Yielding to her desire without further ado, I fetched my hat and cloak, and, she doing likewise, we sallied out forthwith.  Taking the side path by which Dario came and went habitually, we reached a little wicket gate, opening from the path upon the highway; and here, seeing a man mending the road, we asked him where we should find Anne Fitch, as she was called, with whom the painter lodged.  Pointing to a neat cottage that stood by the wayside, within a stone’s throw, he told us the “wise woman” lived there.  We crossed over and knocked at the door, and a voice within bidding us come in, we did so.

There was a very sweet, pleasant smell in the room from the herbs that hung in little parcels from the beams, for this Anne Fitch was greatly skilled in the use of simples, and had no equal for curing fevers and the like in all the country round. (But, besides this, it was said she could look into the future and forecast events truer than any Egyptian.) There was a chair by the table, on which was an empty bowl and some broken bread; but the wise woman sat in the chimney corner, bending over the hearth, though the fire had burnt out, and not an ember glowed.  And a strange little elf she looked, being very wizen and small, with one shoulder higher than the other, and a face full of pain.

When I told her our business,—­for Moll was too greatly moved to speak,—­the old woman pointed to the adjoining room.

“He is gone!” cries Moll, going to the open door, and peering within.

“Yes,” answers Anne Fitch.  “Alas!”

“When did he go?” asks Moll.

“An hour since,” answers the other.

“Whither is he gone?”

“I am no witch.”

“At least, you know which way he went.”

“I have not stirred from here since I gave him his last meal.”

Moll sank into the empty chair, and bowed her head in silence.

Anne Fitch, whose keen eyes had never strayed from Moll since she first entered the room, seeming as if they would penetrate to the most secret recesses of her heart, with that shrewd perception which is common to many whose bodily infirmity compels an extraordinary employment of their other faculties, rises from her settle in the chimney, and coming to the table, beside Moll, says: 

“I am no witch, I say; yet I could tell you things would make you think I am.”

“I want to know nothing further,” answers she, dolefully, “save where he is.”

“Would you not know whether you shall ever see him again, or not?”

“Oh!  If you can tell me that!” cries Moll, quickly.

“I may.”  Then, turning to me, the wise woman asks to look at my hand, and on my demurring, she says she must know whether I am a friend or an enemy, ere she speaks before me.  So, on that, I give my hand, and she examines it.

“You call yourself James Hopkins,” says she.

“Why, every one within a mile knows that,” says I.