o follow her, he may find
kinship's courting get the better of a far-off lover's fancy."

"_Dhe!_" said I; "you have your story most pat. And what now, would
you say, would be the end of it all--coming to the real business of the
palmist, which, I take it, is not to give past history but to forecast
fate?"

I'll not deny but I was startled by the woman's tale, for here was Betty
and here was MacLachlan put before me as plainly as they were in my own
mind day and night since we left Inneraora.

The woman more closely scrutinised my hand, paused a while, and seemed
surprised herself at its story.

"After all," said she, "the woman is not going to marry the man she
loves."

I plucked my hand away with a "Pshaw! what does it matter? If I doubled
your fee you would give me the very best fortune in your wit to devise."

The Irishman with the silver eye here jostled a merchantman, who drew
his gully-knife, so that soon there was a fierce quarrel that it took
all the landlord's threats and vigour of arm to put an end ta By this
time I was becoming tired of my company; now that the spae-wife had
planted the seed of distress in my mind, those people were tawdry,
unclean, wretched. They were all in rags, foul and smelling; their
music was but noise demented. I wondered at myself there in so vicious
a company. And Betty--home--love--peace--how all the tribe of them
suddenly took up every corner of my mind. Oh! fool, fool, I called
myself, to be thinking your half-hearted wooing of the woman had left
any fondness behind it. From the beginning you were second in the field,
and off the field now--a soldier of a disgraced army, has the cousin not
all the chances in the world? Hell be the true friend in trouble, hell
console her loneliness in a sacked burgh town; a woman's affection is so
often her reward for simple kindness that he has got her long ago at no
greater cost than keeping her company in her lonely hours. And you are
but the dreamer, standing off trembling and flushing like a boy when you
should be boldly on her cheek, because you dare not think yourself her
equal The father's was the true word: "There's one thing a woman will
not abide, that her lover should think lightly either of himself or
her."

All that black stream of sorry thought went rushing through me as I
sat with an empty jug in my hand in a room that was sounding like a
market-place. With a start I wakened up to find the landlord making a
buffoon's att