a steady stream of facts tumbled into his sphere of focus : seven years old when hed been dropped off ; his parents had hunted gypsies for most of their adult lives ; someone had always known where he was , and that that someone had tipped off uncle quincy to gregorys whereabouts another thought , meteor-like , streaked over the memories of the detailed maps and charts hed drawn , and he knew with a leap that a gypsy tribe ( this very one in fact the merlot tribe ) had left pencier village only weeks before his own first arrival at the village .