Page:Celebrated Trials - Volume 1.djvu/499
time of day. Now, to convince you of my superior knowledge in astrology, I mean, in telling how far their influence extends over any man's actions, I'll point to you the very action and persons that will bring you to the gallows. This very day month you shall go (in spite of all your foresight and endeavours to the contrary) to pay a visit to Mr. William Bean, your uncle by your mother's side, who is a man of unblameable character and conversation. Him shall you kill, and assuredly be hanged."
Sawney, having observed the air of gravity where-with Mr. Peterson delivered his words, could not help falling into a serious reflection about them; and, thinking the place he was in not convenient enough to indulge the thoughts he found rising within him, abruptly left the fortune-teller, and giving his old nurse five shillings, returned home.
After having seriously pondered on the several particulars of Peterson's words, he could not for his heart but think that the old man, in order to be even with him for telling him of being hanged, had only served him in his own coin; so that after a few hours every syllable was vanished out of his mind, and he resolved to keep up to his usual course of life.
We draw on to his last scene now, which shall be dispatched with all the brevity we are masters of. Sawney having escaped many dangers, and run through many villainies with impunity, must needs go to his uncle Bean's house to pay him a visit, with no other design than to boast to him of his late successes, and how fortune had repaired the injuries his former misconduct and remissness had done him. He went, and his uncle, with his moral frankness, bade him sit down, and call for any thing his house could afford him.
"Nephew," says he, "I have desired a long time to see an alteration in your conduct, that I might say I had a nephew worthy of my acquaintance, and one to whom I might leave my estate, as deserving of it; but I am acquainted from all hands, that you go on worse and worse, and rather than produce an amendment, abandon yourself to the worst of crimes. I am always willing to put the best interpretation I can upon people's conduct; but when so many fresh reports come every day to alarm my ears of your extravagancies and profuse living, I cannot help concluding but that the greatest part of them are true. I will not go about to enumerate what I have heard, the discovery of mistakes only serving to increase one's uneasiness and concern. But methinks, if a good education, and handsome fortune, and a beau-