“He had one to provide for--a female relative--in whom his heart was bound, but this was not reciprocal. The relation was that of religious duty on his side, and self-interest on hers. Still the man nobly struggled for her--so it seemed--and the picture faded, but another came. His ‘_friend_’ by fraud obtained all the man had, and then, with malignant purpose, defamed the female to his dupe, having first reduced the man to beggary. All this, working on the barber, nearly upset his reason, and the victim raged in his agony, and the financier laughed at him, and fed sumptuously, daily; and, having previously obtained by double fraud, a signature to the effect that robbery was a legal loan, gloated over the misery he had caused, and denounced the victim himself had made. Once more the picture flew on, years had gone by, the despised man--despised because his skin was darker than his destroyer’s--had risen into eminence and fame. “It changed again. _Disgrace, poverty, the prison and the halter had avenged him._ “‘The way of the world!’ said Miakus, ‘but recollect that “‘Ever the Right comes uppermost, And ever is justice done!’ What could you expect else from so small a portion of a man? Trust no one. This was fate. Fate cannot be evaded. Submit. It will be well in the sequel. WE MAY BE HAPPY YET!’ “Again those words! and uttered by Miakus, too! “My mind framed a desire to behold something of the future that should be as plain as the pictures of the past had been, and if there was any means whereby the blows of fate might be softened, any field in which to live and act free from the loneliness hitherto endured, and when next my eyes glanced through the magic tube, there passed across the field of vision a solitary human head and bust. So swiftly did it glide past that only an electric sense of its beauty remained with me, but there was a something that told me the head I saw was that of Evlambéa--that by woman alone could redemption come. But then the curse said, ‘A daughter of Ish,’ and she was a child of Japhet. “Scarcely had this figure flitted by than the glass became clouded, black, and finally resumed the appearance it had when first taken from the box. “‘Nothing further can be seen to-day,’ said Miakus, ‘I have already endowed you with priceless gifts. You can go forth to the world and heal the sick, restore the insane, make mirrors and the Elixir, and read the past and future, and yet all this is as nothing to that which you may expect after you shall have solemnly sworn to sleep the sleep of Sialam for me.’