“Well listen to me; you’ve got more fortune in store for you if you know how to pluck it ... you understand my meaning, don’t you?... than any man in the town this bleedun minute. Right, George,” she exclaimed, turning to a very ugly little hunchbacked fellow—truly he was a mere squint of a man, there was such a little bit of him for so much uncomeliness. The Widow Buckland took the box from the hunchback and, thrusting him out of the room, she shut fast the door and turned the key in the lock. Then she drew up a bit of a table to the window, and taking out of the box a small brass vessel and two bottles she set them before her.
“Sit down there, young feller,” she said, and Piffingcap sat down at the end of the table facing the window. The Widow turned to the window, which was a small square, the only one in the room, and closed over it a shutter. The room was clapped in darkness except for a small ray in the middle of the shutter, coming through a round hole about as large as a guinea. She pulled Mr. Piffingcap’s shoulder until the ray was shining on the middle of his forehead; she took up the brass vessel, and holding it in the light of the ray polished it for some time with her forefinger. All her fingers, even her thumbs, were covered with rich sinister rings, but there were no good looks in those fingers for the nails had been munched almost away, and dirty skin hid up the whites. The polished vessel was then placed on the table directly beneath the ray; drops from the two phials were poured into it, a green liquid and a black liquid; mixing together they melted into a pillar of smoke which rose and was seen only as it flowed through the beam of light, twisting and veering and spinning in strange waves.
The Widow Buckland said not a word for a time, but contemplated the twisting shapes as they poured through the ray, breathing heavily all the while or suffering a slight sigh to pass out of her breast. But shortly the smoke played the barber a trick in his nose and heaving up his chin he rent the room with a great sneeze. When he recovered himself she was speaking certain words:
“Fire and water I see and a white virgin’s skin. The triple gouts of blood I see and the doom given over. Fire and water I see and a white virgin’s skin.”
She threw open the shutter, letting in the light; smoke had ceased to rise but it filled the parlour with a sweet smell.
“Well ...” said Mr. Piffingcap dubiously.
And the Widow Buckland spoke over to him plainly and slowly, patting his shoulder at each syllable,
“Fire and water and a white virgin’s skin.”
Unlatching the door she thrust him out of the house into the sunlight. He tramped away across the heath meditating her words, and coming to the end of it he sat down in the shade of a bush by the side of the road, for he felt sure he was about to capture the full meaning of her words. But just then he heard a strange voice speaking, and speaking very vigorously. He looked up and observed a man on a bicycle, riding along towards him, talking to himself in a great way.
“He is a political fellow rehearsing a speech,” said Mr. Piffingcap to himself, “or perhaps he is some holy-minded person devising a sermon.”