laced against one of the walls. "If ye
really wish to know the future I can tell it ye. Oh yes, the Mama can
tell ye. You, Don Jorge Montt, have visited me before--seven years ago;
and I told you many things about your future. Have they yet come to
pass?"

Montt started. He had not expected that she would again recognise him,
for he was very much changed in appearance; and her remembrance of his
name, and the date when he last visited her, seemed rather to savour of
the uncanny.

"Yes, Mama," he replied, "I did visit you at the time you mention; and
all that you told me has, so far, proved true. But men's actions govern
their lives, and I thought that, perhaps, mine might have altered my
future. You did not forecast a very prosperous career for me then, you
know."

"You speak truth, Don Jorge," replied the woman. "Your brave deeds in
the past have indeed influenced your future; and methinks I shall see
great things in store for you. I will read your future first, my
officer," she went on. "Come over here, and sit in this chair. Yes,
that is it. Now do not speak until I give you permission; nor you
either, Senor Englishman. Ha! You wonder how I know your nationality,
do you not? I will show you stranger things than that, however, before
you leave."

Montt having taken his seat in the chair, as directed, the Mama brought
from a corner of the room a large copper brazier, on the top of which
was a bowl of the same metal. Having filled the brazier with hot coals,
which she took from a fire burning in the open hearth, she waited
patiently for the metal bowl to become hot.

After the lapse of perhaps ten minutes the copper basin began to glow
dully red, and the witch-woman thereupon poured into it some powder,
which she took from a little gold casket.

Immediately a great cloud of smoke rushed up from the bowl, and, to
Jim's unbounded amazement, hung suspended over it, without mingling with
the air of the room, as he had expected it would. At the same time a
delightful odour greeted his nostrils, and he began to experience a
delicious sensation of drowsiness stealing over him, while to his ears
there seemed to come a faint sound as of music being played at a
distance. The outlines of the room began to vanish and fade away,
little by little, until the only thing that remained before his eyes was
the column, or rather ball, of smoke which now appeared gradually to
assume larger dimensions, until at leng