Young Davy, it may be guessed, gazed hard at the "Wise Man," and thought him an awful-looking personage, though Tom Cussitt was, at that time of day, a somewhat handsome-looking man. His fine clear blue eye was not, as yet, overhung with those bushy, unsightly brows that marked him in old age; his fair, ruddy skin was not, as yet, disfigured and concealed by the filthy long gray beard he afterwards wore; nor had his fine manly height yet contracted a stoop. Old Davy had often seen Wise Tom before, having frequently conveyed customers to his cottage, and therefore he did not stare at him with wonder or surprise, like the lad. As for Tom, he, of course, stared at neither father nor son, being quite prepared, like Sidrophel, to say to every comer—
"I did expect you here, and knew,
Before you spake, your business, too."
Not that Tom Cussitt was one of your ordinary conjurers,—your mere schemers who take up the trade to scrape a shilling from the gulls among mankind. Many a rich man has gone from Tom's door without being able, although he proffered pounds to the star-gazer, to obtain one syllable from him in solution of the great problem of futurity which the rich man desired so much to know. Nor did Tom usually set about the process of solving a "horary question," or "telling a fortune," with the imposing forms of books and almanacks. On some special occasions he would resort, like other clerks of the starry craft, to these learned appearances; but, more customarily, a single strong pithy remark, or two, delivered over his pipe, and in the course of a general conversation in which he engaged his visitors, comprised the gist of his prophecy respecting the future life of an inquirer, or of his direction for the recovery of stolen goods or chattels. Whatever might be the wise man's own confidence in the rules of prognostication by the stars, every shrewd observer noted that the prophet delivered his oracles rather by the gauge and admeasurement which his strong common sense enabled him to form of human character, and the accuracy by which it enabled him to judge of circumstances, than by any exercise of mathematical or other description of learned skill.
Old Davy was too full with the budget of young Davy's vagaries to need much craft on the part of one who wished to draw him out. The Wise Man quickly kenned what kind of stuff the young chap was made of, and did not feel that it required any great exercise of his wisdom to ken it, either. Old Davy, however, with all his fears for the lad's capricious inclinations, and their probable consequences when he himself might be lain in the grave, was scarcely prepared for the stunning severity of the single definitive sentence wherewith Wise Tom summed up his prophecy of young Davy's "fortune."
"Well, then, Maister Cussitt," said Davy the elder, taking his pipe from his mouth, after the lapse of an hour's chat, "and so what do you think of him? I've tell'd you the day, I'm sewer, quite exact; and I've told you the hour at which Betty brought him into the world, as near as I can remember."
"Reach us a spell, my lad!" said Cussitt to the younger Davy, and pointed to a neat wire case that hung against the wall, and contained long strips of paper wrapped up for pipe-lighters.
"You'll want two," said the very sharp lad, "for my fayther's pipe's out, an' all!"
"Is it, lad?" said old Davy, looking eagerly into the head of his pipe. "Lord! what eyes thou hast! there's nothing can 'scape thee, I declare!" And he chuckled with pleasure at his boy's acuteness.
"And so what think you, then," he asked again—"what think you, Maister Cussitt, will be our Davy's luck?"