y know the future, to prophesy to _him_, who
neither begs their favour nor fears their hate. Macbeth, looking back at
a later time, remembers Banquo's daring, and how

he chid the sisters,
When first they put the name of king upon me,
And bade them speak to him.

'Chid' is an exaggeration; but Banquo is evidently a bold man, probably
an ambitious one, and certainly has no lurking guilt in his ambition. On
hearing the predictions concerning himself and his descendants he makes
no answer, and when the Witches are about to vanish he shows none of
Macbeth's feverish anxiety to know more. On their vanishing he is simply
amazed, wonders if they were anything but hallucinations, makes no
reference to the predictions till Macbeth mentions them, and then
answers lightly.

When Ross and Angus, entering, announce to Macbeth that he has been made
Thane of Cawdor, Banquo exclaims, aside, to himself or Macbeth, 'What!
can the devil speak true?' He now believes that the Witches were real
beings and the 'instruments of darkness.' When Macbeth, turning to him,
whispers,

Do you not hope your children shall be kings,
When those that gave the Thane of Cawdor to me
Promised no less to them?

he draws with the boldness of innocence the inference which is really
occupying Macbeth, and answers,

That, trusted home,
Might yet enkindle you unto the crown
Besides the thane of Cawdor.

Here he still speaks, I think, in a free, off-hand, even jesting,[234]
manner ('enkindle' meaning merely 'excite you to _hope_ for'). But then,
possibly from noticing something in Macbeth's face, he becomes graver,
and goes on, with a significant 'but,'

But 'tis strange:
And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths,
Win us with honest trifles, to betray's
In deepest consequence.

He afterwards observes for the second time that his partner is 'rapt';
but he explains his abstraction naturally and sincerely by referring to
the surprise of his new honours; and at the close of the scene, when
Macbeth proposes that they shall discuss the predictions together at
some later time, he answers in the cheerful, rather bluff manner, which
he has used almost throughout, 'Very gladly.' Nor was there any reason
why Macbeth's rejoinder, 'Till then, enough,' should excite misgivings
in him, though it