"The twilight is lovely, isn't it?" whispered the girl, when they were traversing the pear orchard.
"Made more lovely because of you," replied Waldstricker, sentimentally.
"How romantic you are tonight, dearest!" Helen laughed.
They had turned slowly up the hill, when suddenly Helen stopped and slipped her hand into Ebenezer's arm.
"There is that old woman you heard read from the fortune pot!" she exclaimed. "Let's step one side until she's passed us? She rarely lets a person go by without speaking."
Waldstricker threw up his head arrogantly.
"I'm not afraid of the hag," he replied pompously.
Together they advanced up the hill. Mother Moll, leaning on her cane, crept slowly down toward them. When her faded, nearsighted eyes caught sight of the two approaching figures, she halted in the middle of the road until they were almost upon her. She stared at Waldstricker fully fifteen seconds, while he looked steadily back at her. Then her withered lips spread wide in a sneering, cackling laugh.
"So he air aready been settin' on yer head an' layin' on yer heart, mister," she greeted him, "the leetle man like this, huh, ain't he?"
She shook her cane at the tall man and clacked at him again. Helen was conscious that at Moll's insults, Ebenezer's anger was rising by the minute. She was herself greatly moved by a kind of superstitious awe of the old woman's cryptic utterances. But seeking to avoid any further unpleasantness, she smiled in a friendly manner and asked, "How do you do, Mother Moll?"
The hag thrust forward her face and raised one withered arm, "I air fine, young lady," she screamed, crooking her fingers at the girl, "an' feel finer'n you can do this day, or ye'll ever with him." She pointed her cane at the scowling, dark-faced man; and slowly bobbed her head back to Helen. "Yer life'll draw out long an' terrible, till ye'll wish ye hadn't never seen 'im. He'll set up a knot hole an' drag ye livin' through it. Then he'll turn yer heart inside out an' haul ye back again."
She paused, while Waldstricker's face grew darker and darker. The frown on his brow roused Helen to action.
"Let's go on, dear," she whispered. "Don't pay any attention to her foolish talk."
"Not yet," returned Waldstricker, ominously. "Not yet!"
Moll laughed discordantly, shaking her head until the wisps of gray hair fell in strings about her face.
"He knows I ain't done tellin' ye what'll happen if ye line yer life with his'n," she croaked. "Lady, he air wicked, awful wicked, an' nothin' but misery, deep an' plentiful, air a goin' to make him any better. Every one he loves--"