ngements.

CHAPTER XVII

BETROTHED

At nightfall on the morrow Adrian returned as appointed, and was
admitted into the same room, where he found Black Meg, who greeted him
openly by name and handed to him a tiny phial containing a fluid clear
as water. This, however, was scarcely to be wondered at, seeing that it
was water and nothing else.

"Will it really work upon her heart?" asked Adrian, eyeing the stuff.

"Ay," answered the hag, "that's a wondrous medicine, and those who drink
it go crazed with love for the giver. It is compounded according to the
Master's own receipt, from very costly tasteless herbs that grow only in
the deserts of Arabia."

Adrian understood, and fumbled in his pocket. Meg stretched out her hand
to receive the honorarium. It was a long, skinny hand, with long, skinny
fingers, but there was this peculiarity about it, that one of these
fingers chanced to be missing. She saw his eyes fixed upon the gap, and
rushed into an explanation.

"I have met with an accident," Meg explained. "In cutting up a pig the
chopper caught this finger and severed it."

"Did you wear a ring on it?" asked Adrian.

"Yes," she replied, with sombre fury.

"How very strange!" ejaculated Adrian.

"Why?"

"Because I have seen a finger, a woman's long finger with a gold ring
on it, that might have come off your hand. I suppose the pork-butcher
picked it up for a keepsake."

"May be, Heer Adrian, but where is it now?"

"Oh! it is, or was, in a bottle of spirits tied by a thread to the
cork."

Meg's evil face contorted itself. "Get me that bottle," she said
hoarsely. "Look you, Heer Adrian, I am doing much for you, do this for
me."

"What do you want it for?"

"To give it Christian burial," she replied sourly. "It is not fitting or
lucky that a person's finger should stand about in a bottle like a caul
or a lizard. Get it, I say get it--I ask no question where--or, young
man, you will have little help in your love affairs from me."

"Do you wish the dagger hilt also?" he asked mischievously.

She looked at him out of the corners of her black eyes. This Adrian knew
too much.

"I want the finger and the ring on it which I lost in chopping up the
pig."

"Perhaps, mother, you would like the pig, too. Are you not making a
mistake? Weren't you trying to cut his throat, and didn't he bite off
the finger?"

"If I want the pig, I'll search his stye. You bring that bottle, or----"

She did not finish