Guy Mannering.

GUY MANNERING. 9
But can you not aid me farther in this most important
concern? Believe me, I will not be ungrateful."
"I require and deserve no gratitude for doing a good
action," said the stranger, " in especial for contributing
all that lies in my power to save from an abhorred fate
the harmless infant to whom, under a singular conjunction of planets, last night gave life. There is my address;
you may write to me from time to time concerning the
progress of the boy in religious knowledge. If he be
bred up as I advise, I think it will be best that he come
to my house at the time when the fatal and decisive
period approaches, that is, before he has attained his
twenty-first year complete. If you send him such as I
desire, I humbly trust that God will protect his own,
through whatever strong temptation his fate may subject
him to." He then gave his host his address, which was
a country-seat near a post-town in the south of England,
and bid him an affectionate farewell.
The mysterious stranger departed, but his words remained impressed upon the mind of the anxious parent.
He lost his lady while his boy was still in infancy. This
calamity, I think, had been predicted by the Astrologer;
and thus his confidence, which, like most people of the
period, he had freely given to the science, was riveted
and confirmed. The utmost care, therefore, was taken to
carry into effect the severe and almost ascetic plan of
education which the sage had enjoined. A tutor of the
strictest principles was employed to superintend the
youth's education; he was surrounded by domestics of
the most established character, and closely watched and
looked after by the anxious father himself.
The years of infancy, childhood, and boyhood, passed
as the father could have wished. A young Nazarene