CHAPTER IV. THE HOROSCOPE.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 276, 27 June 1888, Page 6

CHAPTER IV. THE HOROSCOPE.

Loud Stkathspky went straight to his dressing-iooni when he reached the Towers,

and took the paokage f om his coat-pocket. It was incased in a • yellow wrapping, heavily Boaled, and bearing the impress of somo hieroglyphic signet. It was directed bo Angus, Earl of Strathspey, in cramped and almost illegible characters. xho Ear turned it over and over, and ab every touch, like an old amber rolic, it gave forth a strange, strong perfume— a peculiar, indescribable odour, which, with that subtle power that odours alone possess, carried Lord Strathspey into the dim country of the Pyramids, where he had wandored years beforo, and made him see again tho old Egyptian altars sending up the scent of their precious incense. A feeling of superstitious awe stole over him ; tho strange- perfume seemed to take possession of all his senses ; his face, pale enough at Hi&t, grow ghastly and rigid, and his hands vshook and trembled so that ho could bcaicely bteak the seal. But he succeeded at las>t, and a square bit of parchment, old and yellow, and reeking^ as it were, with that strange, overpowering perfume, slippod out and tell at his feet. The eail caught it up with tierce impatience, ft wafc covered' with mystic signs and ehaiactois which he could nob comprehend, but in one coiner wore written, in the same illegible characters, these ominous words : ' Earl of Strathspey, your heir was born under the rulo of a baletul planet. He will be the last one of his haughty race, and he will dio the death of a felon 1 You need not strive to avert it— man cannot light with Fate !' A sharp cry of horror escaped the earl s | lips, the yellow paichment chopped hoiTi his nerveless lingers. He fell back in his scat, as weak and cjcdulous as a womanami he one of the haughtiest and most iearlchs men in England, with the heroic old Strathspey blood in his veins ! What had come over him '! Was he enchanted—bewitched v He made an effort to rise, but his trembling limbs lofused to obey hit will, and a deadly drowsiness .seemed to be stealing over him, like the approach of death itselt. lli-> sitrht began to fail him, tho floor seemed to slide from beneath his foot, and one awtul sentence rang in his cars over and o\oi till it seemed to bo driving him mad— that which predicted a felon's fate to his own <jon ' (To l» ( otiiunn i(. )