_I.--The Astrologer_


It was in the month of November, 17--, when a young English gentleman,
who had just left the University of Oxford, being benighted while
sightseeing in Dumfriesshire, sought shelter at Ellangowan, on the very
night the heir was born. Our hero, Guy Mannering, entering into the
simple humour of Mr. Bertram, his host, agreed to calculate the infant's
horoscope by the stars, having in early youth studied with an old
clergyman who had a firm belief in astrology.

Mannering had once before tried a similar piece of foolery, at the
instance of the young lady to whom he was betrothed, and now found that
the result of the scheme in both cases presaged misfortune in the same
year to the infant as to her. To the baby, three periods would be
particularly hazardous--his fifth, his tenth, his twenty-first year.

He mentally relinquished his art for ever, and to prevent the child
being supposed to be the object of evil prediction, he gave the paper
into Mr. Bertram's hand, and requested him to keep it for five years
with the seal unbroken, after which period he left him at liberty,
trusting that the first fatal year being safely overpast, no credit
would be paid to its farther contents.

When Mrs. Bertram was able to work again, her first employment was to
make a small velvet bag for the scheme of nativity; and though her
fingers itched to break the seal, she had the firmness to enclose it in
two slips of parchment, and put it in the bag aforesaid, and hang it