‘O, what a handsome face! what a royal person!’ exclaimed the whole family as I returned, in Spanish, but in the whining, canting tones peculiar to the Gypsies, when they are bent on victimising. ‘A more ugly Busno it has never been our chance to see,’ said the same voices in the next breath, speaking in the jargon of the tribe. ‘Won’t your Moorish Royalty please to eat something?’ said the tall hag. ‘We have nothing in the house; but I will run out and buy a fowl, which I hope may prove a royal peacock to nourish and strengthen you.’ ‘I hope it may turn to drow in your entrails,’ she muttered to the rest in Gypsy. She then ran down, and in a minute returned with an old hen, which, on my arrival, I had observed below in the stable. ‘See this beautiful fowl,’ said she, ‘I have been running over all Tarifa to procure it for your kingship; trouble enough I have had to obtain it, and dear enough it has cost me. I will now cut its throat.’ ‘Before you kill it,’ said I, ‘I should wish to know what you paid for it, that there may be no dispute about it in the account.’ ‘Two dollars I paid for it, most valorous and handsome sir; two dollars it cost me, out of my own quisobi—out of my own little purse.’ I saw it was high time to put an end to these zalamerias, and therefore exclaimed in Gitáno, ‘You mean two brujis (reals), O mother of all the witches, and that is twelve cuartos more than it is worth.’ ‘Ay Dios mio, whom have we here?’ exclaimed the females. ‘One,’ I replied, ‘who knows you well and all your ways. Speak! am I to have the hen for two reals? if not, I shall leave the house this moment.’ ‘O yes, to be sure, brother, and for nothing if you wish it,’ said the tall woman, in natural and quite altered tones; ‘but why did you enter the house speaking in Corahai like a Bengui? We thought you a Busno, but we now see that you are of our religion; pray sit down and tell us where you have been.’ . . _Myself_.—‘Now, my good people, since I have answered your questions, it is but right that you should answer some of mine; pray who are you? and how happens it that you are keeping this inn?’ _Gypsy Hag_.—‘Verily, brother, we can scarcely tell you who we are. All we know of ourselves is, that we keep this inn, to our trouble and sorrow, and that our parents kept it before us; we were all born in this house, where I suppose we shall die.’ _Myself_.—‘Who is the master of the house, and whose are these children?’ _Gypsy Hag_.—‘The master of the house is the fool, my brother, who stands before you without saying a word; to him belong these children, and the cripple in the chair is his wife, and my cousin. He has also two sons who are grown-up men; one is a chumajarri (shoemaker), and the other serves a tanner.’ _Myself_.—‘Is it not contrary to the law of the Cales to follow such trades?’