place where there is a regular justice. He heads them at night
when they go out to plunder the flocks, or to rob travellers on the
highway; and whatever they steal or plunder they divide amongst
them, always allowing the captain a third part of the whole.'

These Counts, being elected for such qualities as promised to be
useful to their troop or family, were consequently liable to be
deposed if at any time their conduct was not calculated to afford
satisfaction to their subjects. The office was not hereditary, and
though it carried along with it partial privileges, was both
toilsome and dangerous. Should the plans for plunder, which it was
the duty of the Count to form, miscarry in the attempt to execute
them; should individuals of the gang fall into the hand of justice,
and the Count be unable to devise a method to save their lives or
obtain their liberty, the blame was cast at the Count's door, and
he was in considerable danger of being deprived of his insignia of
authority, which consisted not so much in ornaments or in dress, as
in hawks and hounds with which the Senor Count took the diversion
of hunting when he thought proper. As the ground which he hunted
over was not his own, he incurred some danger of coming in contact
with the lord of the soil, attended, perhaps, by his armed
followers. There is a tradition (rather apocryphal, it is true),
that a Gitano chief, once pursuing this amusement, was encountered
by a real Count, who is styled Count Pepe. An engagement ensued
between the two parties, which ended in the Gypsies being worsted,
and their chief left dying on the field. The slain chief leaves a
son, who, at the instigation of his mother, steals the infant heir
of his father's enemy, who, reared up amongst the Gypsies, becomes
a chief, and, in process of time, hunting over the same ground,
slays Count Pepe in the very spot where the blood of the Gypsy had