e was
equally at a loss with herself, and knew not the nature of the dream,
nor its meaning.

One day Mistress Bridget brought in a tall beggar woman, dumb, or
pretendedly so, and apparently deaf. She made many signs that the gift
of foreknowledge was in her possession, though she seemed herself to
have profited little by so dangerous an endowment. Ellen, being
persuaded by her maid, craved a specimen of this wonderful art. The
hag, a smoke-dried, dirty-looking beldame, with a patch over one eye,
and an idiotic expression of face, began to mutter and make an odd
noise at the sight of the sick lady. She took a piece of chalk from
her handkerchief, and began her work of divination. First she drew a
circle on the floor, as a boundary or frame, and within it she put
many uncouth and crabbed signs; but their meaning was perfectly
unintelligible. Under this she sketched something like unto a sword,
then a hideous figure was attached to it, with a soldier's cap on his
head. Before him was a heart, that seemed to hang, as it were, on the
point of this long sword; which when Ellen saw she changed colour, but
attempted to smile; yet she only betrayed her agitation. The dumb
operator drew one hand across her own breast, and with the other
pointed to the lady; which appeared to Ellen as though intimating that
a soldier had won her heart, and that this was the true cause of her
illness. Such an interpretation, perchance, was but the conscious
monitor speaking from within, as it invested this unmeaning
hieroglyphic with the hue and likeness of its own fancies. But more
marvellous still was the subsequent proceeding. Having revealed the
cause, it seemed as though she were about to point out, obscurely as
before, the method and means of cure. When she had drawn the long
unshapely representation of a cloak, above it was placed something
like unto a human head, without helm or other covering; and to this
figure two arms were added; one having a huge hand, displayed proper,
as the heralds say, the other arm entirely destitute of this useful
appendage. Ellen at once remembered her dream, and watched the process
even with more interest than before.

The hand which should have been attached to the wrist was now drawn
distinct from the rest, as though grasping a heart wounded by the
sword; and doubtless the interpretation, according to Bridget's
opinion, was, that the application of a hand, which had been severed
from the body, would alone