"For that little lass the gipsy-boy would have shed all the blood in his young body, and he was but ten years old and five--not yet a man, nor grown to man's stature, but a man in heart, and a giant in his love for the comely, delicate gipsy-girl. So he begged hard of father and mother, uncles and aunts, and he went into her tent with a gift, and prayed of her people that they would give him Thyra to be his wife. They promised, Thyra, do you remember? They promised. They were of the old black race, and the promise of a Lovel is like the oath of a Stanley or a Lee." "It was so long ago!" pleaded Waif, in rather a trembling voice. "You were always very good to me, Fin. I won't deny it; but it was so long ago!" His face softened; his voice was very sad and tender, while he repeated her words. "So long ago! and yet I see it as clear as if it had been but yesterday--the fire smouldering at the tent-door--the moonshine, silver-white on the Severn Sea--the old grandfather sitting within, shaping a wooden peg with his knife--and my little wife crouching in the corner with her black eyes wide open, like the red hind's calf I had noosed a week before in Cloutsham Ball. Long ago! Yes, Thyra, it _is_ long ago; and every day that has gone by, every night that I have seen it all again in my dreams, scores and brands it deeper and deeper in my true gipsy heart. There is no 'long ago' for you and me, Thyra. We have been one ever since that night when you were promised me by the comely Lovels over the camp-fire. Nothing but death can part us now. My sweet lass, I will be kind and true, for mine you surely are, and always will be." To a woman whose heart was still in her own keeping, there would have been something inexpressibly touching in the tender glance of those eyes, naturally so fierce and keen; in the gentle tones of that voice, usually so hard, imperious, and clear. She could not but contrast the gipsy's absorbing devotion with John Garnet's joyous, good-humoured carelessness, and shuddered to think how she loved the first and how she was beloved by the second! She temporised--she prevaricated--she said one thing and meant another. Was she not a woman, though a gipsy? "There would be time enough," she protested, "to consider all these matters when the tribe moved farther West to take up their winter quarters in the 'wrestlers' country,' amongst the Cornish tors and valleys. There was much to be done first; tents to strike, a long journey to be made, to-night's job to be effaced by a speedy change of quarters; and you know as well as I do, Fin," she added, smiling sweetly in his face, "that a storm is brewing down in the West where we are bound, and the same wind that brings the Kaulo-chiriclo--the blackbird, as the Gorgios call him--back to his own nest, will blow many a 'balanser' of good red gold into the pockets of the Romany lad who runs his errands. For my part, I hope with all my heart he'll win!"