. It did not
occur to her that the gipsy had heard the Lashcairn legend in the
village--the most natural thing for a legend-loving gipsy to hear--she
was accustomed to believing anything she was told, and that the gipsy's
words confirmed her own longings made them seem true.

"I'm afraid there's not much chance of strange roads for me," she said,
looking out over the sea with beating heart to where a distant ribbon of
smoke on the horizon showed a ship bound for far ports.

"When were you born?"

Marcella told her and, taking a little stick from under her shawl, the
gipsy scratched strange signs in the mud.

"You were born under the protection of Virgo," said the gipsy, and
Marcella's eyes grew round and big. "You will go by strange paths and
take the man you need. There will be many to hurt you. Fire and flood
shall be your companions; in wounding you will heal, in losing you will
gain; your body will be a battle-ground."

"Oh, but how can you know?" cried Marcella, and suddenly all those
stern Rationalists she had read, Huxley and Frazer, Hegel and Kraill,
all very bearded and elderly, all very much muddled together, passed
before her eyes. "It seems so silly to think you can see from those
scratchy marks what I am going to do in years and years and years."

But as the gipsy went away, smiling wisely, and asking none of the usual
pieces of silver, all the Kelt in Marcella, which believed things had no
roots, came rushing to the surface and sent her indoors to write down
the gipsy's prophecy. Later, with a sense of mischievous amusement she
rummaged in the book-room to find one of the Rationalist books. But they
had been sold, most of them. Professor Kraill's "Questing Cells" was
there and she copied the prophecy into it, on the fly-leaf.

"Talk about a battle-ground!" she said, smiling reflectively. "Professor
Kraill and a gipsy!"

She turned several pages, and once more got the feel of the book, though
still much of it was Greek to her. Then she got down from the window
seat, for her aunt was calling her to tea, and she was hungry.

There was an unusual pot of jam on the table. She looked at it in
surprise as she sat down.

"That is some of Mrs. Mactavish's bramble jelly that she sent up for the
funeral; I thought we'd not be needing it just then. But now I see it's
beginning to get mildewed. So it'll need to be eaten before it's
wasted," said Aunt Janet, peeling off the top layer of furry green mould
and