of the house, to purloin what they can, while the mother is negotiating in the chamber. It is generally the women’s office to make away with the boor’s geese and fowls, when they are to be found in a convenient place. Should the creature make a noise when seized, it is killed and dressed for the consumption of the family; but if, by chance, it have strayed so far from the village, that its crying cannot give any alarm, they keep it alive to sell at the next market town. Winter is the time when the women generally are most called upon to try their skill in this way: during that season, many of the men remain in their huts, sending the women abroad to forage. They go about in the guise of beggars—a character they well know how to support—and commonly carry with them a couple of children, miserably exposed to the cold and frost; one of these is led by the hand, the other tied in a cloth to the woman’s back, in order to excite compassion in well-disposed people. Whole troops of these Gipsey beggars are met with in Spain; and the encounter is by no means pleasant, as they ask alms in a manner, and with such importunity, as if they thought you could not deny them. They also tell fortunes; and impose on the credulous with amulets. Besides all this, they seldom return to their husbands without some pilfered booty. Many writers confine the thefts of the Gipseys to small maters, and will not allow that they are ever guilty of violence. This is not only denied by the testimony of others, but absolutely contradicted by some recent instances. It is true that, on account of their natural timidity, they do hesitate to commit a robbery which appears to be attended with great danger, nor do they often break open houses by night: they rather confine themselves to petty depredations, than, as they think, rush voluntarily into destruction by a great and dangerous action. Yet we have more than one proof, that they make no scruple to murder a traveller, or plunder cities and villages. CHAPTER VIII. _On their Marriages and Education_.