solemn manner to cause the assistants to
retard the birth if practicable, were it but for five minutes. The answer
declared this to be impossible; and almost in the instant that the
message was returned the father and his guest were made acquainted with
the birth of a boy.

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 be 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 powerful
than all, if His aid be invoked in sincerity and truth. You ought to
dedicate this boy to the immediate service of his Maker, with as much
sincerity as Samuel was devoted to the worship in the Temple by his
parents. You must regard him as a being separated from the rest of the
world. In childhood, in boyhood, you must surround him with the pious and
virtuous, and protect him to the utmost of your power from the sight or
hearing of any crime, in word or action. He must be educated in religious
and moral principles of the strictest description. Let him not enter the
world, lest he learn to partake of its follie