. The fire was
lighted, and cast a flickering and gigantic shadow upward; the figure of
a man standing behind Sir Bale Mardykes, on whose shoulder he placed a
lean hand. Sir Bale turned suddenly about, and saw Philip Feltram. He
was looking dark and stern, and did not remove his hand from his
shoulder as he peered into the Baronet's face with his deep-set mad
eyes.

"Ha, Philip, upon my soul!" exclaimed Sir Bale, surprised. "How time
flies! It seems only this minute since I saw the boat a mile and a half
away from the shore. Well--yes; there has been time; it is dark now. Ha,
ha! I assure you, you startled me. Won't you take something? Do. Shall I
touch the bell?"

"You have been troubled about those mortgages. I told you I should pay
them off, I thought."

Here there was a pause, and Sir Bale looked hard in Feltram's face. If
he had been in his ordinary spirits, or perhaps in some of his haunts
less solitary than Mardykes, he would have laughed; but here he had
grown unlike himself, gloomy and credulous, and was, in fact, a nervous
man.

Sir Bale smiled, and shook his head dismally.

"It is very kind of you, Feltram; the idea shows a kindly disposition. I
know you would do me a kindness if you could."

As Sir Bale, each looking in the other's eyes, repeated in this sentence
the words "kind," "kindly," "kindness," a smile lighted Feltram's face
with at each word an intenser light; and Sir Bale grew sombre in its
glare; and when he had done speaking, Feltram's face also on a sudden
darkened.

"I have found a fortune-teller in Cloostedd Wood. Look here."

And he drew from his pocket a leathern purse, which he placed on the
table in his hand; and Sir Bale heard the pleasant clink of coin in it.

"A fortune-teller! You don't mean to say she gave you that?" said Sir
Bale.

Feltram smiled again, and nodded.

"It _was_ the custom to give the fortuneteller a trifle. It is a great
improvement making _her_ fee you," observed Sir Bale, with an approach
to his old manner.

"He put that in my hand with a message," said Feltram.

"He? O, then it was a male fortune-teller!"

"Gipsies go in gangs, men and women. _He_ might lend, though _she_ told
fortunes," said Feltram.

"It's the first time I ever heard of gipsies lending money;" and he eyed
the purse with a whimsical smile.

With his lean fingers still holding it, Feltram sat down at the table.
His face contracted as if in cunning thought, and his chin sank upo