"Enough!" interrupted the doctor, turning as pale as his saffron visage would permit; "no more of the past. What has the future in store for me?"
"A life of disgrace, and death on the scaffold!"
A suppressed cry of horror burst from the white lips of the doctor, who reeled as if struck by some sudden blow.
"To-night," continued the astrologer, unheeding the interruption, "a child has been born whose destiny shall be united with yours through life; some strange, mystic tie will bind you together for a time. But the hand of this child will yet bring your head to the halter."
He paused. Dr. Wiseman stood stiff, rooted to the ground with horror.
"Such is your future; you may go," said the Egyptian, waving his hand.
With his blood freezing in his veins, with hands trembling and lips palsied with horror, he quitted the house. An hour had scarcely passed since his entrance; but that hour seemed to have added ten years to his age. He felt not the cold, keen air as he slowly moved along, every sense paralyzed by the appalling prediction he had just heard.
"Die on the scaffold!" His crime deserved it. But the bare thought made his blood run cold. And through a child born that night he was to perish! Was it the child of Esther Oranmore? Oh, absurd! it had been swept far away by the waves long ere this. Whose, then, could it be? There were more children born this Christmas Eve than that one; but how could any one ever know what he had done? No one knew of it but Mrs. Oranmore; and he well knew she would never tell.
He plunged blindly onward through the heaps of drifted snow, heeding not, caring not, whither his steps wended. Once or twice he met a watchman going his rounds, and he shrank away like the guilty thing that he was, dreading lest the word "murder" should be stamped on his brow. He thought with cowardly terror of the coming day, when every eye, he fancied, would turn upon him with a look of suspicion.
Involuntarily he wandered to the sea-shore, and stood on the bank where he had been one hour before. The waves were dashing now almost to his feet; no trace of any living thing was to be seen around.