The merchant did not blame Dick for the loss of his goods. It was clear that the game had been too slickly worked for the boy to have acted differently than he had done. On the whole, Mr. Bacon thought his young clerk a lucky boy to have escaped with his life. Dick spent his third Christmas week with the Masons, and made further progress in the good opinion of the gentleman, his wife and the sister-in-law, and more firmly established himself in the heart of Madge. He visited the gypsy camp again and told Miriam of the peril he had passed through in connection with the Pattersons. "Did I not tell you to beware of a tall, dark man and a short, light woman?" said the gypsy queen. "By George, you're right! Do you know, that fact has never occurred to me till this moment," admitted Dick. "The man was tall and dark, and the woman was a small blonde. I was lucky to fare no worse than I did." "It was the benign influence of your favorable planets that saved you from death. How old are you?" "I was eighteen about six months ago," said Dick. "It is as I thought. You were threatened with a sudden and violent death through the position of Saturn in the sky at the moment you entered that house in the city; and but for other planetary influences in your favor you would have fared badly." "How can you tell all that without even looking at my hand?" "I recall much that your hand told me, and the circumstances you have related to me enables me to make those deductions." "Hand-reading and astrology seem to be more or less alike." "They must agree, or there would be nothing in either. Cartomancy, which means the reading of the past, present or future through cards, also coincides with the other two, reaching the same results. Why, I can tell your character and all your characteristics by merely studying your physical appearance. You have a compact body, well-developed chest, and other traits that show at a glance the influence of the Sun and Jupiter at your birth, and indicate to an ordinary observer that you are endowed with good health and a resistance against disease. The color of your eyes, and hair, the size and shape of your hands, your ears, your eyebrows, all tell their story as clearly as if described in print. The very flush that you bear upon your cheeks shows beyond a doubt that you were born in the cycle of the Sun." "You gypsies are a great people in your way, I am bound to say," said Dick, regarding Miriam with increased respect. "Our ancestors came from Egypt. We are an old race." "Well, I've got to be going," said Dick. "You are bound back to the city--soon?" "On the day after New Year's." "When you return we will have departed, so I will say good-by forever." "Maybe not. I expect to return at Easter." "Unless the weather is backward, we will be on the move before then," she said. "One last look at your hand." Dick gave it to her. "I told you that you were coming into a fortune before long."