never seen a human being whose look and manner suggested a greater
capacity for doing harm. Yet there was a kindly smile on her tanned face
when she looked at me. Young as I was, the truth came home to me,
somehow, that she was a dead but undeparted spirit and belonged to
another world. I remember the tufts of gray hair above her blue eyes;
the mole on the side of her aquiline nose; her pointed chin and small
mouth. She carried a cane in her bony right hand and the notion came to
me that she was looking for bad boys who deserved a cudgeling.

Aunt Deel nodded and said:

"Ayes, Kate--tell their fortunes if ye've anything to say--ayes!"

She brought two sheets of paper and the old woman sat down upon the
grass and began to write with a little stub of a pencil. I have now
those fateful sheets of paper covered by the scrawls of old Kate. I
remember how she shook her head and sighed and sat beating her forehead
with the knuckles of her bony hands after she had looked at the palm of
Amos. Swiftly the point of her pencil ran over and up and down the sheet
like the movements of a frightened serpent. In the silence how loudly
the pencil seemed to hiss in its swift lines and loops.

My aunt exclaimed "Mercy!" as she looked at the sheet; for while I knew
not, then, the strange device upon the paper, I knew, by and by, that it
was a gibbet. Beneath it were the words: "Money thirst shall burn like a
fire in him."

She rose and smiled as she looked into my face. I saw a kind, gentle
glow in her eyes that reassured me. She clapped her hands with joy. She
examined my palm and grew serious and stood looking thoughtfully at the