‘I see,’ saith Scott, ‘a ruddy-complexioned wench, in a red waistcoat, drawing a can of beer.’
‘She will be your wife,’ cried Hodges.
‘You are mistaken, sir,’ rejoined Scott. ‘So soon as I come to London, I am engaged to marry a tall gentlewoman in the Old Bailey.’
‘You will marry the red gentlewoman,’ replied Hodges, with an air of imperturbable assurance.
On returning to London, Scott, to his great astonishment, found that his tall gentlewoman had jilted him, and taken to herself another husband. Two years afterwards, in the course of a Kentish journey, he refreshed himself at an inn in Canterbury; fell in love with its ruddy-complexioned barmaid; and, when he married her, remembered her red waistcoat, her avocation, and Mr. Hodges ‘his crystal.’
An amusing story is told of this man Hodges.
A neighbour of his, who had lost his horse, recovered the animal by acting upon the astrologer’s advice. Some years afterwards he unluckily conceived the idea of playing upon the wise man a practical joke, and obtained the co-operation of one of his friends. He had certainly recovered his horse, he said, in the way Hodges had shown him, but it was purely a chance, and would not happen again. ‘So come, let us play him a trick. I will leave some boy or other at the town’s end with my horse, and we will then call on Hodges and put him to the test.’
This was done, and Hodges said it was true the horse was lost, and would never be recovered.
‘I thought what fine skill you had,’ laughed the gentleman; ‘my horse is walking in a lane at the town’s end.’
Whereupon Hodges, with an oath, as was his evil habit, asserted that the horse was gone, and that his owner would never see him again. Ridiculing the wise man without mercy, the gentleman departed, and hastened to the town’s end, and there, at the appointed place, the boy lay stretched upon the ground, fast asleep, with the bridle round his arm, but the horse was gone!