coat, much patched, and a black wide-awake hat, pulled down over his
eyes. From his expression--so scowling and vindictive was it--the
barrister judged his ultimate destiny to lie between Pentridge and the
gallows.

As they entered, the fortune-teller raised her head, and, shading her
eyes with one skinny hand, looked curiously at the new comers. Calton
thought he had never seen such a repulsive-looking old crone; and, in
truth, her ugliness was, in its very grotesqueness well worthy the
pencil of a Dore. Her face was seamed and lined with innumerable
wrinkles, clearly defined by the dirt which was in them; bushy grey
eyebrows, drawn frowningly over two piercing black eyes, whose light
was undimmed by age; a hook nose, like the beak of a bird of prey, and
a thin-lipped mouth devoid of teeth. Her hair was very luxurious and
almost white, and was tied up in a great bunch by a greasy bit of black
ribbon. As to her chin, Calton, when he saw it wagging to and fro,
involuntarily quoted Macbeth's lines--

"Ye should be women,
And yet your beards forbid me to interpret
That ye are so."

She was no bad representative of the weird sisters.

As they entered she eyed them viciously, demanding,

"What the blazes they wanted."

"Want your booze," cried the child, with an elfish laugh, as she shook
back her tangled hair.

"Get out, you whelp," croaked the old hag, shaking one skinny fist at
her, "or I'll tear yer 'eart out."

"Yes, she can go." said Kilsip, nodding to the girl, "and you can
clear, too," he added, sharply, turning to the young man, who stood
still holding the door open.

At first he seemed inclined to dispute the detective's order, but
ultimately obeyed him, muttering, as he went out, something about "the
blooming cheek of showin' swells cove's cribs." The child followed him
out, her exit being accelerated by Mother Guttersnipe, who, with a
rapidity only attained by long practice, seized the shoe from one of
her feet, and flung it at the head of the rapidly retreating girl.

"Wait till I ketches yer, Lizer," she shrieked, with a volley of oaths,
"I'll break yer 'ead for ye!"

Lizer responded with a shrill laugh of disdain, and vanished through
the shaky door, which she closed after her.

When she had disappeared Mother Guttersnipe took a drink from the
broken cup, and, gathering all her greasy cards together in a
business-like way, looked insinuatingly at Calton, with a suggestive
leer.

"It