read--your son's irrevocable fate. Don't hope to shirk it. My task is
ended, and I go. Farewell!"

"No, no," the baronet cried; "not so! Remain and breakfast here. The
morning is but just breaking."

"And before yonder sun is above the horizon I will be far away. No,
Sir Jasper Kingsland, I break no bread under your roof. I have done my
work, and depart forever. Look to your son!"

He spoke the last words slowly, with a tigerish glare of hate leaping
out of his eyes, with deadly menace in every syllable. Then he was
gone down the winding stair-way like a black ghost, and so out and away.

Sir Jasper Kingsland took the folded paper and sought his room. There
in the pale day-dawn he tore it open. One side was covered with
cabalistic characters, Eastern symbols, curious marks and
hieroglyphics. The other side was written in French, in long, clear,
legible characters. There was a heading: "Horoscope of the Heir of
Kingsland." Sir Jasper sat down and began to read.

Nearly an hour after, a servant, entering to replenish the faded fire,
fled out of the room and startled the household with his shrieks. Two
or three domestics rushed in. There lay Sir Jasper Kingsland prone on
his face on the floor, stiff and stark as a dead man. A paper,
unintelligible to all, was clutched tightly as a death grip in his
hand. Reading that crumpled paper, the strong man had fallen there
flat on the floor in a dead swoon.