This feminine caprice angered Dan, and piqued his curiosity. He felt as though he were in a fairy wood, searching for some princess, spellbound by a powerful magician. Search as he might, the result was always the same. After a time he waxed sulky, and stayed persistently by his camp-fire, hoping that, if Destiny willed this phantom beauty to be his wife, she would come in due time into his presence. Not that he really believed in such fatalism, but the prophecy of Mother Jericho was not without a certain influence on his mind. He was of a somewhat impressionable nature, and at a rather impressionable age; so it might be that the fulfilment of one prediction led him to attach more value to the others than they deserved. Perhaps, also, he hoped to baffle Fate by remaining snug in his dell; but if so, the hope was vain, for in due course came the hour of fulfilment, and with it the woman. In the gipsy camp he found a new phase of life which amused him exceedingly, and was not sparing of his company to the gentle Romany. No more hospitable hosts could have been found than those ragged wanderers who made the world their home. They invited him to dip into their stew-pot, danced for him by the red firelight, sang wild gipsy songs to him in unknown tongues, and, miracle of miracles, were scrupulously honest in regard to his goods and chattels. Mother Jericho and Tim in command of the tribe, were his firm friends, else he might have found these vagrants less inclined to keep their thievish fingers from his belongings. As it was, he lost not so much as a stick, and began to think that the magpie propensities of the gipsies had been somewhat overrated. This wild life among wild people pleased him, and he found the days pass rapidly in the indulging of such simple pleasures. Every morning he rode Simon to the seashore for a matutinal swim, but never did he meet Joy in the person of Meg "coming up through the Gates of Dawn," though he kept a sharp look-out for a recurrence of the phenomenon. On his way back to camp he bought eggs and milk and bread, so as to lay in a stock of provisions for the day. For the rest of the golden hours he philandered about the woods in chase of that invisible mockery, or paid an idle visit to gipsydom. When all other pleasures palled, he sat smoking in the sunshine and read "Lavengro." The book never failed to enchain his fancy.