to read his future fortune, in the figures described in the sediment at the bottom. Assuming a wild stare, and standing erect over him, her eyes apparently ready to leap from their sockets, she exclaimed, in a hollow sepulchral tone of voice, “You came from the outside of London, did you not?” “Yea,” said the astonished Blincoe, “I did.” “You came down in a waggon, and have been at a place surrounded with high rocks and great waters, and you have been used worse than a stumbling stone.” Blincoe’s mouth, and eyes, and ears, all seemed to open together, at this oracular speech, as he said, “Yea, yea, it is true.” Then she said,—“Your troubles are at an end.—You shall rise above those, who have cast you down so low.—You shall see their downfall, and your head shall be higher than theirs.—Poor lad! terrible have been thy sufferings.—Thou shall get up in the world! you’ll go to another place, where there’ll be a big water, and so go thy way in peace, and may God prosper thy steps!” Filled with amazement, mingled with rising hopes of better fortune, Blincoe arose and departed, making a very low reverence to “_old Beckka’_,” as he went out, and impressed with the fullest conviction, that she was truely a sorceress; the simpleton, forgetting, that his _costume_, his wild and pallid looks, and the _scent_ of his garments, tainted as they were with the perfume of a cotton factory, were more than sufficient to point out to the fortune-teller, the past and present, from which she speedily fabricated the future fortune, for her simple visitor! Blincoe thought he got but a very short story for his shilling! On the other hand, he was very well contented with its _quality_, since it promised him, and in such positive terms, that he should rise above his cruel oppressor and become a great man. Filled with these thoughts, he stepped briskly along, not much encumbered with luggage; for he carried all his wardrobe on his back. When he arrived at a spot called “Orange end,” where four ways met, he was perplexed which to take, the oracle of Chapel-a-Frith not having apprised him of this dilemma, nor which road to take! Being quite in an oracular mood, very happy, that he had got so far away from Litton, and fully convinced, that, go where he would, and befall him what would, he could not blunder upon a worse place, nor be oppressed by a more evil fortune, he tossed up a halfpenny in the air, making it spin round its own axis, and waiting its course as it rolled, resolved to follow in that direction. Its course happening to be pointed towards New Mills, Derbyshire, thither he bent his course, but failed in his application for work. Blincoe, therefore, walked on, till he came to Mr. Oldknow’s Cotton Factory, at Mellow, and there he crept towards the counting-house, in an humble mood, and said, in a very meek tone of voice, “If you please, Sir, can you give me work?” The manager, Mr. Clayton, a gentleman by no means