A Minion of the Moon: A Romance of the King's Highway

by T. W. Speight

The gryengro, or horse-dealer, proceeded to charge and light his pipe, while Dare refreshed himself with a copious pinch of snuff. Then, by the light of the young moon, as they slowly paced the soft turf to and fro, the latter went on to unfold his wishes:

"About a mile on the other side of Broxham there stands in its own grounds a small country house, the name of which is Homecroft. After remaining empty for a long time, it has now found a tenant in the person of Mrs. Bullivant, whose husband died a few years ago, and whose one child, a boy of five or six, is at present from home, most probably on a visit to his grandfather, Lord Cossington. Now, although her own child is away, I have strong reasons for believing that Mrs. Bullivant has another child, who has been stolen away from his friends, hidden in the house, whose presence there is only known to the rawni herself and two or three of her domestics. So, what I want to have found out for me is, whether there is, or is not, such a child as the one I speak of under the roof of Homecroft, and the first question is, whether your daughter can obtain that information for me without arousing any suspicion on the part of Mrs. Bullivant or any of her people."

To this the gypsy, whose name was Enoch Bosworth, replied that he had very little doubt his daughter Rosilla could manage to obtain the required information if time were allowed her, and she was allowed to go to work in her own way in the affair. Dare did not care how she went to work, so long as she got him the needed particulars. It then became a question of terms between the two men, and these having been satisfactorily arranged, they parted, with an agreement to meet again at the same hour and place four evenings later.

Although Dare kept his appointment to the minute, he found the gryengro and his daughter waiting for him, and it soon appeared that Rosilla had indeed made good use of her time. She was already in a position to assure him that his belief in the presence of a strange child at Homecroft was amply justified. Such a child was there, a boy, with regard to whom none of the domestics knew anything--neither his name, where he came from, the connection between him and the mistress of Homecroft, or, in point of fact, why he was there at all. A middle-aged woman who had been in Mrs. Bullivant's service for a number of years, was his sole attendant, and none of the other servants were ever allowed to speak to him--not that much chance of doing so was given them, a couple of rooms having been set apart for the boy and the woman, into which they were forbidden to penetrate.

All this information the artful Rosilla, in the exercise of her calling as a fortune-teller, had succeeded in worming out of Mrs. Bullivant's maid, a girl of the name of Moggy Dredge, who, for some reason or other, had conceived a violent dislike for her mistress--an admission of which Dare did not fail to see the importance.

He must contrive an interview with the girl Dredge, and this Rosilla was commissioned to arrange for. If Mrs. Bullivant's maid would name her own time and place for meeting a certain gentleman, name unknown, and there answer a few questions he would put to her having no reference to herself or her own business, she would find her pocket the richer by a couple of guineas.

Rosilla at once undertook to do her best to arrange the meeting in question, which took place a couple evenings later at a solitary spot a little way outside the palings of the Homecroft grounds.

The gypsy-girl, of her own accord, went a little way apart out of hearing while the gorgio and the lady's-maid said what they had to say to each other.

Even before she quite comprehended what it was Dare wanted her to do, Moggy did not hesitate to confess that, in her own words, she hated her mistress "worse than poison," and that because of the latter's treatment of her, and of the insults she saw fit to heap upon her. In reply to this, Dare very naturally asked her why she did not leave Mrs. Bullivant and go into service elsewhere. Thereupon Moggy burst out crying, and, after sobbing quietly for a little while, confided to Dare that she had had a "misfortune," and had thereby forfeited her character, and that it was Mrs. Bullivant's knowledge of this fact which enabled her to trample on the unhappy girl in the way she did.

Moggy could tell Dare little more about the strange child than he had already learnt from Rosilla. Nor had he expected that she would be able to do so. What he had now to arrange for was the future, and he did not part from the girl till she had given him her promise to furnish him daily with a written report of everything she could hear or gather having reference to the child. This report she was to place each day after nightfall in the hollow of a certain tree, whence it would be fetched by Rosilla, who would play the part of messenger between her and Dare. Later, there would be three more guineas for her, and she confessed that she was badly in need of money to help to pay for the keep of her child.