which announced the lapse of the fatal hour, was heard to strike.
The speech and intellectual powers of the youth were instantly and
fully restored; he burst forth into prayer, and expressed in the
most glowing terms his reliance on the truth and on the Author of
the Gospel. The Demon retired, yelling and discomfited, and the
old man, entering the apartment, with tears congratulated his
guest on his victory in the fated struggle.

The young man was afterwards married to the beautiful maiden, the
first sight of whom had made such an impression on him, and they
were consigned over at the close of the story to domestic
happiness. So ended John MacKinlay's legend.

The Author of Waverley had imagined a possibility of framing an
interesting, and perhaps not an unedifying, tale out of the
incidents of the life of a doomed individual, whose efforts at
good and virtuous conduct were to be for ever disappointed by the
intervention, as it were, of some malevolent being, and who was at
last to come off victorious from the fearful struggle. In short,
something was meditated upon a plan resembling the imaginative
tale of Sintram and his Companions, by Mons. le Baron de la Motte
Fouque, although, if it then existed, the author had not seen it.

The scheme projected may be traced in the three or four first
chapters of the work; but farther consideration induced the author
to lay his purpose aside. It appeared, on mature consideration,
that astrology, though its influence was once received and
admitted by Bacon himself, does not now retain influence over the
general mind sufficient even to constitute the mainspring of a
romance. Besides, it occurred that to do justice to such a subject