not prophecy to her. Watch and pray! Much may be done by effectual
prayer. Human means, fleshly arms, are vain. There is an enemy in the
house of life,' [here she quitted her palmistry for the language of
astrology;] 'there is a frightful danger at hand, both for your wife
and your child. Already on that dark ocean, over which we are all
sailing, I can see dimly the point at which the enemy's course shall
cross your wife's. There is but little interval remaining--not many
hours. All is finished; all is accomplished; and already he is almost
up with the darlings of your heart. Be vigilant, be vigilant, and yet
look not to yourself, but to Heaven, for deliverance.'

This woman was not an impostor: she spoke and uttered her oracles under
a wild sense of possession by some superior being, and of mystic
compulsion to say what she would have willingly left unsaid; and never
yet, before or since, have I seen the light of sadness settle with so
solemn an expression into human eyes as when she dropped my wife's
hand, and refused to deliver that burden of prophetic wo with which she
believed herself to be inspired.

The prophetess departed; and what mood of mind did she leave behind her
in Agnes and myself? Naturally there was a little drooping of spirits
at first; the solemnity and the heart-felt sincerity of fear and grief
which marked her demeanor, made it impossible, at the moment when we
were just fresh from their natural influences, that we should recoil
into our ordinary spirits. But with the inevitable elasticity of youth
and youthful gaiety we soon did so; we could not attempt to persuade
ourselves that there had been any conscious fraud or any attempt at
scenical effect in the Hungarian's conduct. She had no motive for
deceiving us; she had refused all offerings of money, and her whole
visit had evidently been made under an overflow of the most grateful