nd hares which they had purchased or "taken" in the village.
They halted as soon as they had passed me, and prepared to go into
camp; so I waited a little to observe them. During the process of
arranging the carts for the night one of the women became enraged
at the father of her brood because he would not aid her in the
preparation of the simple tent under which the family was to repose.
The woman ran to him, clenching her fist and screaming forth invective
which, I am convinced, had I understood it and had it been directed at
me, I should have found extremely disagreeable. After thus lashing the
culprit with language for some time, she broke forth into screams and
danced frantically around him. He arose, visibly disturbed, and I
fancied that his savage nature would come uppermost, and that he might
be impelled to give her a brutal beating. But he, on the contrary,
advanced leisurely toward her and spat upon the ground with an
expression of extreme contempt. She seemed to feel this much more than
she would have felt a blow, and her fury redoubled. She likewise spat;
he again repeated the contemptuous act; and after both had gratified
the anger which was consuming them, they walked off in different
directions. The battle was over, and I was not sorry to notice a few
minutes later that _paterfamilias_ had thought better of his conduct,
and was himself spreading the tent and setting forth his wandering
Lares and Penates.

A few hundred yards from the point where these wanderers had settled
for the night I found some rude huts in which other gypsies were
residing permanently. These huts were mere shelters placed against
steep banks or hedges, and within there was no furniture save one
or two blankets, a camp-kettle and some wicker baskets. Young girls
twelve or thirteen years of age crouched naked about a smouldering
fire. They did not seem unhappy or hungry; and none of these strange
people paid any attention to me as I drove on to the inn, which, oddly
enough, was at some distance from the main village, hard by the Danube
side, in a gully between the mountains, where coal-barges lay moored.
The Servian Mountains, covered from base to summit with dense forests,
cast a deep gloom over the vale. In a garden on a terrace behind the
inn, by the light of a flickering candle, I ate a frugal dinner, and
went to bed much impressed by the darkness, in such striking contrast
to the delightful and picturesque scenes through which I