Simon Dale | Page 2

had any need to be,
and caused to my parents no small questionings. It was the third clause
or term of the prediction that gave most concern alike to my mother
and to my father; to my mother, because, although of discreet mind and
a sound Churchwoman, she was from her earliest years a Rechabite,
and had never heard of a King who drank water; and to my father by
reason of his decayed estate, which made it impossible for him to
contrive how properly to fit me for my predestined company. "A man
should not drink the King's wine without giving the King as good," my
father reflected ruefully. Meanwhile I, troubling not at all about the
matter, was content to prove Betty right in point of the date, and,
leaving the rest to the future, achieved this triumph for her most
punctually. Whatsoever may await a man on his way through the world,
he can hardly begin life better than by keeping his faith with a lady.
She was a strange old woman, this Betty Nasroth, and would likely
enough have fared badly in the time of the King's father. Now there
was bigger game than witches afoot, and nothing worse befell her than
the scowls of her neighbours and the frightened mockery of children.
She made free reply with curses and dark mutterings, but me she loved
as being the child of her vision, and all the more because, encountering
her as I rode in my mother's arms, I did not cry, but held out my hands,
crowing and struggling to get to her; whereat suddenly, and to my
mother's great terror, she exclaimed: "Thou see'st, Satan!" and fell to
weeping, a thing which, as every woman in the parish knew, a person
absolutely possessed by the Evil One can by no means accomplish
(unless, indeed, a bare three drops squeezed from the left eye may
usurp the name of tears). But my mother shrank away from her and
would not allow her to touch me; nor was it until I had grown older and
ran about the village alone that the old woman, having tracked me to a
lonely spot, took me in her arms, mumbled over my head some words I
did not understand, and kissed me. That a mole grows on the spot she
kissed is but a fable (for how do the women know where her kiss fell
save by where the mole grows?--and that is to reason poorly), or at the
most the purest chance. Nay, if it were more, I am content; for the mole
does me no harm, and the kiss, as I hope, did Betty some good; off she

went straight to the Vicar (who was living then in the cottage of my
Lord Quinton's gardener and exercising his sacred functions in a
secrecy to which the whole parish was privy) and prayed him to let her
partake of the Lord's Supper: a request that caused great scandal to the
neighbours and sore embarrassment to the Vicar himself, who, being a
learned man and deeply read in demonology, grieved from his heart
that the witch did not play her part better.
"It is," said he to my father, "a monstrous lapse."
"Nay, it is a sign of grace," urged my mother.
"It is," said my father (and I do not know whether he spoke perversely
or in earnest), "a matter of no moment."
Now, being steadfastly determined that my boyhood shall be less
tedious in the telling than it was in the living--for I always longed to be
a man, and hated my green and petticoat-governed days--I will pass
forthwith to the hour when I reached the age of eighteen years. My dear
father was then in Heaven, and old Betty had found, as was believed,
another billet. But my mother lived, and the Vicar, like the King, had
come to his own again: and I was five feet eleven in my stockings, and
there was urgent need that I should set about pushing my way and
putting money in my purse; for our lands had not returned with the
King, and there was no more incoming than would serve to keep my
mother and sisters in the style of gentlewomen.
"And on that matter," observed the Vicar, stroking his nose with his
forefinger, as his habit was in moments of perplexity, "Betty Nasroth's
prophecy is of small service. For the doings on which she touches are
likely to be occasions of expense rather than sources of gain."
"They would be money wasted," said my mother gently, "one and all of
them."
The Vicar looked a little doubtful.
"I will write a sermon on that theme," said he; for this was with him a

favourite way out of an argument. In