nted, and fastening
my horse to one of a long line of posts that ran into the sea,
approached Aubrey and accosted him.

"Alone, Aubrey? and at an hour when my uncle always makes the old walls
ring with revel? Hark! can you not hear the music even now? It comes
from the ball-room, I think, does it not?"

"Yes," said Aubrey, briefly, and looking down upon a devotional book,
which (as was his wont) he had made his companion.

"And we are the only truants!--Well, Gerald will supply our places with
a lighter step, and, perhaps, a merrier heart."

Aubrey sighed. I bent over him affectionately (I loved that boy with
something of a father's as well as a brother's love), and as I did bend
over him, I saw that his eyelids were red with weeping.

"My brother--my own dear brother," said I, "what grieves you?--are we
not friends, and more than friends?--what can grieve you that grieves
not me?"

Suddenly raising his head, Aubrey gazed at me with a long, searching
intentness of eye; his lips moved, but he did not answer.

"Speak to me, Aubrey," said I, passing my arm over his shoulder; "has
any one, anything, hurt you? See, now, if I cannot remedy the evil."

"Morton," said Aubrey, speaking very slowly, "do you believe that Heaven
pre-orders as well as foresees our destiny?"

"It is the schoolman's question," said I, smiling; "but I know how these
idle subtleties vex the mind; and you, my brother, are ever too occupied
with considerations of the future. If Heaven does pre-order our destiny,
we know that Heaven is merciful, and we should be fearless, as we arm
ourselves in that knowledge."

"Morton Devereux," said Aubrey, again repeating my name, and with an
evident inward effort that left his lip colourless, and yet lit his dark
dilating eye with a strange and unwonted fire,--"Morton Devereux, I feel
that I am predestined to the power of the Evil One!"

I drew back, inexpressibly shocked. "Good Heavens!" I exclaimed, "what
can induce you to cherish so terrible a phantasy? what can induce you to
wrong so fearfully the goodness and mercy of our Creator?"

Aubrey shrank from my arm, which had still been round him, and covered
his face with his hands. I took up the book he had been reading; it was
a Latin treatise on predestination, and seemed fraught with the most
gloomy and bewildering subtleties. I sat down beside him, and pointed
out the various incoherencies and contradictions of the work, and the
doctrine it espoused: