next a gentle sorrow, had successively dwelt upon her countenance, deepening with the lapse of time into a quiet anguish.  A mixture of affright would now have made it the very expression of the portrait.  Walter’s face was moody and dull or animated only by fitful flashes which left a heavier darkness for their momentary illumination.  He looked from Elinor to her portrait, and thence to his own, in the contemplation of which he finally stood absorbed.

The painter seemed to hear the step of Destiny approaching behind him on its progress toward its victims.  A strange thought darted into his mind.  Was not his own the form in which that Destiny had embodied itself, and he a chief agent of the coming evil which he had foreshadowed?

Still, Walter remained silent before the picture, communing with it as with his own heart and abandoning himself to the spell of evil influence that the painter had cast upon the features.  Gradually his eyes kindled, while as Elinor watched the increasing wildness of his face her own assumed a look of terror; and when, at last, he turned upon her, the resemblance of both to their portraits was complete.

“Our fate is upon us!” howled Walter.  “Die!”

Drawing a knife, he sustained her as she was sinking to the ground, and aimed it at her bosom.  In the action and in the look and attitude of each the painter beheld the figures of his sketch.  The picture, with all its tremendous coloring, was finished.

“Hold, madman!” cried he, sternly.

He had advanced from the door and interposed himself between the wretched beings with the same sense of power to regulate their destiny as to alter a scene upon the canvas.  He stood like a magician controlling the phantoms which he had evoked.

“What!” muttered Walter Ludlow as he relapsed from fierce excitement into sullen gloom.  “Does Fate impede its own decree?”

“Wretched lady,” said the painter, “did I not warn you?”

“You did,” replied Elinor, calmly, as her terror gave place to the quiet grief which it had disturbed.  “But I loved him.”

Is there not a deep moral in the tale?  Could the result of one or all our deeds be shadowed forth and set before us, some would call it fate and hurry onward, others be swept along by their passionate desires, and none be turned aside by the prophetic pictures.

DAVID SWAN.

A FANTASY.

We can be but partially acquainted even with the events which actually influence our course through life and our final destiny.  There are innumerable other events, if such they may be called, which come close upon us, yet pass away without actual results or even betraying their near approach by the reflection of any light or shadow across our minds.  Could we know all the vicissitudes of our fortunes, life would be too full of hope and fear, exultation or disappointment, to afford us a single hour of true serenity.  This idea may be illustrated by a page from the secret history of David Swan.