David Moore seemed to be as unnerved as Bernardine over the coming
marriage. If he heard a sound in Bernardine's room at night, he would
come quickly to her door and ask if anything was the matter. He seemed
to be always awake, watching, listening for something. The next day he
would say to Miss Rogers:

"I was sorely afraid something was happening to Bernardine last
night--that she was attempting to commit suicide, or something of that
kind. A girl in her highly nervous state of mind will bear watching."

"Your fears on that score are needless," replied Miss Rogers. "No matter
whatever else Bernardine might do, she would never think of taking her
life into her own hands, I assure you."

But the old basket-maker was not so sure of that. He had a strange
presentiment of coming evil which he could not shake off.

Each evening, according to his declared intention, Jasper Wilde
presented himself at David Moore's door.

"There's nothing like getting my bride-to-be a little used to me," he
declared to her father, with a grim laugh.

Once after Jasper Wilde had bid Bernardine and her father good-night, he
walked along the street, little caring in which direction he went, his
mind was so preoccupied with trying to solve the problem of how to make
this haughty girl care for him.

His mental query was answered in the strangest manner possible.

Almost from out the very bowels of the earth, it seemed--for certainly
an instant before no human being was about--a woman suddenly appeared
and confronted him--a woman so strange, uncanny, and weird-looking, that
she seemed like some supernatural creature.

"Would you like to have your fortune told, my bonny sir?" she queried in
a shrill voice. "I bring absent ones together, tell you how to gain the
love of the one you want----"

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