rabbit-faced man, a good deal older than herself. Fully agreeing with Sir Richard Grenvile's great axiom, that he who cannot obey cannot rule, Lucy had been for the last five-and-twenty years training him pretty smartly to obey her, with the intention, it is to be charitably hoped, of letting him rule her in turn when his lesson was perfected. He bore his honors, however, meekly enough, having a boundless respect for his wife's wisdom, and a firm belief in her supernatural powers, and let her go her own way and earn her own money, while he got a little more in a truly pastoral method (not extinct yet along those lonely cliffs), by feeding a herd of some dozen donkeys and twenty goats. The donkeys fetched, at each low-tide, white shell-sand which was to be sold for manure to the neighboring farmers; the goats furnished milk and "kiddy-pies;" and when there was neither milking nor sand-carrying to be done, old Will Passmore just sat under a sunny rock and watched the buck-goats rattle their horns together, thinking about nothing at all, and taking very good care all the while neither to inquire nor to see who came in and out of his little cottage in the glen.
The Prophetess, when Rose approached her oracular cave, was seated on a tripod in front of the fire, distilling strong waters out of penny royal. But no sooner did her distinguished visitor appear at the hatch, than the still was left to take care of itself, and a clean apron and mutch having been slipt on, Lucy welcomed Rose with endless courtesies, and—"Bless my dear soul alive, who ever would have thought to see the Rose of Torridge to my poor little place!"
Rose sat down: and then? How to begin was more than she knew, and she stayed silent a full five minutes, looking earnestly at the point of her shoe, till Lucy, who was an adept in such cases, thought it best to proceed to business at once, and save Rose the delicate operation of opening the ball herself; and so, in her own way, half fawning, half familiar—
"Well, my dear young lady, and what is it I can do for ye? For I guess you want a bit of old Lucy's help, eh? Though I'm most mazed to see ye here, surely, I should have supposed that pretty face could manage they sort of matters for itself. Eh?"
Rose, thus bluntly charged, confessed at once, and with many blushes and hesitations, made her soon understand that what she wanted was, "To have her fortune told."
"Eh? Oh! I see. The pretty face has managed it a bit too well already, eh? Tu many o'mun, pure fellows? Well, tain't every mayden has her pick and choose, like some I know of, as be blest in love by stars above. So you h'aint made up your mind, then?"
Rose shook her head.
"Ah—well," she went on, in a half bantering tone, "Not so asy, is it, then? One's gude for one thing, and one for another, eh? One has the blood, and another the money."
And so the "cunning woman" (as she truly was), talking half
