept but fitfully in his four-poster draped with curtains of red damask.
In the morning the landlord informed me at breakfast that a tree had been blown down across the road, and, while “rembling” under his overturned straw-stack, a fine fox was found smothered, and, “See here,” he said, “I shall always think of last night whenever I look at this,” holding up a beautiful tawny brush.
The storm-rack was still scudding overhead as I bade adieu to the quaint pair on the footworn doorstep of the “Black Boy” on the ridge way.
CHAPTER XVII
HORNCASTLE FAIR
Like Lincoln, York, and Chester, the town of Horncastle originated within the boundaries of a Roman castrum, and to this day an old-world atmosphere clings to its narrow, cobbled streets.
Readers who know their Borrow will recall the visit of “The Romany Rye” to Horncastle in the August of 1825, in order to sell a horse which he had purchased by means of a loan from his Gypsy friend Jasper.
Nowhere perhaps are the changes wrought by the passing years more plainly seen than at a horse-fair of ancient standing. Horncastle has inhabitants who remember when the great August Horse-Fair occupied fully a fortnight or three weeks, and was widely recognized as an event of the first rank. Within my own observation, this fair, like others of its kind, has declined with swift strides. In my time, buyers would be present from all parts of the country, as well as from the Continent, and members of our best Gypsy families invariably made a point of attending. In all these respects, however, the once famous fair has dwindled in a very marked manner.
Let me describe a twentieth-century visit to the August horse-mart.