at the wise woman would see next.

"Them men will meet!" she said, presently. "There! They crash together and
fight like dragons! There'll be murder done, but which beats t'other I
can't tell yet. The picture's all ruffled with waves. That means the
future's to be hid--even from me. But one thing is only too clear;
there'll be a gashly upstore and blood spilled when Jack o' oaks meets
Jack o' hearts; and the end of it so far as you be concerned is that
you'll have no husband at all, I'm afeared--poor girl."

So that was the end of the fortune-telling, and Mary wept buckets, and
Mrs. Badge reminded her of the florin but wouldn't take it.

"No," she said, "money like that be nought in such a fix as you find
yourself. The thing is to help you if I can. I don't want to know no
names. 'Tis better I should not; but 'tis clear there's a fair, poor man
coming here to marry you; and there's a dark, rich man also wants to do
so. Now maybe I can help. Which of 'em is it you want to take? Don't tell
me no names. Just say dark or pale."

"The d-d-d-dark one," sobs out Mary. "I thought 'twas all off with the
pale one years ago, and I wouldn't marry him for anything
n-n-n-now--specially if he's so poor as when he went."

"And what'll you do for me if I can save you from him? I don't say I can,
for 'tis a pretty stiff job; but I might do so if I took a cruel lot of
trouble."

"I'll give you everything I've got, Charity--everything!" cries the girl.

"I'm afraid that ban't enough, my dear. Will you give me ten pound the day
you'm married to the dark one? That's a fair offer; and if I don't
succeed, I'll ax for nothing."

The girl jumped at that, and said she thankfully would do so; and Mrs.
Badge bade her keep her mouth close shut--knowing she would not--and let
her go. Poor Mary went off expecting to meet Nathan Coaker at every step
o' the road, and little knowing that the poor blid was sleeping his last
sleep in a grave in foreign parts to Ireland.

The very same evening she met Peter Hacker himself; and though he was a
chap without much use for religion, yet, like a good few other godless
men, he believed in a good bit more than he could understand, and hated to
spill salt, or see a single pie, and wouldn't have cut his nails on a
Friday for a king's ransom.

She told him that her old sweetheart, Nathan Coaker, was coming back, and
that blood would be spilled, and that the wise woman didn't know for
certain whether 'twas h