f 
JUST BEFORE WINTER. 163, 
grass, the night that steals on till the stubbles alone are 
light among the fields—the gipsy sleeps in his tent on 
: mother earth; it is, you sec, primeval man with primeval 
nature. One thing he gains at least—an iron health, an 
untiring foot, women whose haunches bear any burden, 
children whose naked feet are not afraid of the dew. 
By sharp contrast, the Anglo-Saxon labourer who 
lives in the cottage close by and works at the old 
timbered farmstead is profoundly religious. 
The gipsies return from their rambling soon after 
the end of hop-picking; and hold a kind of informal fair 
on the village green with cockshies, swings, and all the 
clumsy games that extract. money from clumsy hands, 
It is almost the only time of the year when the labouring 
people have any cash ; their weekly wages are mortgaged 
beforehand ; the hop-picking money comes in a lump, 
and they have something to spend. Hundreds of pounds 
are paid to meet the tally or account kept by the pickers, 
the: old word tally still surviving, and this has to be 
charmed out of their pockets. Besides the gipsies’ fair, 
the little shopkeepers in the villages send out circulars to 
the ‘most outlying cottage announcing the annual sale 
at an immense sacrifice ; anything to get the hop-pickers’ 
cash; and the packmen come round, too, with jewelry 
and lace and finery. The village by the forest has been 
haunted by the gipsies for a century ; its: population in 
the last thirty years has much increased, and it is very 
curious to observe how the gipsy element has impreg- 
nated the place. Not only are the names gipsy, the 
faces are gipsy ; the black coarse hair, high cheek-bones; 
and peculiar forehead linger; even many of the shop- 
keepers have a distinct trace, and others that do not 
show it so much are known to be nevertheless related. 
Until land became so valuable—it -is now again 
a M2 
