"No; such war as Buckingham may make will be no schooling in the military art, or give promotion to those who deserve it. Drury and I are bound for Sweden the day after to-morrow, and I came to say good-bye." Bess's face took on its look of musing, her eyes gazing into the distance. Then with perplexity in her face, she said-- "It is strange I have had no forewarning of this." "What mean you? You don't in sober truth believe in the gift of prophecy, which your tribe pretend to!" "I don't believe in it: I have it. We who live in Nature's bosom, and do not corrupt soul or body, hear and see what you house-dwellers cannot. Perhaps the spirits of the dead whisper to us, I know not; but we see pictures, and hear voices, and dream dreams, that warn us of things to come. Why should it be incredible to you? Did not your lady see you in peril? By that token I knew her heart and nature." "And you deal in all honesty when you promise rich husbands to farmers' daughters, and astound them by knowing what the kitchen wench told you?" Bess laughed merrily. "What harm is done by giving them pleasant dreams? But of your affairs now? Are you taking no steps against my father?" "I have taken none." "Then in kindness to me, do not. He is a broken man, and has not recovered the full use of his limbs, since he was racked by the old earl. He was overcome by your giving up yourself to save me, for he loves me in his fashion, and he made a clean breast to the young lord of all the practice against you." "If I bore him malice never so much, it should be thrown to the wind for your sake, Bess, to whom I owe more than can be repaid." "When you come back from the wars with honour and riches, you may repay any service the gipsy girl has done you a thousandfold." "How?" "By using voice and influence to protect a persecuted people." "I never heard of your folk being persecuted in the Isle." "No; the cruel laws do not trouble us in this corner of the land, but this very year, twenty of our men were burned in Haddington, and as many women hanged." "Had they been sheep-stealing?" "Their only crime was their gipsy blood. They were condemned 'for being Egyptians.' And just now we are being harried in Durham and in Yorkshire. You don't know your law, justice of the peace that you would have been, if you had come to be squire of Temple." "In truth, I don't, if this be law. Are you sure on't?" "I have seen a woman of our own tribe flogged along the streets, half naked, with her baby at her breast, sheltering its little body from the lash of the scourge with her bare and bleeding arms, and, after the flogging, she was branded in the cheek with a hot iron 'for being an Egyptian.'" "Why do your people abide in England, then?" "Because it is worse for them elsewhere." "If ever I come to be in any kind of authority, things shall be so far better in England as one man can make them, that I swear."