19/68 Something of the wild and weird in the mountain Italian life of these ex-contadine seemed to wake like unholy fire, and answer sympathetically to the Gipsy wizard-spell. Over mountain and sea, and through dark forests with legends of _streghe_ and Zingari, these semi-outlaws of society, the Neapolitan and Rommany, recognised each other intuitively. The handsomest young gentleman in England could not have interested these handsome young sinners as the dark-brown, grey-haired old vagabond did. Heaven knows what they talked, for the girls knew no English, but they whispered; they could not write little notes, so they kept passing different objects, to which Gipsy and Italian promptly attached a meaning. |