was the one chosen to see
farthest through millstones. Do you understand?'

'That was what I was gettin' at,' said Simon, 'but you're so desperate
quick. My Aunt she knew what was coming to people. My Uncle being a
burgess of Rye, he counted all such things odious, and my Aunt she
couldn't be got to practise her gifts hardly at all, because it hurted
her head for a week afterwards; but when Frankie heard she had 'em, he
was all for nothing till she foretold on him--till she looked in his
hand to tell his fortune, d'ye see? One time we was at Rye she come
aboard with my other shirt and some apples, and he fair beazled the life
out of her about it.

'"Oh, you'll be twice wed, and die childless," she says, and pushes his
hand away.

'"That's the woman's part," he says. "What'll come to me--to me?" an' he
thrusts it back under her nose.

'"Gold--gold, past belief or counting," she says. "Let go 'o me, lad."

'"Sink the gold!" he says. "What'll I _do_, mother?" He coaxed her like
no woman could well withstand. I've seen him with 'em--even when they
were sea-sick.

'"If you _will_ have it," she says at last, "you shall have it. You'll
do a many things, and eating and drinking with a dead man beyond the
world's end will be the least of them. For you'll open a road from the
East unto the West, and back again, and you'll bury your heart with your
best friend by that road-side, and the road you open none shall shut so
long as you're let lie quiet in your grave."[6]

[6] The old lady's prophecy is in a fair way to come true, for when the
Panama Canal is finished, one end of it will open into the very bay
where Sir Francis Drake was buried. Then ships will be taken through the
Canal, and the road round Cape Horn which Sir Francis opened will be
abandoned.

'"And if I'm not?" he says.

'"Why then," she says, "Sim's iron ships will be sailing on dry land.
Now ha' done with this foolishness. Where's Sim's shirt?"

'He couldn't fetch no more out of her, and when we come up from the
cabin, he stood mazed like by the tiller, playing with a apple.

'"My Sorrow!" says my Aunt; "d'ye see that? The great world lying in his
hand, liddle and round like a apple."

'"Why, 'tis one you gived him," I says.

'"To be sure," she says. "'Tis just a apple," and she went ashore with
her hand to her head. It always hurted her to show her gifts.

[Illustration: 'You'll open a road from the East unto the West, and back
again.'--P. 292.]