was a Batchelour, but would not be so long; and that he was dearer to
some Body than he thought: the Knight still repeated, She was an idle
Baggage, and bid her go on. Ah Master, says the Gypsie, that roguish
Leer of yours makes a pretty Woman's Heart ake; you ha'n't that Simper
about the Mouth for Nothing---- The uncouth Gibberish with which all
this was uttered, like the Darkness of an Oracle, made us the more
attentive to it. To be short, the Knight left the Money with her that
he had crossed her Hand with, and got up again on his Horse.

As we were riding away, Sir Roger told me, that he knew several
sensible People who believed these Gypsies now and then foretold very
strange things; and for Half an Hour together appeared more jocund
than ordinary. In the Height of his good Humour, meeting a common
Beggar upon the Road who was no Conjuror, as he went to relieve him he
found his Pocket was pickt: That being a Kind of Palmistry at which
this Race of Vermin are very dexterous.

I might here entertain my Reader with Historical Remarks on this idle
profligate People, who infest all the Countries of _Europe_, and live
in the Midst of Governments in a kind of Commonwealth by themselves.
But instead of entering into Observations of this Nature, I shall fill
the remaining part of my Paper with a Story which is still fresh in
_Holland_, and was printed in one of our Monthly Accounts about twenty
Years ago. "As the _Trekschuyt_, or Hackney-boat, which carries
Passengers from _Leiden_ to _Amsterdam_, was putting off, a Boy
running along the Side of the Canal, desir'd to be taken in; which the
Master of the Boat refused, because the Lad had not quite Money enough
to pay the usual Fare. An eminent Merchant being pleased with the
Looks of the Boy, and secretly touched with Compassion towards him,
paid the Money for him, and ordered him to be taken on board. Upon
talking with him afterwards, he found that he could speak readily in
three or four Languages, and learned upon further Examination that he
had been stolen away when he was a Child by a Gypsy, and had rambled
ever since with a gang of those Strolers up and down several Parts of
_Europe_. It happened that the Merchant, whose heart seems to have
inclined towards the Boy by a secret kind of Instinct, had himself
lost a Child some Years before. The Parents, after a long Search for
him, gave him for drowned in one of the Canals with which that Country
abounds; and the Mother