The person had been seated before, but was now in a standing posture, and leaning forward on a stick on which he rested both hands.

The attitude was no less familiar to her than the tone of voice had been.

It was her grandfather.
Her first impulse was to call to him; her next to wonder who his associates could be, and for what purpose they were together.

Some vague apprehension succeeded, and, yielding to the strong inclination it awakened, she drew nearer to the place; not advancing across the open field, however, but creeping towards it by the hedge.
In this way she advanced within a few feet of the fire, and standing among a few young trees, could both see and hear, without much danger of being observed.
There were no women or children, as she had seen in other gipsy camps they had passed in their wayfaring, and but one gipsy--a tall athletic man, who stood with his arms folded, leaning against a tree at a little distance off, looking now at the fire, and now, under his black eyelashes, at three other men who were there, with a watchful but half-concealed interest in their conversation.

Of these, her grandfather was one; the others she recognised as the first card-players at the public-house on the eventful night of the storm--the man whom they had called Isaac List, and his gruff companion.