rces of information in the world. I have
read everything published on palmistry in every known language, and my
library on the subject is perhaps the most complete in existence. In my
time I have examined at least fourteen thousand palms, and taken casts
of many of the more interesting of them. But I had never seen such a
palm as this; at least, never but once, and the horror of the case was
so great that I shudder even now when I call it to mind.

"Pardon me," I said, keeping the patient's hand in mine, "would you let
me look at your palm?"

I tried to speak indifferently, as if the matter were of small
consequence, and for some moments I bent over the hand in silence. Then,
taking a magnifying glass from my desk, I looked at it still more
closely. I was not mistaken; here was indeed the sinister double circle
on Saturn's mount, with the cross inside,--a marking so rare as to
portend some stupendous destiny of good or evil, more probably the
latter.

I saw that the man was uneasy under my scrutiny, and, presently, with
some hesitation, as if mustering courage, he asked: "Is there anything
remarkable about my hand?"

"Yes," I said, "there is. Tell me, did not something very unusual,
something very horrible, happen to you about ten or eleven years ago?"

I saw by the way the man started that I had struck near the mark, and,
studying the stream of fine lines that crossed his lifeline from the
Mount of Venus, I added: "Were you not in some foreign country at that
time?"

The man's face blanched, but he only looked at me steadily out of those
mournful eyes. Now I took his other hand, and compared the two, line by
line, mount by mount, noting the short square fingers, the heavy thumb,
with amazing willpower in its upper joint, and gazing again and again at
that ominous sign on Saturn.

"Your life has been strangely unhappy, your years have been clouded by
some evil influence."

"My God," he said weakly, sinking into a chair, "how can you know these
things?"

"It is easy to know what one sees," I said, and tried to draw him out
about his past, but the words seemed to stick in his throat.

"I will come back and talk to you again," he said, and he went away
without giving me his name or any revelation of his life.

Several times he called during subsequent weeks, and gradually seemed to
take on a measure of confidence in my presence. He would talk freely of
his physical condition, which seemed to cause him much an