unutterable,-- shock me with a new sensation of formidable vulgarity. I
want to cry out loud, "You have no right to sing that song!" For I have
heard it sung by the lips of the dearest and fairest being in my little
world;-- and that this rude, coarse man should are to sing it vexes me like
a mockery,-- angers me like an insolence. But only for a moment!... With
the utterance of the syllables "to-day," that deep, grim voice suddenly
breaks into a quivering tenderness indescribable;-- then, marvelously
changing, it mellows into tones sonorous and rich as the bass of a great
organ,-- while a sensation unlike anything ever felt before takes me by the
throat... What witchcraft has he learned? what secret has he found -- this
scowling man of the road?... Oh! is there anybody else in the whole world
who can sing like that?... And the form of the singer flickers and dims;--
and the house, and the lawn, and all visible shapes of things tremble and
swim before me. Yet instinctively I fear that man;-- I almost hate him; and
I feel myself flushing with anger and shame because of his power to move me
thus...



"He made you cry," Robert compassionately observes, to my further
confusion,-- as the harper strides away, richer by a gift of sixpence taken
without thanks... "But I think he must be a gipsy. Gipsies are bad people
-- and they are wizards... Let us go back to the wood."


We climb again to the pines, and there squat down upon the sun-flecked
grass, and look over town and sea. But we do not play as before: the spell
of the wizard is strong upon us both... "Perhaps he is a goblin," I venture
at last, "or a fairy?" "No," says Robert,-- "only a gipsy. But that is
nearly as bad. They steal children, you know."...