As the Gypsies were mounting their horses, I heard the dusty
phantom exclaim -

'Brother, you are an arrant ring-maker and a horse-breaker; you'll
make a hempen ring to break your own neck of a horse one of these
days.'

They pressed their horses' flanks, again leaped over the ditches,
and speedily vanished, amidst the whirlwinds of dust which they
raised upon the road.

The words of the phantom Gypsy were ominous. Gypsy Will was
eventually executed for a murder committed in his early youth, in
company with two English labourers, one of whom confessed the fact
on his death-bed. He was the head of the clan Young, which, with
the clan Smith, still haunts two of the eastern counties.


SOME FURTHER PARTICULARS RESPECTING THE ENGLISH GYPSIES


It is difficult to say at what period the Gypsies or Rommany made
their first appearance in England. They had become, however, such
a nuisance in the time of Henry the Eighth, Philip and Mary, and
Elizabeth, that Gypsyism was denounced by various royal statutes,
and, if persisted in, was to be punished as felony without benefit
of clergy; it is probable, however, that they had overrun England
long before the period of the earliest of these monarchs. The
Gypsies penetrate into all countries, save poor ones, and it is