By this hour a sweet-smelling mist, such as, I think, falls nowhere else as it does in the Acadian fields, lay heavy on the grasses. I bethought me that it was the dew of the new moon, and therefore endowed with many virtues; and I persuaded myself to believe that my feet, which were by now well drenched with it, must needs be set upon a fortunate errand. As I came to this comforting conclusion I reached a little thicket at an orchard corner, where grew a deep tangle of early flowering herbs. There, gathering the wet and perfumed blooms, stooped an old woman with a red shawl wrapped over her head and shoulders. She straightened herself briskly as I came beside her, and I saw the haggard, high-boned, hawk-nosed face of old Mother Pêche, whose tales of wizardry I had often listened to in the years long gone by. She turned upon me her strange eyes, black points of piercing intelligence encircled by a startling glitter of wide white, and at once she stretched out to me a crooked hand of greeting. “It is good for these old eyes, Master Paul, to see thee back in the village!” she exclaimed. Now, any one will tell you that it is not well to be crossed in one’s path by an old woman, when on an errand of moment. I hurried past, therefore; and it shames me to say it. But then, remembering that one had better defy any omen than leave a kindness undone, I stopped, turned back, and hastily grasped the old dame’s wizened hand, slipping into it a silver piece as I did so. It was a broad piece, and full as much as I could wisely spare; but an old woman or a small boy is ever welcome to share my last penny. Her strange eyes gleamed for a moment, but as she looked up to bless me her face changed. After gazing earnestly into my eyes she muttered something which I could not catch, and to my huge amazement flung the silver behind her with a violence which left no doubt of her intentions. She flung it toward a little swampy pool; but as luck would have it the coin struck a willow sapling by the pool’s edge, bounded back, and fell with a clink upon a flat stone, where I marked it as it lay whitely glittering. I was too amazed to protest for a moment, but the old woman hastened to appease me. “There was sorrow on it, dearie,—thy sorrow,” she exclaimed coaxingly; “and I wouldn’t have it. The devil take all thy bad luck, and Mary give thee new fortune!” To me it seemed that throwing away the silver piece was taking superstition quite too seriously. I laughed and said: “But, mother, if there be bad luck ahead of me, so much the more do I want your blessing, and truly I cannot spare you another silver crown. Faith, this one’s not gone yet, after all!” And picking it up I handed it back to her. “Let the devil fly away with my ill luck, if he may, but don’t let him fly away with your little savings,” I added.