“It would be little use to go home,” he said, “for if my wife is not glad to see me, it is no home to me; and she will not be glad to see me till I can find the gipsy and know how the charm can be broken.” One night he went into a booth where there were a number of men drinking, and amongst them there was one who looked like a gipsy, a dark, savage-looking fellow who was talking loud, and boasting much of all he had done. The potter sat and listened to their talk, and presently they began quarrelling, and talking about who was the most beautiful woman in the world. The gipsy cried out that he knew the most beautiful, and that she had given him a parting gift and wished him God-speed, and now he was going back to her, for he knew now the way to make her love him, and he meant to wed her and have her for his wife. Upon this the others laughed and jeered, and said, was it likely that such a beautiful woman would care for such a rough, ill-favoured fellow as he, and declared they didn’t think much of her beauty if she was willing to marry him and to be his wife. Then another man standing near said that he knew where lived the most beautiful woman on the face of the earth, though he did not believe that she would ever be wife of his, still all the same it would be hard to beat her for loveliness; and she was a clever worker too, for she it was who worked the mats that lay under his feet in the cart he drove. Upon this they all began to wrangle, and their words grew high. “And if the beautiful woman loved you so,” cried one man to the gipsy, “how could you come away and leave her?” The gipsy laughed. “She didn’t love me then,” he said, “but she will now, for I am taking her a charm which will make her love me more than any one on earth. She has only to drink out of the cup I carry here, and she will be mine for life.” Upon this they all laughed, and derided him still more. “Then let every one believe that what I say is true,” cried the gipsy, and from his bosom he took out a small brown bowl and waved it in the air, “and here is the cup to prove it.” And the potter’s heart almost stood still, for he recognized the cup which the gipsy girl had made for him years before. The other man laughed scornfully. “That proves nothing,” he said. “I might take the mat out from the cart and ask it to say if I spoke the truth; but mats and cups have no tongues to speak with, though my mat can say more than your cup, for there is a rhyme on it with a pattern of a cup; moreover, the rhyme is about a gipsy too.” “Let us see it,” cried they all. Then the man went out to his cart and fetched in a white and brown straw mat, covered with a pattern made of cups, and he read the rhyme which was written upon it— “From the gipsy’s cup I drank for love, From the gipsy’s cup I drank for hate, And when she gave me that cup again My love was gone and I drank too late.” On hearing this the potter jumped up, and dashed into their midst, and seized the cup.