In his visions he
had seen her--Fleda Fawe, not Fleda Druse--laying the cloth and bringing
out the silver cups, or stretching the Turkey rugs upon the ground to
make a couch for two bright-eyed lovers to whom the night was as the day,
radiant and full of joy. He had shut his eyes and beheld hillsides where
abandoned castles stood, and the fox and the squirrel and the hawk gave
shade and welcome to the dusty pilgrims of the road; or, when the wild
winds blew in winter, gave shelter and wood for the fire, and a sense of
homeliness among the companionable trees.
He had seen himself and this beautiful Romany 'chi' at some village fair,
while the lesser Romany folk told fortunes, or bought and sold horses,
and the lesser still tinkered or worked in gold or brass; he had seen
them both in a great wagon with bright furnishings and brass-girt harness
on their horses, lording it over all, rich, dominant and admired. In his
visions he had even seen a Romany babe carried in his arms to a Christian
church and there baptized in grandeur as became the child of the head of
the people. His imagination had also seen his own tombstone in some
Christian churchyard near to the church porch, where he would not be
lonely when he was dead, but could hear the gossip of the people as they
went in and out of church; and on the tombstone some such inscription as
he had seen once at Pforzheim--"To the high-born Lord Johann, Earl of
Little Egypt, to whose soul God be gracious and merciful.
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