Food they must have! There is corn in Egypt! When gentle spring returns, then heigho! for the country lanes, villages and provincial towns, and as they move from place to place they leave their trail behind them.
And what a trail it is! ask the governors of our local prisons, ask the guardians of any country districts, ask the farmers, aye, and ask the timid women and pretty children, and, my word for it, they will be able to tell you much of these strange beings that returning summer brings unfailingly before them.

Their lodging is sometimes the cold hard ground, or the haystack, or perchance, if in luck, an outbuilding.
The prisons are their sanatoria, the workhouses their homes of rest, and the casual ward their temporary conveniences.

But always before them is one objective, for a common lodging-house is open to them, and its hypnotism draws them on and on.
So on they go, procreating as they go.

Carrying desolation with them, leaving desolation behind them.

The endurance of these people--I suppose they must be called people--is marvellous and their rate of progression is sometimes astonishing; weary and footsore, maimed, halt or blind they get over the ground at a good uniform pace.
Look at that strange being that has just passed us as we sat on the bank of a country lane; he goes along with slouching gait and halting steps; he has no boots worthy of the name, his tattered trousers, much too long, give us glimpses of his flesh.