'Oh, I have prayed, Crona, ever so much, all the way through the forest. But you give me a little hope, and I am so glad I have come.'
'Lotty will return,' Crona said again.
And Antony was now smiling.
'Think you she has been picked up by some vessel already?'
She did not answer immediately. The blazing peat and wood sent darting tongues of flame up through the blue-white smoke, and it was at these the witch was gazing.
'I can see the dear bairn at this moment,' she said. 'Lotty is crouching under the bows of her boat, and this is riding to the lee of something, I cannot tell you what. That is all you or I will know to-night.' Then she placed her hand on the back of his, and smoothed, patted, and stroked it.
It may have been some magnetic influence, or it may not; but true it is that from that moment Antony mourned no more for Lotty, only hoped.
But now she began to speak of himself, and told him much as she looked at his palm about his past and not a little about his future.
'Have you an enemy,' she said abruptly; 'a tall, dark man?'
'Oh, there is nearly always a tall, dark man in fortune-telling, Crona.'