"And the Master said, 'It may be so.'

"And the king continued, 'There came two men, and one was good and
the other bad. And one thou didst bless, thinking he was good; but
he was wicked. And the other thou didst curse, and thought him bad;
but he was good.'

"The Master said, 'And what came of it?'

"The king answered, 'All evil came upon the good man, and all
happiness to the bad.'

"And the Master said, 'I write letters, but I am not the messenger; I
hunt the deer, but I am not the cook; I plant the vine, but I do not
pour the wine to the guests; I ordain war, yet do not fight; I send
ships forth on the sea, but do not sail them. There is many a slip
between cup and lip, as the chief of the rebel spirits said when he
was thrown out of heaven, and I am not greater nor wiser than he was
before he fell. Hast thou any more questions, O son?'

"And the king went his way."

One afternoon I was walking with three ladies. One was married, one was
a young widow, and one, no longer very young, had not as yet husbanded
her resources. And as we went by the Thames, conversation turned upon
many things, and among them the mystery of the future and mediums; and
the widow at last said she would like to have her fortune told.

"You need not go far to have it done," I said. "There is a gypsy camp
not a mile away, and in it one of the cleverest fortune-tellers in
England."

"I am almost afraid to go," said the maiden lady. "It seems to me to be
really wrong to try to look into the awful secrets of futurity. One can
never be certain as to what a gypsy may not know. It's all very well, I
dare say, to declare it's all rubbish, but then you know you never can
tell what may be in a rubbish-heap, and they may be predicting true
things all the time while they think they're humbugging you. And they do
often foretell the most wonderful things; I know they do. My aunt was
told that she would marry a man who would cause her trouble, and, sure
enough, she did; and it was such a shame, she was such a sweet-tempered,
timid woman, and he spent half her immense fortune. Now wasn't that
wonderful?"

It would be a curious matter for those who like studying statistics and
chance to find out what proportion in England of sweet-tempered, timid
women of the medium-middle class, in newly-sprouted families, with
immense fortunes, do _not_ marry men who only want their mon