Dickie Carpenter breaks off his recent engagement to Esther Lawes and confides the reason to Mcfarlane, a dour Scot who is the fiancée of Rachel Lawes, Esther's younger sister. Dickie, a former naval man, has had an aversion to gypsies since his childhood, when he started to have recurring dreams in which a he would be in a given situation and suddenly feel a presence. When he looked up, a gypsy woman stood there looking at him. The sudden appearance of this woman always unnerved him, although it wasn't until some years after these dreams started that he encountered a real gypsy. This happened on a walk in the New Forest, and she warned him not to take a certain path. He ignored her and the wooden bridge he was crossing broke beneath his weight, casting him into the fast-running stream below and nearly drowning him.