"If I bore him malice never so much, it should be thrown to the wind for your sake, Bess, to whom I owe more than can be repaid."
"When you come back from the wars with honour and riches, you may repay any service the gipsy girl has done you a thousandfold."
"By using voice and influence to protect a persecuted people."
"I never heard of your folk being persecuted in the Isle."
"No; the cruel laws do not trouble us in this corner of the land, but this very year, twenty of our men were burned in Haddington, and as many women hanged."
"Their only crime was their gipsy blood. They were condemned 'for being Egyptians.' And just now we are being harried in Durham and in Yorkshire. You don't know your law, justice of the peace that you would have been, if you had come to be squire of Temple."
"In truth, I don't, if this be law. Are you sure on't?"
"I have seen a woman of our own tribe flogged along the streets, half naked, with her baby at her breast, sheltering its little body from the lash of the scourge with her bare and bleeding arms, and, after the flogging, she was branded in the cheek with a hot iron 'for being an Egyptian.'"
"Why do your people abide in England, then?"
"Because it is worse for them elsewhere."
"If ever I come to be in any kind of authority, things shall be so far better in England as one man can make them, that I swear."
"God be with you, your Shield and Preserver, and bring you home again to your own country, able and willing to keep your vow."
A letter from Anna awaited me on my return to the vicarage, from which I copy as much as it is fit for other eyes than mine to see.
"An armourer in Amsterdam has made himself a name and great gain by a shirt of mail, which is said to be verily pistol proof, and, at the same time, more light and flexible than any heretofore made. I have sent one for you, and one for your friend, and trust they will come to hand in time, and prove as useful as our military friends say they are. It will be great joy to me, if the idle gew-gaws with which they were bought have been converted into stout and serviceable covering for the breast of my reckless soldier and his comrade. I try to persuade myself that danger flees from those who court it, for well I know you will ever be in the forefront of battle, when you anywise may. But for my sake, pray remember that there is a soldierly prudence.