The woman was some years older than her companion, and still more forlornly shabby. Her garments seemed literally composed of particles of dust glued together, while her face might have insured her condemnation as a witch before any honest jury in the reign of King James the First. His breakfast, and the brandy-bottle that flanked the loaf, were now placed before Losely; and, as distastefully he forced himself to eat, his eye once more glanced towards, and this time rested on, the shabby man, in the sort of interest with which one knave out of elbows regards another. As Jasper thus looked, gradually there stole on him a reminiscence of those coarse large features—that rusty disreputable wig. The recognition, however, was not mutual; and presently, after a whisper interchanged between the man and the woman, the latter rose, and approaching Losely, dropped a curtsey, and said, in a weird, under voice: "Stranger! luck's in store for you. Tell your fortune!" As she spoke, from some dust-hole in her garments she produced a pack of cards, on whose half-obliterated faces seemed incrusted the dirt of ages. Thrusting these antiquities under Jasper's nose, she added, "Wish and cut."
"Yshaw," said Jasper, who, though sufficiently superstitious in some matters and in regard to some persons, was not so completely under the influence of that imaginative infirmity as to take the creature before him for a sibyl. "Get away; you turn my stomach. Your cards smell; so do you!"
"Forgive her, worthy sir," said the man, leaning forward. "The hag may be unsavoury, but she is wise. The Three Sisters who accosted the Scottish Thane, sir (Macbeth—you have seen it on the stage?) were not savoury. Withered, and wild in their attire, sir, but they knew a thing or two! She sees luck in your face. Cross her hand and give it vent!"
"Fiddledee," said the irreverent Losely. "Take her off, or I shall scald her," and he seized the kettle.
The hag retreated grumbling; and Losely, soon despatching his meal, placed his feet 'on the hobs, and began to meditate what course to adopt for a temporary subsistence. He had broken into the last pound left of the money which he had extracted from Mrs. Crane's purse some days before. He recoiled with terror from the thought of returning to town and placing himself at her mercy. Yet what option had he? While thus musing, he turned impatiently round, and saw that the shabby man and the dusty hag were engaged in an amicable game of ecarte, with those very cards which had so offended his olfactory organs. At that sight the old instinct of the gambler struggled back; and, raising himself up, he looked over the cards of the players. The miserable wretches were, of course, playing for nothing; and Losely saw at a glance that the man was, nevertheless, trying to cheat the woman! Positively he took that man into more respect; and that man, noticing the interest with which Losely surveyed the game, looked up, and said:
"While the time, sir? What say you? A game or two? I can stake my pistoles—that is, sir, so far as a fourpenny bit goes. If ignorant of this French game, sir, cribbage or all fours?"
"No," said Losely, mournfully; "there is nothing to be got out of you; otherwise"—he stopped and sighed. "But I have seen you under other circumstances. What has become of your Theatrical Exhibition? Gambled it away? Yet, from what I see of your play, I think you ought not to have lost, Mr. Rugge."
The ex-manager started.
"What! You knew me before the Storm?—before the lightning struck me, as I may say, sir—and falling into difficulties, I became-a wreck? You knew me?—not of the Company?—a spectator?"
"As you say—a spectator. You had once in your employ an actor—clever old fellow. Waife, I think, he was called."