“Well, my dear young lady, and what is it I can do for ye?  For I guess you want a bit of old Lucy’s help, eh?  Though I’m most mazed to see ye here, surely.  I should have supposed that pretty face could manage they sort of matters for itself.  Eh?”

Rose, thus bluntly charged, confessed at once, and with many blushes and hesitations, made her soon understand that what she wanted was “To have her fortune told.”

“Eh?  Oh!  I see.  The pretty face has managed it a bit too well already, eh?  Tu many o’ mun, pure fellows?  Well, ’tain’t every mayden has her pick and choose, like some I know of, as be blest in love by stars above.  So you hain’t made up your mind, then?”

Rose shook her head.

“Ah—­well,” she went on, in a half-bantering tone.  “Not so asy, is it, then?  One’s gude for one thing, and one for another, eh?  One has the blood, and another the money.”

And so the “cunning woman” (as she truly was), talking half to herself, ran over all the names which she thought likely, peering at Rose all the while out of the corners of her foxy bright eyes, while Rose stirred the peat ashes steadfastly with the point of her little shoe, half angry, half ashamed, half frightened, to find that “the cunning woman” had guessed so well both her suitors and her thoughts about them, and tried to look unconcerned at each name as it came out.

“Well, well,” said Lucy, who took nothing by her move, simply because there was nothing to take; “think over it—­think over it, my dear life; and if you did set your mind on any one—­why, then—­then maybe I might help you to a sight of him.”

“A sight of him?”

“His sperrit, dear life, his sperrit only, I mane.  I ’udn’t have no keeping company in my house, no, not for gowld untowld, I ’udn’t; but the sperrit of mun—­to see whether mun would be true or not, you’d like to know that, now, ’udn’t you, my darling?”

Rose sighed, and stirred the ashes about vehemently.

“I must first know who it is to be.  If you could show me that—­now—­”

“Oh, I can show ye that, tu, I can.  Ben there’s a way to ’t, a sure way; but ‘tis mortal cold for the time o’ year, you zee.”

“But what is it, then?” said Rose, who had in her heart been longing for something of that very kind, and had half made up her mind to ask for a charm.

“Why, you’m not afraid to goo into the say by night for a minute, are you?  And to-morrow night would serve, too; ’t will be just low tide to midnight.”

“If you would come with me perhaps—­”

“I’ll come, I’ll come, and stand within call, to be sure.  Only do ye mind this, dear soul alive, not to goo telling a crumb about mun, noo, not for the world, or yu’ll see naught at all, indeed, now.  And beside, there’s a noxious business grow’d up against me up to Chapel there; and I hear tell how Mr. Leigh saith I shall to Exeter gaol for a witch—­did ye ever hear the likes?—­because his groom