'How should there be a wedding,' I asked, 'if I am there and you not there, Robin—and I to be crying? And how could I—oh! Robin—how could I be married twice?'

'Nay, Sweetheart, she could not tell what wedding it was. She only uttered the gibberish of her trade; I am sorry that I wasted a sixpence upon her.'

'Robin, is it magic that they practise—these gipsies? Do they traffic with the Devil? We ought not to suffer witches to live amongst us.'

'Most are of opinion that they have no other magic than the art of guessing, which they learn to do very quickly, putting things together, from their appearance; so that if brother and sister walk out together they are taken to be lovers, and promised a happy marriage and many children.'

That may be so, and perhaps the fortune told by this gipsy was only guess-work. But I cannot believe it; for the event proved that she had in reality possessed an exact knowledge of what was about to happen.

Some of the gipsy women—but these were the older women, who had lost their good looks, though not their impudence—were singing songs, and those, as Robin told me, songs not fit to be sung; and one old crone, sitting before her tent beside a roaring wood fire over which hung a great saucepan, sold charms against shot and steel. The lads bought these greedily, giving sixpence apiece for them; so that the old witch must have made a sackful of money. They came and looked on shyly. Then one would say to the other, 'What thinkest, lad? Is there aught in it?' And the other would say, 'Truly, I know not; but she is a proper witch, and I'll buy one. We may have to fight. Best make sure of a whole skin.' And so he bought one, and then all bought. The husbands of the gipsy women were engaged, meantime, we understood, in robbing the farm-yards in the neighbourhood, the blame being afterwards laid upon our honest soldiers.

Then there was a ballad-monger singing a song about a man and a broom, and selling it (to those who would buy) printed on a long slip of paper. The first lines were—

There was an old man and he lived in a wood,
And his trade it was making a broom,

but I heard no more, because Robin hurried me away. Then there were some who had drunk too much cider or beer, and were now reeling about with stupid faces and glassy eyes; there were some who were lying speechless or asleep upon the grass; and some were cooking supper over fires after the manner of the gipsies.

'I have seen enough, Robin,' I said. 'Alas for sacred Religion if these are her defenders!'