The moon was shining bright and clear upon Morley Down, covering every rise on which its beams fell with soft and silvery light, and casting every dell and opposite slope into dark broad shadow. From that height a slight degree of mistiness appeared, hanging over the scene in the valley; but above, all was clear; and the satellite of the earth was so bountiful of her reflected rays, that our fellow-stars could scarcely be seen in the sky, twinkling faintly, half eclipsed by her excess of splendour. The scattered bushes and stunted hawthorns, and the tumulus, with its clump of towering beeches, caught the rays; but, with the peculiar effect of trees by moonlight, the latter seemed more to absorb than to reflect the light, while their long deep shadows cast upon the neighbouring ground, showed, at least, that they served to intercept the beams. In many of the little pits and hollows of the ground small pools of water had been formed; and so often did these appear, glistening in the moonshine, in situations otherwise dark, that it seemed as if the light sought out purposely the objects best calculated to reflect it, and, like active benevolence in search of humble merit, followed them into the dim and lowly abodes where they had made their dwelling. From these pools, however, the sand-pit in which the gipsies had pitched their tents was free; and the only water it contained was afforded by a small clear spring, which the labourers had cut through in digging for the produce of the pit; and, which, welling from the bank, fell into a clear small basin of yellow sand that would, in all probability, have absorbed it speedily, had it not found a sudden channel among some smooth stones and gravel, and thence wound away, forced into a thousand meanders by the irregularity of the ground, till, issuing forth upon the common, it pursued its course down the hill, and, joined by several other brooks, poured no inconsiderable addition into the river in the valley below. It, too, caught the moonbeams and glanced brightly in them; but that was not the only light that shone upon it, as it trickled down the bank, and rested in its little basin below. A redder and less pure gleam was reflected from its waters, for at about twenty yards from the source, close under shelter of the high bank and overhanging bushes, the gipsies had pitched their tents; and now, though the hour was nearly midnight, they were just in the midst of those revels that often rise up from many a moor and many a planting throughout old England, while the rest of her denizens are fast asleep. The evening was as warm as if it had been far earlier in the year; and although the wind was high it whistled sheer over the pit, without visiting with its rude search the corner thereof in which the race of wanderers had nested their encampment. The very sound, however, and the freshness of the night air, rendered the idea of a fire any thing but unpleasant; and in