Tom was entirely sobered, and profoundly impressed.  He said, apologetically: 

“Dave, I wasn’t meaning to belittle that science; I was only chaffing —­chattering, I reckon I’d better say.  I wish you would look at their palms.  Come, won’t you?”

“Why certainly, if you want me to; but you know I’ve had no chance to become an expert, and don’t claim to be one.  When a past event is somewhat prominently recorded in the palm, I can generally detect that, but minor ones often escape me—­not always, of course, but often—­but I haven’t much confidence in myself when it comes to reading the future.  I am talking as if palmistry was a daily study with me, but that is not so.  I haven’t examined half a dozen hands in the last half dozen years; you see, the people got to joking about it, and I stopped to let the talk die down.  I’ll tell you what we’ll do, Count Luigi:  I’ll make a try at your past, and if I have any success there—­no, on the whole, I’ll let the future alone; that’s really the affair of an expert.”

He took Luigi’s hand.  Tom said: 

“Wait—­don’t look yet, Dave!  Count Luigi, here’s paper and pencil.  Set down that thing that you said was the most striking one that was foretold to you, and happened less than a year afterward, and give it to me so I can see if Dave finds it in your hand.”

Luigi wrote a line privately, and folded up the piece of paper, and handed it to Tom, saying: 

“I’ll tell you when to look at it, if he finds it.”

Wilson began to study Luigi’s palm, tracing life lines, heart lines, head lines, and so on, and noting carefully their relations with the cobweb of finer and more delicate marks and lines that enmeshed them on all sides; he felt of the fleshy cushion at the base of the thumb and noted its shape; he felt of the fleshy side of the hand between the wrist and the base of the little finger and noted its shape also; he painstakingly examined the fingers, observing their form, proportions, and natural manner of disposing themselves when in repose.  All this process was watched by the three spectators with absorbing interest, their heads bent together over Luigi’s palm, and nobody disturbing the stillness with a word.  Wilson now entered upon a close survey of the palm again, and his revelations began.

He mapped out Luigi’s character and disposition, his tastes, aversions, proclivities, ambitions, and eccentricities in a way which sometimes made Luigi wince and the others laugh, but both twins declared that the chart was artistically drawn and was correct.

Next, Wilson took up Luigi’s history.  He proceeded cautiously and with hesitation now, moving his finger slowly along the great lines of the palm, and now and then halting it at a “star” or some such landmark, and examining that neighborhood minutely.  He proclaimed one or two past events, Luigi confirmed his correctness, and the search went on.  Presently Wilson glanced up suddenly with a surprised expression.