But a reason for delay was whispered around,--the fortune-woman was coming. Soon a rough farm-wagon came up the road and through the yard-gate, and stopped in front of the door of the farmhouse. There was a hush of voices, and a snicker and digging of their neighbors' ribs upon the part of others, as a large, coarse-featured woman was helped out of the wagon by the driver of the team.
   This female was the famous fortune-woman. Some of these dwellers on the edge of the wilderness were no better than the classic Greek and noble Roman of ancient times; for they believed in divination.
   The fortune-woman went into the house where the mother of Willie sat, crying. The men crowded the room and windows and door. Some of the men looked solemn; some jeered. Out at the door Josh explained apologetically to the unbelievers, that, "inasmuch as some thinks a how she can tell, and some thinks as how she can't, so it were thought better for to go and fetch her, so as that all might satisfactory themselves, and no fault found, and every thing done for the little boy."
   After a brief seance with the teacup in the house, the fortune- woman, urged by the men, went "out of doors" and walked up along the hollow with her teacup, experimenting to find the child. About half of the men straggled after her. Jim declared to the group who lingered at the house that he would sell out and leave, if the entire crowd disgraced the town by following after that "old she- devil."
   To a stranger coming upon the field at this time, the scene was curious and picturesque, and some of it unaccountable. In the background was a vast descending plain of evergreen forest, sloping away from the Adirondack highlands to the dim distance of the St. Lawrence Valley, where could be seen the white, thread-like line of the great river; and still beyond the Canada woods, melting away to a measureless distance of airy blue. In the foreground was a vulgar old woman waddling along, and snatching here and there a teacupful of water from the puddles formed by the melting snow; and fifty vigorous men in awe-struck attitudes were gazing at her, and, when she moved, they followed her.
   Odd as this grotesque performance seemed, it had in it a touch of the old heathenish grandeur belonging to the ancient superstitions. The same strange light that through all time has shone from human faces as souls reach after the great infinite unknown shone from the faces of some of these men. There were fine visages among them. Burly Josh and a hunter with dark, poetic eyes would have been a match for handsome, pious Aeneas or the heroes of Hellas, who watched the flight of birds, and believed in a fortune-woman at Delphos.
 :  But the simple faith of these modern worshippers was not rewarded: after the Greek pattern, the oracle gave ambiguous responses. The old woman proclaimed, with her eyes snapping venomously, that there was "a big black baste a-standin' over the swate child." She announced, with a swing of her right arm extending around half a circle, that "the dear, innocent darlin' was somewhere about off that way from the house." She scolded the men sharply for their laziness, telling them they had not looked for the lost child, but were waiting around the house, "While the blessed baby starved, and the big black baste stood over him."

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