By daylight the next morning I set forth on my journey.  I looked back at the cottage as I opened the garden gate.  At one window was my mother, with her handkerchief to her eyes.  At the other stood my aunt Chance, holding up the Queen of Spades by way of encouraging me at starting.  I waved my hands to both of them in token of farewell, and stepped out briskly into the road.  It was then the last day of February.  Be pleased to remember, in connection with this, that the first of March was the day, and two o’clock in the morning the hour of my birth.

V

Now you know how I came to leave home.  The next thing to tell is, what happened on the journey.

I reached the great house in reasonably good time considering the distance.  At the very first trial of it, the prophecy of the cards turned out to be wrong.  The person who met me at the lodge gate was not a dark woman—­in fact, not a woman at all—­but a boy.  He directed me on the way to the servants’ offices; and there again the cards were all wrong.  I encountered, not one woman, but three—­and not one of the three was dark.  I have stated that I am not superstitious, and I have told the truth.  But I must own that I did feel a certain fluttering at the heart when I made my bow to the steward, and told him what business had brought me to the house.  His answer completed the discomfiture of aunt Chance’s fortune-telling.  My ill-luck still pursued me.  That very morning another man had applied for the groom’s place, and had got it.

I swallowed my disappointment as well as I could, and thanked the steward, and went to the inn in the village to get the rest and food which I sorely needed by this time.

Before starting on my homeward walk I made some inquiries at the inn, and ascertained that I might save a few miles, on my return, by following a new road.  Furnished with full instructions, several times repeated, as to the various turnings I was to take, I set forth, and walked on till the evening with only one stoppage for bread and cheese.  Just as it was getting toward dark, the rain came on and the wind began to rise; and I found myself, to make matters worse, in a part of the country with which I was entirely unacquainted, though I guessed myself to be some fifteen miles from home.  The first house I found to inquire at, was a lonely roadside inn, standing on the outskirts of a thick wood.  Solitary as the place looked, it was welcome to a lost man who was also hungry, thirsty, footsore, and wet.  The landlord was civil and respectable-looking; and the price he asked for a bed was reasonable enough.  I was grieved to disappoint my mother.  But there was no conveyance to be had, and I could go no farther afoot that night.  My weariness fairly forced me to stop at the inn.