ortunes.

She was continually practicing on the credulity of silly girls; and
took advantage of their ignorance to cheat and deceive them. Many an
innocent servant has she caused to be suspected of a robbery, while
she herself, perhaps, was in league with the thief. Many a harmless
maid has she brought to ruin by first contriving plots and events
herself, and then pretending to foretell them. She had not, to be
sure, the power of really foretelling things, because she had no
power of seeing into futurity; but she had the art sometimes to
bring them about according as she foretold them. So she got that
credit for her wisdom which really belonged to her wickedness.

Rachel was also a famous interpreter of dreams, and could
distinguish exactly between the fate of any two persons who happened
to have a mole on the right or the left cheek. She had a cunning way
of getting herself off when any of her prophecies failed. When she
explained a dream according to the natural appearance of things, and
it did not come to pass; then she would get out of the scrape by
saying, that this sort of dreams went by contraries. Now of two very
opposite things, the chance always is that one of them may turn out
to be true; so in either case she kept up the cheat.

Rachel, in one of her rambles, stopped at the house of Farmer
Jenkins. She contrived to call when she knew the master of the house
was from home, which indeed was her usual way. She knocked at the
door; the maids being in the field haymaking, Mrs. Jenkins went to
open it herself. Rachel asked her if she would please to let her
light her pipe? This was a common pretense, when she could find no
other way of getting into a house. While she was filling her pipe,
she looked at Mrs. Jenkins, and said, she could tell her some good
fortune. The farmer's wife, who was a very inoffensive, but a weak
and superstitious woman, was curious to know what she meant. Rachel
then looked about carefully, and shutting the door with a mysterious
air, asked her if she was sure nobody would hear them. This
appearance of mystery was at once delightful and terrifying to Mrs.
Jenkins, who, with trembling agitation, bid the cunning woman speak
out. "Then," said Rachel in a solemn whisper, "there is to my
certain knowledge a pot of money hid under one of the stones in your
cellar." "Indeed!" said Mrs. Jenkins, "it is impossible, for now I
think of it, I dreamed last night I was in prison for debt." "Did
you