"Master, you want me to tell you all the truth,--yes? If it's a big or a
little thing, I'll tell the truth, so help me God, upon my life! The
devil be in my soul if I tell the least lie! And what is it? Did I ever
in all my life steal a chicken? and what do the gypsies do with the
feathers, because nobody ever saw any near a gypsy tent? Never, sir,--I
_never_ stole a chicken; and in all the sixty years that I've been on the
roads, in all that time I never saw or heard or knew of a gypsy's
stealing one. What's that you say?--that Petulengro told you yesterday
that he carried a gun to kill _chickens_! Ah yes, sir,--that is true,
too. The man meant in his heart wood chickens [that is, pheasants]. But
not _domestic_ chickens. Gypsies never steal _them_." {324}