The Queen dared not permit an answer to be given to this question. She hurriedly begged her guests to quit a sick man who was likely to grow worse if he was obliged to talk. Macbeth, however, was well enough next day to converse with the witches whose prophecies had so depraved him. He found them in a cavern on a thunderous day. They were revolving round a cauldron in which were boiling particles of many strange and horrible creatures, and they knew he was coming before he arrived. “Answer me what I ask you,” said the King. “Would you rather hear it from us or our masters?” asked the first witch. “Call them,” replied Macbeth. Thereupon the witches poured blood into the cauldron and grease into the flame that licked it, and a helmeted head appeared with the visor on, so that Macbeth could only see its eyes. He was speaking to the head, when the first witch said gravely, “He knows thy thought,” and a voice in the head said, “Macbeth, beware Macduff, the chieftain of Fife.” The head then descended Into the cauldron till it disappeared. “One word more,” pleaded Macbeth. “He will not be commanded,” said the first witch, and then a crowned child ascended from the cauldron bearing a tree in his hand The child said-- “Macbeth shall be unconquerable till The Wood of Birnam climbs Dunsinane Hill.” “That will never be,” said Macbeth; and he asked to be told if Banquo's descendants would ever rule Scotland. The cauldron sank into the earth; music was heard, and a procession of phantom kings filed past Macbeth; behind them was Banquo's ghost. In each king, Macbeth saw a likeness to Banquo, and he counted eight kings. Then he was suddenly left alone. His next proceeding was to send murderers to Macduff's castle. They did not find Macduff, and asked Lady Macduff where he was. She gave a stinging answer, and her questioner called Macduff a traitor. “Thou liest!” shouted Macduff's little son, who was immediately stabbed, and with his last breath entreated his mother to fly. The murderers did not leave the castle while one of its inmates remained alive. Macduff was in England listening, with Malcolm, to a doctor's tale of cures wrought by Edward the Confessor when his friend Ross came to tell him that his wife and children were no more. At first Ross dared not speak the truth, and turn Macduff's bright sympathy with sufferers relieved by royal virtue into sorrow and hatred. But when Malcolm said that England was sending an army into Scotland against Macbeth, Ross blurted out his news, and Macduff cried, “All dead, did you say? All my pretty ones and their mother? Did you say all?”