passion of the open road which was not an elaborate and furtive evasion
of the law and a defiance of social ostracism. Here she and her father
moved in an atmosphere of esteem touched by mystery, but not by
suspicion; here civilization in its most elastic organization and
flexible conventions, had laid its hold upon her, had done in this
expansive, loosely knitted social system what could never have been
accomplished in a great city--in London, Vienna, Rome, or New York. She
had had here the old free life of the road, so full of the scent of deep
woods--the song of rivers, the carol of birds, the murmuring of trees,
the mysterious and devout whisperings of the night, the happy communings
of stray peoples meeting and passing, the gaiety and gossip of the
market-place, the sound of church bells across a valley, the storms and
wild lightnings and rushing torrents, the cries of frightened beasts, the
wash and rush of rain, the sharp pain of frost, and the agonies of some
lost traveller rescued from the wide inclemency, the soft starlight
after, the balm of the purged air, and "rosy-fingered morn" blinking
blithely at the world. The old life of the open road she had had here
without anything of its shame, its stigma, and its separateness, its
discordance with the stationary forces of law and organized community.

Wild moments there had been of late years when she longed for the faces
of Romany folk gathered about the fire, while some Romany 'pral' drew all
hearts with the violin or the dulcimer. When Ambrose or Gilderoy or
Christo responded to the pleadings of some sentimental lass, and sang to
the harpist's strings:

"Cold blows the wind over my true love,
Cold blow the drops of rain;
I never, never had but one sweetheart;
In the green wood he was slain,"