It was the early July that is still reminiscently June. Orioles and tanagers were still flashing through the Hudson River green, rose-breasted grosbeaks and indigo birds had only just moved on to other mysterious leafage. The fields and hills were dusted with silver daisies and amid slopes of feathery grass coreopsis began to toss golden crowns. Out on the country roads the deep woods began to show, through their mystical vistas, tall towered carillons of speckled lily bells, and mountain laurel tossed pink shells on clumps of foam-lit dark. The car whirled along rocky bits of road where tall plantains, and milkweed and fireweed, things of orange and rose and scarlet plume burned along the ditches of water-worn gravel, or by the lichened gray of ranging stone walls. It all spelled myriad fecundities, ripe gay plant life, a thousand dusts and washes of seed, a thousand marchers of hidden atoms, a thousand caravans and progression of strange mysterious pollen. The rich Chord of Summer was resolving throughout the countryside, played by a hand that goes lovingly back each year to the old hymn of begetting, and birth, and death! The old, old hymn of creation that sings us all in and out of being. A gypsy camp on a rocky hillside back of the road showed dingy tents, and the tethered horses and empty hooded wagons stood in a sea of wild roses and buttercups. The gypsies, rather modern, with a decided tendency to fireless cookers and hair-nets and graphophones, were brown and smiling in indolent gypsy leisure. Minga stared upon them with awe; she dimly got their Pagan raison d'être, their rising to sunrise, their sleeping in cold stars and dew; the girl looked delightedly upon the strong bodies of little, half-naked children, and though daintily clad herself, she got a sense of the primal poetry and rags of the vagabond women who looked not too respectfully out to the showy car. "Pretty lady, have your fortune told," called out one old hag. The gleaming lawless faces said impertinent lawless things, the teeth glittered, and the eyes were saucy. Minga was for halting the car and climbing down for this experience, but her companion restrained her. "Ah, don't!" begged Dunstan disgustedly. "Say, they're fresh. Don't monkey with 'em, they have diseases, they're always horribly dirty. Don't go near them," shuddered the boy; "they make me crawl, somehow." The old crone sitting by a steaming kettle swung on a pole looked out to them leeringly. That she could have heard their comments seemed incredible to the two in the automobile, but the black gaze seemed to read their very souls. "Ah--Mates," the old woman called out teasingly, meaningly, with a curious warning. "Mates," then as the impudent curious eyes surveyed them, this woman made a strange gesture, pagan, clairvoyant and authoritative. "Mates," she screamed after them, "there's a dead body between ye; it joins ye, Mates, Mates."