Sir Roger, observing that I listened with great attention to his account of a people who were so entirely new to me, (20) told me that if I would they should tell us our fortunes. As I was very well pleased with the knight's proposal, we rid up and communicated our hands to them. A Cassandra of the crew, after having examined my lines[121] very diligently, told me that I loved a pretty maid in a (25) corner; that I was a good woman's man; with some other particulars which I do not think proper to relate. My friend Sir Roger alighted from his horse, and exposing his palm to two or three that stood by him, they crumpled it into all shapes, and diligently scanned every wrinkle that could be made in it; when one of them, who was older and more sunburnt than the rest, told him that he (167: 5) had a widow in his line of life[122]; upon which the knight cried, "Go, go, you are an idle baggage!" and at the same time smiled upon me. The gipsy, finding he was not displeased in his heart, told him, after a farther inquiry into his hand, that his true love was constant, and (10) that she should dream of him to-night. My old friend cried "Pish!" and bid her go on. The gipsy told him that he was a bachelor, but would not be so long; and that he was dearer to somebody than he thought. The knight still repeated she was an idle baggage, and bid her (15) go on. "Ah, master," says the gipsy, "that roguish leer of yours makes a pretty woman's heart ache; you ha'n't that simper about the mouth for nothing--." The uncouth gibberish with which all this was uttered, like the darkness of an oracle, made us the more attentive to it. (20) To be short, the knight left the money with her that he had crossed her hand with, and got up again on his horse. [121] The lines or wrinkles in the palm of the hand supposed to indicate the fortune. [122] The line beginning at the middle of the wrist and sweeping round the base of the thumb. As this is the line upon which are based predictions as to length of life and not as to marriage relations, Mr. Spectator probably did not report the gipsy correctly. As we were riding away, Sir Roger told me that he knew several sensible people who believed these gipsies (25) now and then foretold very strange things; and for half an hour together appeared more jocund than ordinary. In the height of his good humour, meeting a common beggar upon the road who was no conjurer, as he went to relieve him, he found his pocket was picked; that being (168: 5) a kind of palmistry at which this race of vermin are very dextrous.