hould stand in need of your skill, you shall find
me so, too. Good-night, and may your prayers be powerful, as I know they
come from a Christian heart, honest Solomon."

CHAPTER XI. A Conjurer's Levee.

We cannot form at this distance of time any adequate notion of the
influence which a conjurer of those days exercised over the minds and
feelings of the ignorant. It was necessary that he should be, or be
supposed at least to be, well versed in judicial astrology, the use of
medicine, and consequently able to cast a nativity, or cure any earthly
complaint. There is scarcely any grade or species of superstition that
is not associated with or founded upon fear. The conjurer, consequently,
was both feared and respected; and his character appeared in different
phases to the people--each phase adapted to the corresponding character
of those with whom he had to deal. The educated of those days, with but
few exceptions, believed in astrology, and the possibility of developing
the future fate and fortunes of an individual, whenever the hour of his
birth and the name of the star or planet under which he was born could
be ascertained. The more ignorant class, however, generally associated
the character of the conjurer with that of the necromancer or magician,
and consequently attributed his predictions to demoniacal influence.
Neither were they much mistaken, for they only judged of these impostors
as they found them. In nineteen cases out of twenty, the character of
the low astrologer, the necromancer, and the quack was associated, and
the influence of the stars and the aid of the devil were both considered
as giving assurance of supernatural knowledge to the same individual.
This unaccountable anxiety to see, as it were, the volume of futurity
unrolled, so far as it discloses individual fate, has characterized
mankind ever since the world began; and hence, even in the present
day, the same anxiety among the ignorant to run after spae-women,
fortunetellers, and gypsies, in order to have their fortunes told
through the means of their adroit predictions.

On the following morning the whole town of Rathfillan was in a state of
excitement by the rumor that a conjurer had arrived, for the purpose not
only of telling all their future fates and fortunes, but of discovering
all those who had been guilty of theft, and the places where the stolen
property was to be found. This may seem a bold stroke; but when we
consider the mate