“Pipe-clay,” replied the stranger. He dangled a rag aloft, stirred it in a bucket on the grass, and smeared another snow-white patch down the pony’s flank. “How’s that, huh? Look a-here,”--his crafty black eyes twinkled,--“I’ll tell you what, Squair. If you won’t give me away, I’ll let ye finish the rest of him.” Miles joyfully vaulted the rails. Horses, in his life, had been rare. Hardly had he begun this new, odd, and delectable employment, before the little man was seated on the mound of ruin, a luxurious critic. “Don’t rub so hard.” He stuffed tobacco into a black pipe. “Ye ain’t curryin’. Coat her smooth and even.” Pleasure gave way, at last, to curiosity. “What’s it for?” asked the boy. “Well, now, ’tain’t my fault,” rejoined the stranger candidly. “But our paterons _do_ like to see a white horse. No use o’ talkin’, they do. Now Terry’s smart as the Old Sarpint, but he ain’t altogether a thorough white. Not thorough and complete, he ain’t.” “Why, he’s a gray!” cried Miles, patting the inquisitive muzzle. “I give ye credit for that!” approved the man. “To them that didn’t know him well, Terry _would_ seem grayish. I don’t deny they’s mottles, suspicion o’ gray, in places, as you say.” Behind the speaker, a black shape bounced up out of the ground. A large Newfoundland dog, leaping from the cellar, raced down the bank, frisked about Miles with wide-flung paws, made a kind of salmon leap into the air, turned an amazing somersault, and, rebounding from the grass, perched on the pony’s back. Next moment he sprang down again, and with forepaws on the boy’s shoulders, barked riotously in his face. “Oh!” cried Miles, dazed and deafened. “So that’s it. You keep a show!” The little man blew upward a cloud of smoke in the sunlight, and nodded lazily. “Other side the hawthorn,” he grunted. “Go look.” Spread to dry across the sheep-sorrel, long strips of canvas bore inscriptions red and blue: “Gypsy Fair,” “Abram the Magician,” “Performing Quadrupeds,” “Madge the Egyptian Seeress tells your Future,” “Equine Theatre,” “Terry the Horseflesh Wonder,” “Ride the Gypsy Mare.” The boy returned with round eyes alight. Here was the Romany Rye, not in grandfather’s book, but in real life. “Do you--do you keep a seeress?” he cried. “And a real magician?” “Come here,” said the man mysteriously. “What’s wrong with your nose?” He tweaked that organ viciously three times, and produced in swift succession a whittled square of black tobacco, a stag-horn knife, a blue cotton handkerchief. “Beats all,” he marveled. “Beats me, Squair, why ye ever stowed those up there! Gettin’ hunchback, too, ain’t ye? Bend over.” Miles felt the man’s hand slip beneath his collar, then something cold between the shoulder-blades. “Well, no wonder,” said the magician. There in his hand was a bell-mouthed flageolet, with tarnished German-silver keys. “Are you Abram?” asked the boy, laughing, but a little daunted.