“The prediction was partly fulfilled, as it was very likely to be at the time our neighborhood was overrun by a ruthless foe.  It happened so, poor Fanny!  You did not know the future, any more than I did—­no one on earth knows the mysteries of the future, ’not the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.’”

This seemed to annoy the poor creature—­soothsaying, by palmistry, had been her weakness in her brighter days, and now the strange propensity clung to her through the dark night of her sorrows, and received strength from her insanity.

“Come in, dear Fanny,” said Edith, “come in and stay with us.”

“No, no!” she almost shrieked again.  “I should bring a curse upon your house!  Oh!  I could tell you if you would hear!  I could warn you, if you would be warned!  But you will not! you will not!” she continued, wringing her hands in great trouble.

“You shall predict my fate and Miriam’s,” said Marian, smiling, as she opened the gate, and came out leading the child.  “And I know,” she continued, holding out her palm, “that it will be such a fair fate, as to brighten up your spirits for sympathy with it.”

“No!  I will not look at your hand!” cried Fanny, turning away.  Then, suddenly changing her mood, she snatched Marian’s palm, and gazed upon it long and intently; gradually her features became disturbed—­dark shadows seemed to sweep, as a funereal train, across her face—­her bosom heaved—­she dropped the maiden’s hand.

“Why, Fanny, you have told me nothing!  What do you see in my future?” asked Marian.

The maniac looked up, and breaking, as she sometimes did, into improvisation, chanted, in the most mournful of tones, these words: 

“Darkly, deadly, lowers the shadow,
  Quickly, thickly, comes the crowd—­
From death’s bosom creeps the adder,
  Trailing slime upon the shroud!”

Marian grew pale, so much, at the moment, was she infected with the words and manner of this sybil; but then, “Nonsense!” she thought, and, with a smile, roused herself to shake off the chill that was creeping upon her.

“Feel! the air! the air!” said Fanny, lifting her hand.

“Yes, it is going to rain,” said Edith.  “Come in, dear Fanny.”

But Fanny did not hear—­the fitful, uncertain creature had seized the hand of the child Miriam, and was gazing alternately upon the lines in the palm and upon her fervid, eloquent face.

“What is this?  Oh! what is this?” she said, sweeping the black tresses back from her bending brow, and fastening her eyes upon Miriam’s palm.  “What can it mean?  A deep cross from the Mount of Venus crosses the line of life, and forks into the line of death! a great sun in the plain of Mars—­a cloud in the vale of Mercury! and where the lines of life and death meet, a sanguine spot and a great star!  I cannot read it!  In a boy’s hand, that would betoken a hero’s career, and a glorious death in a victorious field; but in a girl’s!  What can it mean when found in a girl’s?  Stop!” And she peered into the hand for a few moments in deep silence, and then her face lighted up, her eyes burned intensely, and once more she broke forth in improvisation: