n? It looks very black!"

"Cleaner than yours will be when it is stained with blood, young
maiden!"

"Tut! If you insist on telling my fortune, tell me a pleasant one, and
I will pay you double," laughed Capitola.

"The fates are not to be mocked. Your destiny will be that which the
stars decree. To prove to you that I know this, I tell you that you are
not what you have been!"

"You've hit it this time, old lady, for I was a baby once and now I am
a young girl!" said Cap, laughing.

"You will not continue to be that which you are now!" pursued the hag,
still attentively reading the lines of her subject's hand.

"Right again; for if I live long enough I shall be an old woman."

"You bear a name that you will not bear long!"

"I think that quite a safe prophecy, as I haven't the most distant idea
of being an old maid!"

"This little hand of yours--this dainty woman's hand--will be--red with
blood!"

"Now, do you know, I don't doubt that either? I believe it altogether
probable that I shall have to cook my husband's dinner and kill the
chickens for his soup!"

"Girl, beware! You deride the holy stars--and already they are adverse
to you!" said the hag, with a threatening glare.

"Ha, ha, ha! I love the beautiful stars but did not fear them I fear
only Him who made the stars!"

"Poor butterfly, listen and beware! You are destined to imbrue that
little hand in the life current of one who loves you the most of all on
earth! You are destined to rise by the destruction of one who would
shed his heart's best blood for you!" said the beldame, in an awful
voice.

Capitola's eyes flashed! She advanced her horse a step or two nearer
the witch and raised her riding whip, saying:

"I protest! If you were only a man I should lay this ash over your
wicked shoulders until my arms ached! How dare you? Faith, I don't
wonder that in the honest old times such pests as you were cooled in
the ducking pond! Good gracious, that must have made a hissing and
spluttering in the water, though!"

"Blasphemer, pay me and begone!"

"Pay you? I tell you I would if you were only a man; but it would be
sinful to pay a wretched old witch in the only way you deserve to be
paid!" said Cap, flourishing her riding whip before a creature tall
enough and strong enough to have doubled up her slight form together
and hurled it into the abyss.

"Gold! gold!" said the hag curtly, holding out black and talon-like
fingers, which she worked co