either, seeing that destiny overruled the
affair, and Betty Nasroth, the wise woman, announced its imminence more
than a year beforehand. For she predicted the birth, on the very day
whereon I came into the world, within a mile of the parish church, of a
male child who--and the utterance certainly had a lofty sound about
it--should love where the King loved, know what the King hid, and drink
of the King's cup. Now, inasmuch as none lived within the limits named
by Betty Nasroth, save on the one side sundry humble labourers, whose
progeny could expect no such fate, and on the other my Lord and Lady
Quinton, who were wedded but a month before my birthday, the prophecy
was fully as pointed as it had any need to be, and caused to my parents
no small questionings. It was the third clause or term of the prediction
that gave most concern alike to my mother and to my father; to my
mother, because, although of discreet mind and a sound Churchwoman, she
was from her earliest years a Rechabite, and had never heard of a King
who drank water; and to my father by reason of his decayed estate, which
made it impossible for him to contrive how properly to fit me for my
predestined company. "A man should not drink the King's wine without
giving the King as good," my father reflected ruefully. Meanwhile I,
troubling not at all about the matter, was content to prove Betty right
in point of the date, and, leaving the rest to the future, achieved this
triumph for her most punctually. Whatsoever may await a man on his way
through the world, he can hardly begin life better than by keeping his
faith with a lady.

She was a strange old woman, this Betty Nasroth, and would likely enough
have fared badly in the time of the King's father. Now there was bigger
game than witches afoot, and nothing worse befell her than the scowls of
her neighbours and the frightened mockery of children. She made free
reply with curses and dark mutterings, but me she loved as being the
child of her vision, and all the more because, encountering her as I
rode in my mother's arms, I did not cry, but held out my hands, crowing
and struggling to get to her; whereat suddenly, and to my mother's great
terror, she exclaimed: "Thou see'st, Satan!" and fell to weeping, a
thing which, as every woman in the parish knew, a person absolutely
possessed by the Evil One can by no means accomplish (unless, indeed, a
bare three drops squeezed from the left eye may usurp the name of
te