After all this rigmarole Charity Badge bade Mary take a seat at the table.  Then she drawed the blind, and lighted a lamp; and then she fetched out a pack of cards and her seeing-crystal.  ’Twas all done awful solemn, and Mary Tuckett without a doubt felt terrible skeered even afore t’other began.  Then Mrs. Badge poured a drop of ink into her crystal—­some said ’twas only the broken bottom of an old drinking glass; but I don’t know nothing about that.  Next she dealt out the cards, and fastened on the Jack o’ hearts and the Jack o’ oaks,[1] and made great play with ’em.  And, after that, she sat and gazed upon the crystal with all her might, and didn’t take her eyes off of it for full five minutes.

    [1] Oaks—­Clubs.

“Now list to me, Mary Tuckett,” she says, “and try to put a bold face on what be coming, for there’s trouble brewing for ’e—­how much only you yourself can tell.”

With that she read out the fortune.

“There’s a dark, rich man after you, Mary.  He’s fierce as a tiger, and the folk don’t like him, but he’s good at bottom, and he’ll make you a proper husband.  But there’s another chap who have more right to you according to the cards, and I see him in the crystal very plain.  He’s flaxen curled with a straight back and a fighting nose, and blue eyes.  Very great at horsemanship seemingly, and he’ll have you for a wife, so sure as death, unless something happens to prevent it.  He’s on the way to you this minute.  He’s the Jack o’ hearts; and t’other man’s Jack o’ oaks.  Now hold your breath a bit while I look in the crystal and see what happens.

“Good powers!” cried the girl, creaming with terror down her spine. “’Tis Nathan Coaker as you be seeing!  I thought he’d forgot me a year agone!”

“Hush!  Don’t be talking.  No, he ain’t forgot you by the looks of it.  Quite the contrary.”

Mary went white as curds, and sat with her hands forced over her heart to hear what the wise woman would see next.

“Them men will meet!” she said, presently.  “There!  They crash together and fight like dragons!  There’ll be murder done, but which beats t’other I can’t tell yet.  The picture’s all ruffled with waves.  That means the future’s to be hid—­even from me.  But one thing is only too clear; there’ll be a gashly upstore and blood spilled when Jack o’ oaks meets Jack o’ hearts; and the end of it so far as you be concerned is that you’ll have no husband at all, I’m afeared—­poor girl.”

So that was the end of the fortune-telling, and Mary wept buckets, and Mrs. Badge reminded her of the florin but wouldn’t take it.

“No,” she said, “money like that be nought in such a fix as you find yourself.  The thing is to help you if I can.  I don’t want to know no names.  ’Tis better I should not; but ’tis clear there’s a fair, poor man coming here to marry you; and there’s a dark, rich man also wants to do so.  Now maybe I can help.  Which of ’em is it you want to take?  Don’t tell me no names.  Just say dark or pale.”