Some of these practitioners--old women as well as men--pretend to have the gift of causing warts to disappear by counting them, and asking certain questions of the persons applying to them for relief. The principal information they seem to wish to arrive at is the age of the person; and this known, they predict that the warts are likely to disappear within a certain time. As these unsightly excrescences affect more particularly young persons, and as it is known that they frequently disappear naturally at that age when youth is passing into manhood, it is not unlikely that this fact may have been observed, and the knowledge of it turned to account. It is believed that those who possess the secret may impart it to one, and to one only; but they must receive neither fee nor reward for so doing; for if they do, or if they tell it to more than one, they lose their power of curing. They must not receive money for their services, but if a cure is effected they are at liberty to take a present. [Illustration: “Town Harbour, from an old picture.”] As might be expected, fortune-telling forms no small part of the white-witch’s profession, although all do not practise it, and some confine themselves to this particular branch alone. Cards seem to be now the principal means used for prying into the secrets of futurity, but other appliances have been used, and may, perhaps, still be used by some, such as the detection of a thief by means of a Bible and key. A sort of rhabdomancy, or divination by small rods, shuffled together with certain ceremonies and charms, and then thrown on the ground, was used by a sort of half-demented creature called Collas Roussé, about the end of the last century. He is said to have had a good deal of shrewdness, to have been very quick at repartee, and to have had great facility in expressing himself in rhymed sentences. He appears to have believed that he was really in possession of supernatural knowledge, and as his assumption of extraordinary powers gained credence with the vulgar, he found it an easy task to make a profit of their credulity. It is reported of him that when brought to justice for some gross act of imposition, he had the audacity to threaten his judges with the effects of his vengeance. His threats, however, did not deter the magistrates from sentencing him to exposure in the cage on a market day, with his divining apparatus by his side. He bore his punishment bravely, and entertained the multitude who crowded to see him with rhyming remarks. Another species of rhabdomancy is the use of the divining rod, the efficacy of which is fully believed in, not only for the discovery of springs of water, but also for the revealing of the spot where treasure has been concealed; and, if the stories that are told are all to be depended upon, there is evidence sufficient to stagger the sturdiest unbeliever.