“Who are those Leonards, I wonder? Who were they before they came here?”
“Old Leonard made a mint of money in India, and his sons are spending it for him as fast as they can. One day when he was talking to my father, he hinted that he had taken this remote place, the Granary, and brought them down here, to get them out of the fast lives they were leading in London. He got afraid, he said.”
“Haven’t the sons any professions, Bill?”
“Don’t seem to have. Or anything else that’s good—money excepted?”
“What do they do with their time?”
“Anything. Idle it away. Keep dogs; and shoot, and fish, and lounge, and smoke, and—— Halloa! look yonder, Johnny!”
Briar Wood had no straight and direct road through it; but plenty of small paths and byways and turnings and windings, that might bring you, by good luck, to landing at last; or might take you unconsciously back whence you came. Emerging from a part, where the trees grew dark and dense and thick, upon one of those delightful glades I spoke of before, we saw what I took to be a small gipsy encampment. A fire of sticks, with a kettle upon it, smoked upon the ground; beside it sat a young woman and child; a few tin wares, tied together, lay in a corner, and some rabbits’ skins were stretched out to dry on the branches of trees.
Up started the woman, and came swiftly towards us. A regular gipsy, with the purple-black hair, the yellow skin, and the large soft gleaming eyes. It was a beautiful young face, but worn and thin and anxious.
“Do you want your fortunes told, my good young gentlemen? I can——”
“Not a bit of it,” interrupted Bill. “Go back to your fire. We are only passing through.”