Then the gipsy took up one of her mats which lay on the ground beside her, and looked at it.
“You are clever with your loom,” he said; “but what do you mean by the little verse you put on all these mats?”
“It is a little verse which can but be rightly read by one person,” she answered; “and if he sees it, it will not matter whether others understand it or no.”
“And have you been here all alone since I came by?” asked the gipsy; “have no other gipsies been past? for I want to join some of my own people, and perhaps you can tell me which way they are gone.”
“One came not so long ago,” answered the potter’s wife, “but she was so tired with tramping far that she could go no further. So she has stayed, and rests in the churchyard. She was a gipsy woman with red beads and coins in her hair. And I kept her and let her die in peace, and wrapped her in a cloth of white and gold.”
“And did she do nothing while she rested here?” asked the gipsy man. “Did she make you no present to pay you for your trouble?”
“She made me a present which paid me for my trouble well,” said the woman, “though it was only a little cup of clay that was grey and wet. And she gave me this ring, and bid me give it to her husband if he came by here, and tell him that it was useless for him to seek her further.”
The gipsy man looked at the ring she held out to him, and he turned pale, and knit his brows.
“And where is that cup?” he asked; “and where is her little boy? For I will take him with me into the world.”
“I don’t know where he is gone,” said the potter’s wife; “as for the cup, he took it with him when he went.”