Evidently one of the vans had come to grief, and several men of the party were making a great show of repairing it.

After I had run the gauntlet of the begging children, and was just out of ear-shot of the group, I turned round to survey it from a distance.

It was encamped on a slight rise of the undulating road, and from where I stood tents and vans and men were clearly silhouetted against the sky.

The road ran through and a little higher than the encampment, which occupied both sides of it.

Presently the figure of a young man separated itself from the rest, stept up on to the smooth road, and standing in the middle of it, in an absorbed attitude, began to make a movement with his hands as though winding string round a top.