pon the comparative quiet and solitude of the moon-drenched
gardens. Whereupon her destiny grinned a heartless grin and arranged
to throw her to the lions that, all unsuspected, raged in the maiden
bosom of Mercedes Pride.

The tireless ingenuity with which that rampant spinster devised ways
and means of rendering herself a peripatetic pest had long since won
the ungrudged admiration of Sally, who elected to be amused more than
annoyed by the impertinences, the pretentiousness, the fawning
adulation and the corrosive jealousy of Mrs. Gosnold's licensed
pick-thank. And when she had first divined the woman beneath the
disguise of the witch Sally had wondered what new method of making a
sprightly nuisance of herself Miss Pride had invented to go with her
impersonation.

It proved, naturally enough, remembering the limitations of a New
England maiden's imagination, to be compulsory fortune-telling with
the aid of cards, a crystal ball, the palm of the victim's hand,
unlimited effrontery, and a "den" rigged up in a corner of a hedge
with a Navajo blanket for a canopy and for properties two wooden
stools, a small folding table, a papier-mache skull, a jointed wooden
snake, an artificial pumpkin-head with a candle in it, and a black cat
tethered by a string to a stake in the ground and wishing he had never
been born.

Within this noisome lair the sorceress squatted and practised her
unholy arts upon all comers without mercy or distinction as to race,
caste, sex, age, colour, or previous condition of servitude. And when
trade slackened (as inevitably it did when "the young people"
for whose "amusement" this mummery ostensibly was staged asserted
their ennui by avoiding the neighbourhood) Ecstatica, nothing daunted,
would rise up and go forth and stalk her prey among the more mature,
dragging them off forcibly by the hand, when needs must, to sit at her
table and sympathise with the unfortunate cat and humour her nonsense.

Thus she inveigled Sally when the latter unwarily wandered her way.

Miss Pride knew her victim perfectly, but for the sake of appearances
kept up the semblance of mystification.

"Sit you there, my pretty," she grabbed vivaciously, two hands on
Sally's shoulders urging her to rest on one of the stools. "Don't be
afraid of my simple magic; the black art has nothing to do with the
lore of the wise old woman. Just show me your rosy palm, and I will
tell you your fortune. No, you needn't cross my palm wit