"'Three silver groats, Three women's lives, Three cows, three calves, Three scolding wives. The first to lie at your side, The second to lie at your feet, The third a widow, a witch, and a bride, To sew your winding-sheet.'" The man, who had been twice married, and was not indisposed for another venture, rode on in no slight perplexity, pondering this mysterious doggrel, and more convinced than ever that the gipsy-folk, as he called them, possessed some dark and dreadful knowledge, unlimited in scope and embracing the future as the past. With a beating heart, that yet danced in her bosom under a sense of her own happiness, Waif drew near the village of Porlock. She had decided to exercise the utmost caution in approaching John Garnet's refuge, lest her presence should in any way compromise his safety, or afford a clue to his hiding-place. For one of her race, this was no difficult task. Her gipsy experiences had taught her long ago to take advantage of every irregularity of surface, even in so open a plain as Marlborough Downs; and in such a country as West Somerset, with its narrow lanes, high tangled hedges, scattered brakes, impervious copses, valleys, coombes, and forests, rugged mountains, and broken moor, Waif could glide from point to point as secretly and almost as swiftly as the very wild deer, to which she bore some vague and fanciful resemblance. Since she told the farmer his fortune three leagues off, no mortal eye had rested on her form till she caught sight of the man she loved, within three hundred feet. [Illustration: THE LESSON LEARNT.] Why did her colour fade, her breath come quick, her blood run icy cold? There was a white dress by John Garnet's side, and that unaccountable intuition, swift and subtle as the electric spark--that instinct of the heart, which never hesitates and is never mistaken, told her the truth. This was the meeting for which she had so longed, to compass which she had cajoled Fin Cooper, deceived her people, and travelled afoot across the heather all these weary miles! Waif trembled and her knees shook; for the first time in her life she turned sick and faint.