"Why," replied the other, "foolishly enough I felt charmed by his countenance, by the soft sound of his voice, by his whole look and air: this perverse sympathy will keep following us everywhere. I took a liking to him: and catching my heart in this piece of folly, I punisht myself by conceiving a downright aversion to the fellow, as we should and must do to everything we are greatly delighted with." Edward wanted to ask further questions, but the striking of the clock called him to his business, and being dismist by the old man he went away, with a multitude of thoughts concerning this singular conversation, to meditate further upon it at leisure. * * * * * Whenever Edward's thoughts now recurred, as they often did, to the nature of his situation, that and every thing connected with it, the appointment which had fixt him in this secluded spot, the business he was engaged in, as well as the persons with whom he had to hold intercourse, appeared to him in a light totally different from before. He was loth to acknowledge to himself how forcibly and singularly his imagination had been wrought upon by his late discourse with Rose. Hitherto he had only lookt on her as a pleasing child; but now the lovely girl became an object to which expectations and silent hopes attacht themselves: he watcht her more attentively; he talked oftener to her and more at length; and the budding of her youthful soul, the frank artlessness of her thoughts, interested his heart more and more. And then, when he recollected the hideous, sallow-faced Eleazar, with his surly morose temper, and thought that this tender flower had already in secret devoted herself as a sacrifice to so odious a creature, his anger was moved by this absurd project, which at other times again he could not help smiling at. Eleazar had been absent for some days past. He had not taken much pains to conceal that he was going into the lonely, remote parts of the mountains in search of those marks which he had read of in the master miner's book. This absurdity sorted well with his strange dreamy character; for he was perpetually poring over books of magic and alchemical treatises, had a laboratory in his room, and would often boast in pretty intelligible hints that he had found the philosopher's stone. When Edward bethought himself of his singular conversation with his old master, and of the sentiments he had given vent to during that confidential hour, he no longer regarded it as improbable that Balthasar should have been led by his wild moody whims to design his blooming foster-daughter for the wife of the gloomy Eleazar. A shudder came over him to think with what dark and perplext spirits he was so closely linkt; his head went round with the giddiness of all about him, and he seemed almost to lose his hold on himself. This made him still more regret the loss of young William: at the same time his annoyances were increast by the