his
step as he paced to and fro the straight walk that bisected the garden,
with his eyes on the ground, and his hat over his brows.

Now then he had reached the place where the last trace of his father
seemed to have vanished; in how wayward and strange a manner! If no
further clue could be here discovered by the inquiry he purposed; at
this spot would terminate his researches and his hopes. But the young
heart of the traveller was buoyed up with expectation. Looking back to
the events of the last few weeks, he thought he recognised the finger of
Destiny guiding him from step to step, and now resting on the scene
to which it had brought his feet. How singularly complete had been
the train of circumstance, which, linking things seemingly most
trifling--most dissimilar, had lengthened into one continuous chain of
evidence! the trivial incident that led him to the saddler's shop; the
accident that brought the whip that had been his father's, to his eye;
the account from Courtland, which had conducted him to this remote part
of the country; and now the narrative of Elmore leading him to the spot,
at which all inquiry seemed as yet to pause! Had he been led hither
only to hear repeated that strange tale of sudden and wanton
disappearance--to find an abrupt wall, a blank and impenetrable barrier
to a course, hitherto so continuously guided on? had he been the sport
of Fate, and not its instrument? No; he was filled with a serious
and profound conviction, that a discovery that he of all men was best
entitled by the unalienable claims of blood and birth to achieve was
reserved for him, and that this grand dream and nursed object of his
childhood was now about to be embodied and attained. He could not but
be sensible, too, that as he had proceeded on his high enterprise, his
character had acquired a weight and a thoughtful seriousness, which was
more fitted to the nature of that enterprise than akin to his earlier
temper. This consciousness swelled his bosom with a profound and steady
hope. When Fate selects her human agents, her dark and mysterious
spirit is at work within them; she moulds their hearts, she exalts their
energies, she shapes them to the part she has allotted them, and renders
the mortal instrument worthy of the solemn end.

Thus chewing the cud of his involved and deep reflection, the young
adventurer paused at last opposite his host, who was still bending over
his pleasant task, and every now and then, excite