rotwood, who never was born," he felt that
he was slightly premature in his wrath, so he cooled down and
resolved to make the best of it with his comfortable boys.

The yellow sorceress continued: "Your line of life is long, and
you will live to a good old age. You have had much trouble in
love affairs, and now your first love is entirely lost to you.
You can never reclaim her, and you must never venture anything in
lotteries."

Whether Madame Fleury supposed that her visitor intended to spend
his salary in lottery tickets, in the hope of winning back his
early love, or whether she supposed that the woman then
exhibiting herself as "Perham's Gift Lady," was the person, is
not in evidence; but, from the peculiar construction of her last
remark, something of the kind must have been in her thoughts. She
had now reached the third part of her discourse, and come to the
"three questions." She produced an old French Bible, dingy with
age and snuff, and which she informed the observer had been in
her family for three hundred years; an old iron key was tied
between the leaves, with the ring and part of the shank of the
key projecting, and the Bible was tightly bound round with many
folds of black ribbon. Making her visitor hold one side of the
ring of the key, while she held the other, she said: "Ask your
three questions, and if they are to be answered in the affirmative
the book will turn."

The Individual, who had been much impressed by her canine
observation of a few minutes before, and whose thoughts were
still running upon his pet Juno, and her six innocent offspring,
in a fit of absence of mind propounded this interrogatory:

"Shall I marry the person of whom I am now thinking?" The potent
enchantress repeated the question aloud in French, and then, with
pale lips and trembling voice, she addressed the book and key
thus:

"Holy Bible, I ask you, in the name of the Father, the Son, and
the Holy Ghost, will this man marry the person now in his
mind?"--then she closed her eyes for a moment, placed one hand
over her heart, and rapidly muttered something in so low a tone
that it was inaudible to her listener. Immediately the Bible
commenced to turn slowly towards her, and soon had made a
complete revolution, thus expressing a very decided affirmative.

Having started a matrimonial subject with so satisfactory a
result, her customer thought he could do no better than to follow
it up, and accordingly asked question No.