"I know you!" said Waif. "I've seen you before. I watched you from our tents, and waited here to make sure Parson Gale, I can tell you something you would give ten years of your life to know."
She had waylaid him purposely at the bend of the coombe, that he could not but pass to reach the level moor, arriving by a path only accessible to an active hill-climber on foot, so that even had he come round at a gallop, she must have been here before him.
"Can you tell me my fortune, pretty lass?" returned Gale, with a forced attempt at gallantry. "Give me hold of that slender little hand, and I'll put a silver groat in it, if I have one left in the world."
He leaned over his horse's shoulder while he spoke, preserving his balance with some difficulty. Waif, keeping well out of reach, gave no encouragement to his assumed familiarity.
"Forget," she said, "for the time, that I am a gipsy, and that you are a priest. Parson Gale, I know the wish that is nearest your heart this very moment. You look for health, ease, happiness, and a good name like your neighbours, but you would give the soul out of your body for revenge!"
He started; the certainty with which she had fathomed his desire, and named its price, recalled the speculations of a few minutes back. Again some nameless fear of the supernatural crept over him, and he shuddered to think that for the compassing of his own eternal destruction, the gipsy-girl's shape and semblance might have been assumed by the Prince of Darkness, who thus accosted him face to face. He had seen a Romish priest cross himself under a similar terror. He would have liked now to make the holy sign, and wondered would it be any use?
Waif, if she understood, only despised his hesitation. "I can give you what you want," she said, "and I ask nothing of you in return." Though spoken in a low voice, almost a whisper, every syllable passed through her firm-set lips, hard, cruel, and distinct.
With returning confidence rose the coarse overbearing manner that had already lost this man so many friends. "Nothing for nothing," said he with a brutal laugh. "Come, lass, exchange is no robbery; speak what you have to say, and take a kiss from an honest fellow in return."
Her delicate face expressed a loathing that the vainest of men must have observed: but Waif had a task to perform, and she went through with it systematically, to the bitter end.
"The man you seek," she said, "is in your reach. The man who slew your brother sleeps to-night within three leagues of you, in the hamlet by Porlock Bay. When you stand face to face with John Garnet, tell him that the gipsy-girl he betrayed delivered him into your hand."