Grandmother Cardover’s shop saw me often. There in the keeping-room, with its dull red walls and leisurely loud ticking clock, we would talk together of bygone times and of those which were, maybe, coming. At first she urged me to marry, and to take up the position in the county which should be mine. But soon, with the easy fatalism of old age, she accepted me for what I was, and ceased to worry. With my father I held no communication--the breach had become final; so of Ruthita I heard next to nothing. But as regards Lord Halloway, quite inadvertently I increased my knowledge. One squally night I was returning from Ransby, driving up the sodden road to the Hall, when my attention was attracted by a camp-fire. I halted out of curiosity, and struck across the turf to the light. Between me and the fire was a wind-break of young firs, a diminutive plantation behind which, as behind bars, figures prowled. As the flames shot up, the figures yearned toward the clouds; as the flames died down, the figures seemed to creep into the ground. On reaching the wind-break a lurcher growled, and I heard a man’s voice telling the beast to lie quiet. I was about to declare myself, when a hand was laid on my shoulder. I leapt aside, peering into the darkness. “All right, brother,” a voice said huskily. “I’m meaning you no hurt.” A woman’s face pushed itself out of the blackness; by the light of the fire I saw that it was Lilith’s. “Now you’re here, brother, we’ve come back to Woadley.” She spoke as though our meeting had been pre-arranged. Gazing through the trees I saw the old yellow caravan: and G’liath; the gaudy woman was there, and the hag who had tried to tell Vi’s fortune on the marshes. The huddled gipsy tents became an accustomed sight and the center of a new interest in my landscape. The proud lawlessness of the gipsies appealed to my own suppressed wildness. They opened a door of escape from commonplace environment. Their unannounced comings and goings had an atmosphere of mystery and stealth which filled me with excitement. Of a night I would look out from my bedroom windows and see the red glow of their camp across the park-land; in the morning nothing would remain but blackened turf and silence. I went on many tramping expeditions with Lilith. She had become curiously elflike and wilful since those early days. She seemed to live wholly in the moods and sensations of the present; of the past she would speak only in snatches. Sometimes, when she softened, she would mention Ruthita; but it was long before I discovered her secret and the reason why for so many years the gipsies had refused to camp at Woadley.