and death and murder fall
upon your neighbours, you shall stand between the dead and the living,
and the troubles that pass over your heads shall be like the shadow of
the light clouds that fly across the moor on a sunny day. And when in
your ripe and honoured old age you shall sit with your husband, in a
garden of your own planting, in the lands far away, and see your
grandchildren playing around you, you shall think of the words of the
wild, lost gipsy woman, who gave you her best blessing before she went
away and was seen no more."

Mrs. Buckley tried to say "Amen," but found herself crying. Something
there was in that poor creature, homeless, penniless, friendless, that
made her heart like wax. She watched her as she strode down the path,
and afterwards looked for her re-appearing on a high exposed part of
the road, a quarter of a mile off, thinking she would take that way.
But she waited long, and never again saw that stern, tall figure, save
in her dreams.

She turned at last, and one of the maids stood beside her.

"Oh, missis," she said, "you're a lucky woman today. There's some in
this parish would have paid a hundred pounds for such a fortune as that
from her. It'll come true,--you will see!"

"I hope it may, you silly girl," said Mrs. Buckley; and then she went
in and knelt beside her sleeping boy, and prayed that the blessing of
the gipsy woman might be fulfilled.

* * * * *

It was quite late on the evening of his second day's journey that the
Major, occupying the box-seat of the "Exterminator," dashed with
comet-like speed through so much of the pomps and vanities of this
wicked world as showed itself in Piccadilly at half-past seven on a
spring afternoon.

"Hah!" he soliloquized, passing Hyde-park Corner, "these should be the
folks going out to dinner. They dine later and later every year. At
this rate they'll dine at half-past one in twenty years' time. That's
the Duke's new house; eh, coachman? By George, there's his Grace
himself, on his brown cob; God bless him! There are a pair of
good-stepping horses, and old Lady E---- behind 'em, by Jove!--in her
war-paint and feathers--pinker than ever. She hasn't got tired of it
yet. She'd dance at her own funeral if she could. And there's Charley
Bridgenorth in the club balcony--I wonder what he finds to do in peace
time?--and old B---- talking to him. What does Charley mean by letting
himself be seen in the same balcony with that disreputable old