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Rh business—Is it terrestrial or celetial? What says my military Albumazar? Have you calculated the course of futurity? have you consulted your Ephemerides, your Almochodon, your Almuten?"

"No, truly, counsellor, you are the only Ptolemy I intend to resort to upon the present occasion—a second Prospero, I have broke my staff, and drowned my book far beyond plummet depth. But I have great news notwithstanding. Meg Merrilies, our Egyptian sybil, has appeared to the Dominie this very day, and, as I conjecture, has frightened him not a little."

"Indeed?"

"Aye, and she has done me the honour to open a correspondence with me, supposing me to be as deep in astrological mysteries as when we first met; here is her scroll, delivered to me by the Dominie."

Pleydell put on his spectacles. "A vile greasy scrawl, indeed—and the letters are uncial or semiuncial, as somebody calls