It certainly seemed
probable that intelligence from the Continent, which could easily
have been transmitted by an active and powerful agent, might have
enabled him to prepare such a scene of phantasmagoria as she had
herself witnessed. Yet there were so many difficulties in
assigning a natural explanation, that, to the day of her death,
she remained in great doubt on the subject, and much disposed to
cut the Gordian knot by admitting the existence of supernatural
agency."
"But, my dear aunt," said I, "what became of the man of skill?"
"Oh, he was too good a fortune-teller not to be able to foresee
that his own destiny would be tragical if he waited the arrival
of the man with the silver greyhound upon his sleeve. He made,
as we say, a moonlight flitting, and was nowhere to be seen or
heard of. Some noise there was about papers or letters found in
the house; but it died away, and Doctor Baptista Damiotti was
soon as little talked of as Galen or Hippocrates."
"And Sir Philip Forester," said I, "did he too vanish for ever
from the public scene?"
"No," replied my kind informer. "He was heard of once more, and
it was upon a remarkable occasion. It is said that we Scots,
when there was such a nation in existence, have, among our full
peck of virtues, one or two little barley-corns of vice.
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