up at me, with a droll, puzzled expression, and
said, "Patchessa _tu_ adovo?" (Do _you_ believe in that?) With a wink,
I answered, "Why not? I, too, tell fortunes myself." _Anch io sono
pittore_. It seemed to satisfy him, for he replied, with a nod-wink, and
proceeded to pour forth the balance of his thoughts, if he had any, into
the music of his violin.

When the ladies had all been instructed as to their future, my friend,
who had been in the East, must needs have his destiny made known unto
him. He did not believe in this sort of thing, you know,--of course not.
But he had lived a long time among Orientals, and he just happened to
wish to know how certain speculations would fall out, and he loves, above
all things, a lark, or anything out of the common. So he went in. And
when alone with the sybil, she began to talk to him in Romany.

"Oh, I say, now, old lady, stow that!" he exclaimed. "I don't understand
you."

"You don't understand me!" exclaimed the fortune-teller. "Perhaps you
didn't understand your own mother when she talked Romany to you. What's
the use of your tryin' to make yourself out a Gorgio to _me_? Don't I
know our people? Didn't your friend there talk Romanes? Isn't he all
Romaneskas? And didn't I hear you with my own ears count up to ten in
Romany? And now, after that, you would deny your own blood and people!
Yes, you've dwelt in Gorgines so long that you think your eyes are blue
and your hair is yellow, my son, and you have been far over the sea; but
wherever you went you knew Romanes, if you don't know your own color.
But you shall hear your fortune. There is lead in the mines and silver
in the lead, and wealth for him who is to win it, and that will be a dark
man who has been nine times over the sea, and eaten his bread under the
black tents, and been three times near death, once from a horse, and once
from a man, and once through a woman. And you will know something you
don't know now before a month is over, and something will be found that
is now hidden, and has been hidden since the world was made. And there's
a good fortune coming to the man it was made for, before the oldest tree
that's a-growing was a seed, and that's a man as knows how to count
Romanes up to ten, and many a more thing beside that, that he's learned
beyond the great water."

And so we went our ways, the harp and violin sounds growing fainter as we
receded, till they were like the buzzing of bees in dry