swarthy men and women. Hastily they harnessed the ponies and took down
the tent, and packed the carts, and in a remarkably brief space of time
the party rode off with the utmost speed.

Three years passed, during which I increased considerably in stature and
strength, and, let us hope, improved in mind. For at school I had learnt
the whole of Lilly's "Latin Grammar"; but I was very ignorant of
figures. Our regiment was moved to Edinburgh, where the castle was a
garrison for soldiers. In that city I and my brother were sent to the
high school. Here the scholars were constantly fighting, though no great
harm was done. I had seen deaths happen through fights at school in
England.

I became a daring cragsman, a character to which an English lad can
seldom aspire, for in England there are neither crags nor mountains. The
Scots are expert climbers, and I was now a Scot in most things,
particularly the language. The castle in which I dwelt stood on a craggy
rock, to scale which was my favourite diversion.

In the autumn of 1815, when the war with Napoleon was ended, we were
ordered to Ireland, where at school I read Latin and Greek with a nice
old clergyman, and of an evening studied French and Italian with a
banished priest, Italian being my favourite.

It was in a horse fair I came across Jasper Petulengro, a young gipsy of
whom I had caught sight in the gipsy camp I have already alluded to. He
was amazed to see me, and in the most effusively friendly way claimed me
as a "pal," calling me Sapengro, or "snake-master," in allusion, he
said, to the viper incident. He said he was also called Pharaoh, and was
the horse-master of the camp.