“Good, then; here goes to keep the game alive. I can say I am not related to any of the hupper classes; leastways not as I knows on――my impression being that I was born under a hedge: I am a gipsy: this I dare say you have already guessed. Well, let me tell you a gipsy’s life is not without is charms. I believe I was cradled on a horse or a donkey, but this is what I’ve heard other people say. [Sidenote: No. 9.] [Illustration: “DON’T YOU DARE TO INSULT ME, YOU NASTY UGLY LITTLE VILLIAN,” EXCLAIMED MRS. POCKLINGTON.] “My earliest recollections bring to my view seven or eight hooped tents on the skirts of a common, eight or ten stunted sorts of horses, and five or six donkeys with here and there a fire on the ground, kettles hanging over them hitched on a cross-stick, supported by others fixed in the ground. “Myself with four or five other children of my own age might be seen rolling on the grass just washed and refreshed by the morning dew. “There, aint that a picter? But, Lord love yer, them days are passed, and the honourable race of gipsies are rapidly passing away before modern improvements, as they are termed――and be hanged to them. “Aint it a picture――a gipsy encampment, I only ask ye that?” “It is, without a doubt, quite a picture,” said Peace. “I see you are a sensible man, sir,” remarked the gipsy; “but let me proceed with my story. “As I grow up I was reckoned the best climber and runner in the camp. My elder brother, Ralph, undertook my edication. “‘Will,’ ses he, one day, ‘come along with me.’ He took me to a pond at the remote corner of a common when he laid me down on my face across the edge of the bank. He then covered me with briar, and giving me proper instructions went and drove the geese all that way, quietly to the spot where I lay. As they waddled to reach the water, I, from under the boughs, grabbed at their legs and secured two on ’em. Didn’t I have a tuck-out when I got home off one of the geese?” There was a roar of laughter at this part of the narrative. “After this I got on fast in life; new scenes every day opened to me, and horse-dealing and horse-stealing became part of my business. “We attended races and fairs, where the girls of our camp told fortunes, the old women set up togs for the children to throw at three shies a penny. My brother and others followed the thimble and garter rig, while I and father at times skirted the towns and villages to job swap horses. “Sometimes I was sent off with a horse fifty miles away from his former acquaintances, there to await the arrival of our clan. “When I was fifteen years of age I could ride and leap a ’oss with any jockey in the kingdom. A ’oss I liked better than anything in the world, and a prad has got me into my present difficulty; but it can’t be helped.