"You\'re just an unmitigated little humbug, Johnnie," said Graeme, as he leaned over the wall smoking, to the small boy whose acquaintance he had made the previous day, and who had promptly foretold a storm which had not come.

"Unmitigumbug! Guyablle! Qu\'es\' ce que c\'es\' que ?a?" echoed the small boy, with very wide eyes.

"You, my son. Your black magic\'s all humbug. It lacks the essential attribute of fulfilment. It doesn\'t work. Black magic that doesn\'t work is humbug."

"Black-mack-chick! My Good! You do talk!"

"What about that storm?"

"Ah ouaie! Well, you wait. It come."

"So will Christmas, and the summer after next, if we wait long enough. On the same terms I foretell thunders and lightnings, rain, hail, snow, and fiery vapours, followed by lunar rainbows and waterspouts."

"Go\'zamin!" said Johnnie, with a touch of reluctant admiration at such an outflow of eloquence; and then, by way of set-off, "I sec six black crows, \'s mawn\'n."

"Ah—really? And what do you gather from such a procession as that now?"

"Some un\'s gwain\' to die," in a tone of vast satisfaction.

"Of course, of course—if we wait long enough. It\'s perhaps you. You\'ll die yourself sometime, you know."

"Noh, I wun\'t. No \'n\'ll ivver see me die. I\'ll just turn into sun\'th\'n—a gull maybe," as one floated by on moveless wing, the very poetry of motion; and the fathomless black eyes followed it with pathetic longing.

"Cormorant more likely, I should say."

"Noh............