It is very possible that the reader during his country walks or
rides has observed, on coming to four cross-roads, two or three
handfuls of grass lying at a small distance from each other down
one of these roads; perhaps he may have supposed that this grass
was recently plucked from the roadside by frolicsome children, and
flung upon the ground in sport, and this may possibly have been the
case; it is ten chances to one, however, that no children's hands
plucked them, but that they were strewed in this manner by Gypsies,
for the purpose of informing any of their companions, who might be
straggling behind, the route which they had taken; this is one form
of the patteran or trail. It is likely, too, that the gorgio
reader may have seen a cross drawn at the entrance of a road, the
long part or stem of it pointing down that particular road, and he
may have thought nothing of it, or have supposed that some
sauntering individual like himself had made the mark with his
stick: not so, courteous gorgio; ley tiro solloholomus opre lesti,
YOU MAY TAKE YOUR OATH UPON IT that it was drawn by a Gypsy finger,
for that mark is another of the Rommany trails; there is no mistake
in this.
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