A Gipsy dog is, if we study him, a true character.

Approach a camp: a black hound, with sleepy eyes, lies by a tent; he does not bark at you or act uncivilly, for that forms no part of his master's life or plans, but wherever you go those eyes are fixed on you.

By-and-by he disappears--he is sure to do so if there are no people about the _tan_--and then reappears with some dark descendant of the Dom and Domni.

I have always been under the impression that these dogs step out and mutter a few words in Rommany--their deportment is, at any rate, Rommanesque to the highest degree, indicating a transition from the barbarous silence of doghood to Christianly intelligence.

You may persuade yourself that the Gipsies do not mind your presence, but rest assured that though he may lie on his side with his back turned, the cunning _jucko_ is carefully noting all you do.