"What do you know about that ?" "Everything--everything!" she exclaimed, exultingly.

"Far more than you do, for you only know such a thing exists--you know nothing of its contents.

Oh, no! mamma guarded her darling boy too carefully for that, notwithstanding your dying father's command.

But in spite of her it has come true." "What was the astrologer's prediction--that terrible prediction that shortened my father's life ?" "It was this--that his only son and heir, born on that night, would die by the hand of the common hangman, a murderer's death on the scaffold.
Enough to blight any father's life who believed in it, was it not ?" "It was devilish.

My poor father! Tell me the name of the fiend incarnate who could do so diabolical a deed, for you know ?" "I do.