Alick blushed and looked awkward, but he gave his bony, ill-shaped hand all the same.

After a little while, during which Mr. Gryce had bent this finger this way and that finger another way, had counted the lines made by the bended wrist, and had talked half to himself of the line of Jupiter and the line of Saturn, the line of life and that of Venus, he said quietly, “You will have your wish, and soon.  I see a most important change of residence at about this time, which in conjunction with this,” pointing to a small cross at the root of the fourth finger, “will be certainly to your advantage.”

“How strange!” said Alick.  “One scarcely knows whether to laugh at it all as old wives’ fables or to believe in the mysterious forewarnings of fate, the foremarkings of the future.”

“There are more things in heaven and earth—­” said Mr. Gryce.  “And we know so little we may well believe a trifle more.”

The fact was, all this was founded on these circumstances:  He had at this moment a letter in his pocket from his sister Keziah telling him that old Priest Wilson had been found dead in his bed last night; the bishop’s chaplain was a friend of his, both having been at the same station in India; and the perpetual curacy of Monk Grange was one which, if offices went according to their ratio of unpleasantness, a man should have been paid a large income to take.  Hence there was no chance of a rush for the preferment, and the bishop would be grateful for any intimation of a willing martyr.  Through all of which chinks whereby to discover the future Mr. Gryce founded his prophecy; and through them, too, it came about that he proved a true prophet.  In three days’ time from this the post brought a letter to Alick Corfield from the bishop offering him the perpetual curacy of Monk Grange, income seventy pounds a year and a house.

Before speaking even to his mother, Alick rushed off with this letter to Mr. Gryce.  The old leaven of superstition which works more or less in all of us—­even those few who think proof a desirable basis for belief, and who require an examination conducted on scientific principles before they accept supernaturalism as “only another law coming in to modify those already known”—­that superstition which belongs to most men, and to Alick with the rest, made this letter a matter of tremendous excitement to him.  He saw in it the hand of God and the finger of Fate.  It was impossible that Mr. Gryce, living at North Aston, should know anything of a small country incumbency in the North.  It was all that study made of his poor parched and knuckly hand.  And what had been seen there was manifestly the thing ruled for him by Providence and destiny.

“How could you possibly tell?” he cried, looking at his own hand as if he could read it as his clever friend had done.

“That is my secret,” said Emmanuel, smiling at the credulity on which he traded.  Then, thinking a flutter outward of the corners of his cards the best policy in the circumstances about them at the moment, he added, “And when you get there you will understand more than you do now.  For you will go?”