"Oh, don't be afraid on my account," said the word-master: "if I were to meet him, I could easily manage him one way or the other: I know all kinds of strange words and names, and, as I told you before, I sometimes hit people when they put me out." He accordingly purchases Slingsby's property, and further invests in a waggoner's frock.

To the pony he gives the name of Ambrol, which signifies in gypsy a pear.

He spends a first night under the hedge in a drizzling rain, and then spends two or three days in endeavouring to teach himself the mysteries of his new trade.

While living in this solitary way he is detected by Mrs.Herne, an old gypsy woman, "one of the hairy ones," as she terms herself, who carried "a good deal of devil's tinder" about with her, and had a bitter grudge against the word- master.

She hated him for having wormed himself, as she fancied, into the confidence of the gypsies and learned their language.