e; for this was with him a
favourite way out of an argument. In truth the Vicar loved the prophecy,
as a quiet student often loves a thing that echoes of the world which he
has shunned.

"You must write down for me what the King says to you, Simon," he told
me once.

"Suppose, sir," I suggested mischievously, "that it should not be fit
for your eye?"

"Then write it, Simon," he answered, pinching my ear, "for my
understanding."

It was well enough for the Vicar's whimsical fancy to busy itself with
Betty Nasroth's prophecy, half-believing, half-mocking, never forgetting
nor disregarding; but I, who am, after all, the most concerned, doubt
whether such a dark utterance be a wholesome thing to hang round a young
man's neck. The dreams of youth grow rank enough without such watering.
The prediction was always in my mind, alluring and tantalising as a
teasing girl who puts her pretty face near yours, safe that you dare not
kiss it. What it said I mused on, what it said not I neglected. I
dedicated my idle hours to it, and, not appeased, it invaded my seasons
of business. Rather than seek my own path, I left myself to its will and
hearkened for its whispered orders.

"It was the same," observed my mother sadly, "with a certain cook-maid
of my sister's. It was foretold that she should marry her master."

"And did she not?" cried the Vicar, with ears all pricked-up.

"She changed her service every year," said my mother, "seeking the
likeliest man, until at last none would hire her."

"She should have stayed in her first service," said the Vicar, shaking
his head.

"But her first master had a wife," retorted my mother triumphantly.

"I had one once myself," said the Vicar.

The argument, with which his widowhood supplied the Vicar, was sound and
unanswerable, and it suited well with my humour to learn from my aunt's
cook-maid, and wait patiently on fate. But what avails an argument, be
it ever so sound, against an empty purse? It was declared that I must
seek my fortune; yet on the method of my search some difference arose.

"You must work, Simon," said my sister Lucy, who was betrothed to
Justice Barnard, a young squire of good family and high repute, but
mighty hard on idle vagrants, and free with the stocks for revellers.

"You must pray for guidance," said my sister Mary, who was to wed a
saintly clergyman, a Prebend, too, of the Cathedral.

"There is," said I stoutly, "nothing of such matters in Betty Nasr