ds and of
Worth's dresses, what would a girl of average charms be worth to a
stranger? Let us reflect!

It was an October morning, and, pausing after a run, I let the pack and
the "course-men" sweep away, while I sat in a pleasant spot to enjoy the
air and scenery. The solemn grandeur of groves and the quiet dignity of
woodland glades, barred with rays of solid-seeming sunshine, such as the
saint of old hung his cloak on, the brook into which the overhanging
chestnuts drop, as if in sport, their creamy golden little boats of
leaves, never seem so beautiful or impressive as immediately after a rush
and cry of many men, succeeded by solitude and silence. Little by little
the bay of the hounds, the shouts of the hunters, and the occasional
sound of the horn grew fainter; the birds once more appeared, and sent
forth short calls to their timid friends. I began again to notice who my
neighbors were, as to daisies and heather which resided around the stone
on which I sat, and the exclusive circle of a fairy-ring at a little
distance, which, like many exclusive circles, consisted entirely of
mushrooms.

As the beagle-sound died away, and while the hounds were "working around"
to the road, I heard footsteps approaching, and looking up saw before me
a gypsy woman and a boy. She was a very gypsy woman, an ideal witch,
nut-brown, tangle-haired, aquiline of nose, and fierce-eyed; and fiercely
did she beg! As amid broken Gothic ruins, overhung with unkempt ivy, one
can trace a vanished and strange beauty, so in this worn face of the
Romany, mantled by neglected tresses, I could see the remains of what
must have been once a wonderful though wild loveliness. As I looked into
those serpent eyes; trained for a long life to fascinate in
fortune-telling simple dove-girls, I could readily understand the
implicit faith with which many writers in the olden time spoke of the
"fascination" peculiar to female glances. "The multiplication of women,"
said the rabbis, "is the increase of witches," for the belles in Israel
were killing girls, with arrows, the bows whereof are formed by pairs of
jet-black eyebrows joined in one. And thus it was that these black-eyed
beauties, by _mashing_ {108} men for many generations, with shafts shot
sideways and most wantonly, at last sealed their souls into the corner of
their eyes, as you have heard before. Cotton Mather tells us that these
witches with peaked eye-corners could never weep but three t