astrologer--the prediction?"

"Surely. You have never been the same man since that fatal night. It
is of the prediction you would speak?"

"It is. I must tell my son. I must warn him of the unutterable horror
to come. Oh, my boy! my boy! what will become of you when you learn
your horrible doom?"

"Papa," the lad said, softly, but growing very white, "I don't
understand--what horror? what doom? Tell me, and see how I will bear
it. I am a Kingsland, you know, and the son of a daring race."

"That is my brave boy! Send them out of the room, Olivia--priest,
doctor, Mildred, and all--then come close to me, close, close, for my
voice is failing--and listen."

Lady Kingsland arose--fair and stately still as twelve years before,
and eminently self-sustained in this trying hour. In half a minute she
had turned out rector, physician, and daughter, and knelt again by that
bed of death.

"The first part of my story, Olivia," began the dying man, "belongs to
you. Years before I knew you, when I was a young, hot-headed, rashly
impulsive boy, traveling in Spain, I fell in with a gang of wandering
gypsies. I had been robbed and wounded by mountain brigands; those
gypsies found me, took me to their tents, cared for me, cured me. But
long after I was well I lingered with them, for the fairest thing the
sun shone on was my black-eyed nurse, Zenith. We were both so young
and so fiery-blooded, so--Ah! what need to go over the old, old