The Astrologer on the morrow met the party who gathered around the
breakfast-table, with looks so grave and ominous, as to alarm the
fears of the father, who had hitherto exulted in the prospects held
out by the birth of an heir to his ancient property, failing which
event it must have passed to a distant branch of the family. He
hastened to draw the stranger into a private room.

"I fear from your looks," said the father, "that you have bad
tidings to tell me of my young stranger; perhaps God will resume
the blessing He has bestowed ere he attains the age of manhood, or
perhaps he is destined to be unworthy of the affection which we are
naturally disposed to devote to our offspring."

"Neither the one nor the other," answered the stranger;" unless my
judgment greatly err, the infant will survive the years of
minority, and in temper and disposition will prove all that his
parents can wish. But with much in his horoscope which promises
many blessings, there is one evil influence strongly predominant,
which threatens to subject him to an unhallowed and unhappy
temptation about the time when he shall attain the age of
twenty-one, which period, the constellations intimate, will he the
crisis of his fate. In what shape, or with what peculiar urgency,
this temptation may beset him, my art cannot discover."

"Your knowledge, then, can afford us no defence," said the anxious
father, "against the threatened evil?"

"Pardon me," answered the stranger, "it can. The influence of the
constellations is powerful, but He, who made the heavens, is more