to me absolutely flabbergasted. She stared, and looked in a dazed way at the girl, standing up as she did so with the instinctive habit, ingrained through centuries of custom, of an inferior to a superior. Then she moved her hand across her forehead, as though to clear her brain, before she replied:
"What was I waitin' for? I'll tell ye, an ye will. I was waitin' for the fulfillment o' the Doom. The Voices hae spoken; and what they hae said, will be. There be them that would stand in the way o' Fate, and would try to hinder the comin' that must be. But they will fail; they will fail! They can no more block the river o' time wi' ony deeds o' mon, than they can dam the spate wi' a bairn's playtoy." Again came Marjory's searching question, with all the mystery-dispelling freshness of her unfettered youth; and indeed it seemed as if the Old-world mystery could not hold its dignity in the face of overt, direct questioning:
"By the way, what was it that the Doom said? Was it anything that an American girl can understand?" Gormala gazed at her in manifest wonder. To her, reared in the atmosphere of the Old Far West, this product of the New Far West seemed like a being of another world. Had Marjory been less sweet in her manner than she was, or less fair to look upon, less dignified, or less grave, the old woman would probably have shown hostility at once. But it seemed to me impossible that even a witch-woman could be hostile to Marjory to-day. She looked so sweet, and kind and happy; so bright and joyous; so much like the incarnation of ideal girlhood, that criticism was disarmed, and hostility could not force a way into the charmed circle of that radiant presence. To me, her attitude towards Gormala was incomprehensible. She knew Gormala, for I had told her of who and what the Seer was, and of the prophecies and warnings that she had already
