The guest spent a part of the night in ascertaining the position of the heavenly bodies, and calculating their probable influence; until at length the result of his observations induced him to send for the father and conjure him in the most 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 follies, or perhaps of its vices.  In short, preserve him as far as possible from all sin, save that of which too great a portion belongs to all the fallen race of Adam.  With the approach of his twenty-first birthday comes the crisis of his fate.  If he survive it, he will be happy and prosperous on earth, and a chosen vessel among those elected for heaven.  But if it be otherwise—­’ The Astrologer stopped, and sighed deeply.