"They are new tenants--just arrived to-night. I know nothing about them, but the house is called Gray Gables, and belongs to an old man in New York. You must be a stranger, sir, not to know Gray Gables?"--with a glance of furtive inquiry. "Yes, I am a stranger. I landed here from a yacht to-night," Dorian answered, with careless confidence. "I'll tell you the truth, old lady. Some women badgered me so that I was fain to jump overboard into the sea to avoid them, so my friend, the owner of the yacht, kindly consented to set me off here, where I'm as lonesome as Robinson Crusoe on his desert-island." "You don't know anybody at Pirate Beach?" she suggested. "Not a living soul but you, my friend--no, not even the name of the place until now. Pirate Beach! Jove, an unpleasantly suggestive name." "There's nothing in the name, though there might have been many years ago. There's no danger now, young sir"--wheedingly. "Glad to hear it, I'm sure. Well, is there any hotel hereabout?" "A matter of five miles or so on a lonely road." "Too long a tramp for a lazy man. Maybe they will give me a bed up yonder." A hoarse cry issued from the woman's lips, and, recoiling from him, she suddenly lifted her skinny right arm on high, and almost shrieked, so loud and uneven was her voice: "Young man, venture not now or ever beneath the roof of Gray Gables. It is written in the stars that Fate threatens thee there!" Dorian Mountcastle stared, then laughed at her tragic turn. "So you are a sibyl? Come, read me a page from the mystic stars." A piece of silver crossed her skinny palm, and she laughed in joy. There was more where that came from. She had caught the clink in his vest pocket. She laughed, then scowled. "Oh, you may sneer," she cried angrily. "You do not believe that old Meg can read the stars, you jest at her art. But the time comes when you shall weep. Look up yonder at that old gray house, so dark and forbidding, among the trees. It has been accursed and uninhabited for years; but to-night I see in the shining stars a new shadow hovering, vulturelike, above it. You are mixed up in it--you, whom fate has sent here to-night. For you I read woe and despair. You will go mad for a woman's love!" He laughed at her in keenest mockery, this Dorian Mountcastle, who was so tired of lovely woman and her deceitful wiles. "You are cheating me, Madam Sibyl! I know the shallow sex too well to lose my head over any of them!" he exclaimed, in a voice of cynical melancholy, and, throwing her another coin, walked impatiently away to some little distance, standing with his back to her, and his moody face turned to the sea.