She lifted her head as they approached, revealing an immensely old, delicately-featured face, which might have been carved out of yellow ivory. It was a network of wrinkles, colourless save for the piercing black eyes that sparkled beneath arched black brows, while the fine-cut nostrils and beautifully moulded mouth spoke unmistakably of race--of the old untainted blood which in some gipsy families has run clear, unmixed and undiluted, through countless generations. There was an odd dignity about the shrunken, still upright figure as she rose from her seat--the freedom of one whose neck has never bowed to the yoke of established custom, whose kingdom is the sun and sea and earth and air as God gave them to Adam--and when the visitors had explained their errand, and she proceeded to answer them in the soft, slurred accents of the Devon dialect, the illiterate speech seemed to convey a strange sense of unfitness. Claire and Nick were the first to dare the oracle. The old woman beckoned to them to follow her into the cottage, while Tormarin and Jean waited outside, and when they emerged once more, both were laughing, their faces eager and half excited like the faces of children promised some indefinite treat. “She’s given you luck, then?” asked Jean, smiling in sympathy. The gipsy interposed quickly. “Tezn’t for me to give nor take away the luck. But I knaw that, back o’ they gert black clouds the young lady’s so mortal feared of, the zun’s shinin’ butivul. I tell ’ee, me dear”--nodding encouragingly to Claire, while her keen old eyes narrowed to mere pin-points of light--“you’ll zee it, yourself--and afore another year’s crep’ by. ’Ess, fay! You’ll knaw then as I tolled ’ee trew.” Then, with a gesture that summoned Jean to follow her, she disappeared once more into the interior of the hut. Jean hesitated nervously in the doorway. For a moment she was conscious of an acute feeling of distaste for the impending interview--a dread of what this woman, whose eyes seemed the only live thing in her old, old face, might have to tell her. “Come with me,” she appealed to Blaise. And he nodded and followed her across the threshold. The scent of a peat fire came warm and fragrant to her nostrils as she stepped out of the sunlight into the comparative dusk of the little shanty, mingling curiously with an aroma of savoury stew which issued from a black pot hung above the fire, bubbling and chuckling as it simmered. The gipsy, as though by force of habit, gave a stir to its contents and then, settling herself on a three-legged stool, she took Jean’s hand in her wrinkled, claw-like fingers and peered at its palm in silence.