Should there be no map, “in most lodging-houses there is an old man who is guide to every ‘WALK’ in the vicinity, and who can tell each house on every round, that is ‘good for a cold tatur.’”[33] The hieroglyphics that are used are:— ☓ NO GOOD; too poor, and know too much. ◠+ STOP,—if you have what they want, they will buy. They are pretty “_fly_” (knowing). ⸧— GO IN THIS DIRECTION, it is better than the other road. Nothing that way. ◇ _BONE_ (good). Safe for a “cold tatur,” if for nothing else. “_Cheese your patter_” (don’t talk much) here. ▽ _COOPER’D_ (spoilt), by too many tramps calling there. □ _GAMMY_ (unfavourable), likely to have you taken up. Mind the dog. ☉ _FLUMMUXED_ (dangerous), sure of a month in “_quod_” (prison). ⊕ _RELIGIOUS_, but tidy on the whole. Where did these signs come from, and when were they first used? are questions which I have asked myself again and again, whilst endeavouring to discover their history. Knowing the character of the Gipseys, and ascertaining from a tramp that they are well acquainted with the hieroglyphics, “and have been as long ago as ever he could remember,” I have little hesitation in ascribing the invention to them. And strange it would be if some modern Belzoni, or Champollion, discovered in these beggars’ marks fragments of ancient Egyptian or Hindoo hieroglyphical writing! But this, of course, is a simple vagary of the imagination. That the Gipseys were in the habit of leaving memorials of the road they had taken, and the successes that had befallen them, there can be no doubt. In an old book, _The Triumph of Wit_, 1724, there is a passage which appears to have been copied from some older work, and it runs thus:—“The Gipseys set out twice a year, and scatter all over England, each parcel having their appointed stages, that they may not interfere, nor hinder each other; and for that purpose, when they set forward in the country, _they stick up boughs in the way of divers kinds, according as it is agreed among them, that one company may know which way another is gone, and so take a different road_.” The works of _Hoyland_ and _Borrow_ supply other instances. I cannot close this subject without drawing attention to the extraordinary fact, that actually on the threshold of the gibbet the sign of the vagabond is to be met with! “The murderer’s signal is even exhibited from the gallows; as a red handkerchief held in the hand of the felon about to be executed is a token that he dies without having betrayed any professional secrets.”[34]