receiving your wife on board. I am bitterly disappointed in being
left this time; do, therefore, to a certain degree, console me by
promising that I shall sail with you next voyage, if Heaven permit
your return."

"I promise it, Amine, since you are so earnest. I can refuse you
nothing; but I have a foreboding that yours and my happiness will be
wrecked for ever. I am not a visionary, but it does appear to me that,
strangely mixed up as I am, at once with this world and the next, some
little portion of futurity is opened to me. I have given my promise,
Amine, but from it I would fain be released."

"And if ill _do_ come, Philip, it is our destiny. Who can avert fate?"

"Amine, we are free agents, and to a certain extent are permitted to
direct our own destinies."

"Ay, so would Father Seysen fain have made me believe; but what he
said in support of his assertion was to me incomprehensible. And yet
he said that it was a part of the Catholic faith. It may be so--I am
unable to understand many other points. I wish your faith were made
more simple. As yet the good man--for good he really is--has only led
me into doubt."

"Passing through doubt, you will arrive at conviction, Amine."

"Perhaps so," replied Amine; "but it appears to me that I am as yet
but on the outset of my journey. But come, Philip, let us return. You
must to Amsterdam, and I will go with you. After your labours of the
day, at least until you sail, your Amine's smiles must still enliven
you. Is it not so?"

"Yes, dearest, I would have proposed it. I wonder much how Schriften
could come here. I did not see his body it is certain, but his escape
is to me miraculous. Why did he not appear when saved? where could he
have been? What think you, Amine?"

"What I have long thought, Philip. He is a ghoul with an evil eye,
permitted for some cause to walk the earth in human form; and, is,
certainly, in some way, connected with your strange destiny. If it
requires anything to convince me of the truth of all that has passed,
it is his appearance--the wretched Afrit! Oh, that I had my mother's
powers!--but I forget; it displeases you, Philip, that I ever talk of
such things, and I am silent."

Philip replied not; and absorbed in their own meditations they walked
back in silence to the cottage. Although Philip had made up his own
mind, he immediately sent the Portuguese priest to summon Father
Seysen, that he might communicate with them and take their opinio