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 been inhabited these twenty years. On the other side it joins with the black forest, and has been always understood, from its being desolated in one of the late wars, and never repaired, uninhabitable ever since; the house must be in ruins, and the grounds round it barren and uncultivated. Who the person or persons can be that reside there I have no idea, and indeed I should suppose it can afford no accommodations for any other than banditti."

"Or the sons of misery," cried Ferdinand, "such are neither delicate in their accommodations, nor fastidious in their choice of situations; all places are alike to the wretched, and I hope to-morrow I shall be admitted as an inmate."

"And I hope not," returned Father Joseph. "My son, you are very young, let not the first disappointment in your calculations of happiness induce you to renounce the world. You have been wrong, perhaps, in your first selection of the means to attain it. Man has but little prescience, and that