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Title: Tales of the supernatural
       Six romantic stories

Author: James Platt

Release Date: November 20, 2022 [eBook #69397]

Language: English

Produced by: Al Haines

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TALES OF THE
SUPERNATURAL ***







  TALES OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

  SIX ROMANTIC STORIES.


  BY

  JAMES PLATT, JUNIOR.


  _PRICE ONE SHILLING._


  LONDON:
  SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & CO.,
  4 STATIONERS' HALL COURT.
  1894.

  _Entered at Stationers' Hall_] [_All Rights Reserved._




CONTENTS.


THE SEVEN SIGILS

THE HAND OF GLORY

THE RABBI LION

THE EVIL EYE

THE WITCHES' SABBATH

THE DEVIL'S DEBT




THE SEVEN SIGILS.



PART I.

BRAVO AND POISONER.

The Bottomless Lake of our Legend was reputed an outlet of the
Bottomless Pit.  No creature of our world had ever swum its lethal
ebb and flow, but on the nights of the great Sabbaths, when the
wizardry of all Italy swept to its beetling cliffs as to their
Holiest of Holies, its waters eructed to the rendezvous the retinue
of Hell--the wealth of an argosy would not have tempted a Lombard to
venture within eye-shot of it after nightfall.  Who, then, are these
two men of mortal mould that outstare the depths of the Bottomless
Lake itself, and not only that but from the very horns of the Altar
of the Black Mass, and not only that, but at the witching hour
forsooth of night, when graveyards yawn, and the everlasting doors of
Tophet open wide?  Their guardian angels of good have surely turned
from their right hands, and their evil guardians of the left are
grinning from horn to horn.  With the chime of twelve from the
distant steeple dies out the last echo of admonition, and they begin
to work out such unhallowed errand as alone can have brought them to
so damned a spot; the elder of the two in a tone of hushed solemnity
addresses a series of questions to the younger, who responds to them
with an equally awful gravity, after the manner of a catechism.

"Dost know me who I am?"

"Tosca of Venice, bravo and poisoner."

"And Yourself?"

"Janko the Illyrian, bravo with a right good will, but not yet
poisoner."

"My ancestry?"

"Sorcerer stock, whose secrets you would fain have inherited and
their trade pursued."

"Why did I not?"

"The Council of Ten bore down upon your race, and but for your
extreme youth you yourself would have crossed the Bridge of Sighs.
Orphaned by the State, and retaining for sole inheritance the
swashing blade that still gnaws at your scabbard, and a few recipes
for poisons (which last, however, were worth a Borgia's envy), you
soon found yourself compelled to use both the one and the other to
buy you bed and board.  Proceeding at first with hesitancy, and never
sojourning long in one locality, you became by degrees the repository
of so many family secrets that at the present day you may stalk
assured through the length and breadth of Italy, and ruffle it in
what company you will."

"And your own story?"

"I know not by what catastrophe the memory of all my earliest years
was shaken loose from me.  Suffice it then, that once on a visit to
my native country you found me wandering an orphan like yourself, and
with a mind so blank that you appropriated it instantly to write on
it as it were your own ten commandments.  Since that day I have never
left you, and I am only repeating what you yourself tell me when I
say that you have made me your equal master in every trick of fence.
But of that other art of yours that rivals the Creator, my most
dutiful entreaties have never availed with you to teach me anything."

"But did I not reasonably argue that you would better attend the
heaviness of so terrific a responsibility, until you were of man's
estate?  And is not to-day the anniversary of your coming of age?
And have we not pelted hither hot-foot from the confines of the land
upon that very business?"

"It is true that before entrusting me with even the least of these
your ancient awful secrets you have brought me here to-night--for
what?"

"To enter you with fitting state upon the bead-roll of that glorious
mystery, that with the mere putting on of a glove, or sniffing of a
flower can check the most rebellious blood with a thus far shall thou
flow, but no farther!"

"Say, rather to better the assurance that you have of me already from
years of fraternal familiar common life, by laying upon me in
addition a binding bond ensanctified by centuries of warlock use, and
now to be imposed in this very spot where the Master whom thereby we
both shall serve is at this hour present, though to us invisible, the
Prince of the Power of the Air."

"You are at any rate resolved to link yourself to me with fetters
forged in the fire that is not quenched, and by a testament
registered in the Chancery of Hell to the effect that any treachery
from one of us to the other shall be resented and avenged by that
common Master of ours who hears us at this moment from his postern
gate, the Bottomless Lake below?"

"I am resolved to that for which I came here."

"Follow, then, with me the observance of that visible sign and token
that unites us in one blood and in one flesh.  This horn is from that
beast whose form our Master loves to take, when from this altar where
we stand he greets his liegemen and his liege-women turned backward
like his prayers.  This horn I charge to the half with my own blood,
obtained by the biting of my arm.  Now do you likewise bite and fill
and then drink (to my health) the moiety of the draught so mixed."

"May you live till the Last Trump!"

"You have pledged me in it as I now pledge you, and there remains but
one more ceremony.  I am about to throw this emptied receptacle into
the waters of the Bottomless Lake.  You know already that everything
that touches its surface, whether living or dead, is forfeit to that
Ancient of Days that crouches in wait below.  Do you agree that this
will be the fate reserved for that one of us two that shall first
contravene this super-sacred oath?"

"His soul be the devil's fee."

The emptied horn shot like an elf-bolt into the pathless waters of
the Bottomless Lake.  The benighted pair that watched it from the
unhallowed shrine above could have sworn that a hand came up and
caught it as it fell, but a sudden flash of lightning that snapped in
their eyes and a peal of thunder that made the four corners of the
earth to quake rendered that fact uncertain.  The strangers would
then have been only too gladly drenched to the skin that they might
have hugged their wagered souls in the belief that this unweather was
of Nature, and not of the Evil One.  But the Heavens shed no tear.
There succeeded to that single flash and single peal only the same
deadly calm that had preceded them.  Although their business there
was over, neither of the two men cared to suggest to the other his
secret persuasion that there was no need for further stay.  One
o'clock whispered from afar its holy amen to their accursed ritual.
Other hours flitted by, and still they gazed into unplummeted waves
enwrapped in gloom as in their cloaks.  At last as it were by a
simultaneous impulse they turned together, and with a mutual sigh
descended in the direction of the dawning city.  From what has been
said of the superstitious awe with which the Bottomless Lake was
regarded, it will be readily understood that they had to traverse a
considerable distance of uninhabited country before coming in sight
of the main travelled road.

When at last after the painful up and down of many hills, they
perceived the highway cutting through a valley at their feet, the
habitual reserve engendered by their profession moved them to await
atop the passage of a carriage that appeared in sight in the distance
going towards the town rather than continue their journey, and be
passed by it.  As it came nearer both these men who had recently
drunk so deeply of forbidden founts, suddenly uttered an exclamation
that sounded very like a fear.  For they saw at the self-same second
that the coach contained a girl of beauty beyond a sultan's dream,
and that some dozen or so of foot-pads darted from both sides of the
road and seized the heads of her horses.  The report of a pistol was
obviously connected with the fall of the driver like a log from his
box.  The young lady was left with no other defender than a large
black dog that ran behind the carriage, but as the assailants threw
the doors open and hustled her out it became apparent that he was
chained to the vehicle, and in an instant they were beyond his reach.
But at this critical juncture Tosca descended almost, as it seemed,
to the startled abductors with one leap from the heights above, and
with a howl like a wild beast.

Although they did not know it, the finest sword player in Europe was
in their midst.  They went down by couples before him, spitted like
larks.  They had scarcely grasped the miracle of his presence before
the lovely vision of the coach was resting in his left arm (the right
still continuing to deal destruction), and she had scarcely glanced
at his face, when, with a sigh of evident content with her defender,
she hid her golden head in his breast to shut out the shambles from
her eyes.  But the fight was already past.  Half the ravishers lay
stretched upon the ground, and the bravo of Venice needed no second
or even first glance at them to know that they would never rise
again.  The remainder, appalled by a result which they were far from
attributing to the purely human agency which had caused it, had only
to cast a look beneath his black-a-vised brows, when with a shriek
that he was signed in the corner of his eye with the devil's private
mark, they precipitately fled.  The bravo dropped his sword into its
sheath, and now with both arms round her waist he drew the goddess
(as she appeared to him) towards her carriage.  In doing so he
perceived that she had fainted, and printed upon her lips the
fiercest as it was the chastest kiss that he had ever bestowed upon
woman.  By an extraordinary chance (but there was more than chance in
it), after completing the foulest rite, he had stumbled upon the
purest passion of his life.  For no other woman would he have shut
the carriage door as he did now after placing her within it,
remaining himself outside.  And it is needful to add in this
connexion that he had entirely forgotten the very existence of that
comrade just bound to him by a tie indissoluble.  That comrade,
nevertheless, had watched the whole from the altitude where both had
first stood.  Could he have followed the giddy foot-hold of his
patron he would in that moment have slain him in his tracks.  And
that he could in no wise stir from where he stood either previously
to take part in that chance medley, or now to snatch a share in the
reward of it, was due not at all to cowardice (a thing that must of
necessity be unknown to any that followed the fortunes of Tosca), but
to a kind of spell as he fancied that froze him to his place.  And of
this he was indeed well qualified to judge since he had already
experienced the self-same sensation on one (and one only) former
occasion.  What puzzled him was that the obvious cause in the prior
case was a certain amulet of unknown antiquity and power, which Tosca
was accustomed to wear round his neck upon a chain of gold, and which
in a moment of confidence he had shown that once to his pupil.
Whereas on the present occasion the cause of his vertigo could
scarcely be the same, the talisman being invisible.  And yet the
effect was identical.  If anything more than another had been the
actual moving cause of his present icy chill it must certainly be the
damsel of the coach.  So unmistakeable was the hold which the mere
sight of her had taken upon him, that at the instant when Tosca
placed his lips upon hers (and they had never been touched before by
man), the surging up of jealousy burst the shackles of the spell, and
the Illyrian clattered down like an avalanche.  He reached the road
at the important moment when his oblivious partner, after shutting
the door of the coach, was upon the point of mounting the box to
drive the young beauty he knew not whither.  Nor did it occur to him
that he knew not.  But at this precise juncture his dream was
shattered by the advent of the Illyrian flashing fires of jealous
heat from his eyes.  So choked with it was he that he could not
speak, but only pointed with one hand to the carriage while he
clenched the other in Tosca's face.  The Venetian was equally taken
aback by the sudden resurrection of one whose presence in the world
he had totally overlooked.  How long they would have stared at one
another had nothing intervened it would be impossible to say.  They
were heedless of the barking of the black dog, since that had
continued without intermission from the first irruption of the
bid-stands.  But they were twitched bolt round in the direction of
the coach by a sudden crack of its wheels.  Whether the coachman had
fallen from his box through a genuine belief that he was hurt; or
whether through an equally genuine desire not to be; or, lastly,
through collusion did not appear, but it was sufficiently obvious
that the fellow had not received a scratch.  Concluding the danger to
be over he had now quietly reassumed his post, and was driving off.
He took no more notice of the other two than if he had not seen them
(which again might really have been the case), and used his whip to
such good purpose that the vehicle was lost to sight (to memory dear)
before the rivals had taken a step to arrest its progress.  Then
burst the storm of mutual recrimination.  Tosca first spoke.

"Darkness and devils!  You have robbed me of that for which I would
not leave whole the skin of any man alive."

"'S death, kinsman, would you draw on me?  Remember you not the oath
of some few hours ago?  Are you already so anxious to tap at that
postern we both wot of?  Knock then, and it shall be opened unto you.
Ho, you pale at this reminder, and suffer your hand to drop from the
hilt of that ancestral spit of yours."

"You were well advised to speak before I had drawn, or you would
perchance have learned ere this that there are one or two tricks of
fence I never taught even to you."

"Deceit upon deceit.  You have always given me to understand that
there was absolutely nothing in that branch of our partnership that
you had not revealed to me.  Perchance I shall ere long come upon
some other tit-bit churlishly rapt aside.  But why do I chide you for
teaching me too little, when I had rather cause to weep salt tears
that you have fathered me too much?  When you met me, I had, as you
have told me oft, a mind so blank that you could write on it (and
that was the attraction that led you to adopt me) whatever kind of
script you chose; And you chose to scribble the Devil's A, B, C.  It
is through your corruption of my innocent youth that I am unfit
to-day to even look upon such as she who has just escaped us (and
there ruled her favouring star).  And if you reply that you have kept
me till I was of age, unspotted from the worst half of your
villainies, I dare swear that I should not be far out in conjecturing
that regard for the safety of your body, rather than for that of my
soul, was the true reason why you have never yet suffered me to wear
the glass mask in your laboratories.  And, to crown all, you kissed
her."

"Did I kiss her?  I thought it was a dream."

Thus Tosca murmured softly to himself, his head falling upon his
breast, as if in communion with some saint.  It was Janko who this
time broke the silence by clutching of his sword.  But Tosca looked
up with a glance so diabolical, that he dropped it again at once.  By
a motion of his hand, the Venetian, as it were compelled him to seat
himself by the side of the road; and, sitting quietly beside him,
commenced in the following strain:--

"You make me laugh apart when you speak of my corrupting your
innocent youth.  If you only knew the truth!  Or, as you said just
now (God knows whether inspired by good or evil chance), if you only
knew that tit-bit rapt aside, as you thought, churlishly (when you
merely guessed at it), but in reality with more generosity, than you
will be decently able to thank me for (when you only know the facts).
Your innocent youth, indeed!!  By the God above us, whom we both
fear, and neither serves, you will see by the story I am about to
tell you that I knew all the time and as I say with generosity have
concealed from you the nature of that catastrophe that shook loose
from you the memories of all your earliest years.  You will see that
before your mind became a blank, I had read upon it (tender as were
your years) the lurid brand of Cain.  You will see that your brain
was seared by your own atrocious hand, and that my adoption of you
afterwards was based on the calculation that for a bravo and poisoner
there could be in the whole round world no better raw material than a
matricide!  Start not till you have heard me out.  I was in Illyria.
Reasons which your experience of ups and downs in our profession will
readily enable you to appreciate had caused me to retire (rather
hurriedly, I confess) from the town which I had honoured with my
presence for some months.  The same reasons oblige me to travel in
preference by night, and to secrete myself by day.  On the first
occasion of my doing this latter, I settled upon an apparently
deserted hut in the trackless depths of the forest.  This hut
consisted of a large front room (reaching to the roof tree) for the
accommodation of the two-footed, and a stall at back for that of the
four-footed creation.  The latter did not run so high as the front
room, Inasmuch as it contained a loft for fodder atop, and it was in
this airy apartment that I decided to take my siesta, since it had
openings both upon the stables (if I may so call it) and the front
chamber, and my disposition as you know is strategic.  I had slept, I
know not how long, when I was awakened by a noise in front, and
speedily ascertained that it was caused by an altercation going on
among visitors to the parlour.  Do not start till you have heard me
out.  One of the disputants was yourself.  The other, who occupied
the only stool in the place, was a grey-haired, blear-eyed female of
considerable antiquity.  I know nothing of your accursed Illyrian
jargon.  But without understanding the conversation I could see the
beldame hugging to her withered breast a jewel, small, but of great
price, and withal slung upon a golden chain.  I tell you without
hesitation that it was the same amulet you have been shown by me upon
a previous occasion, foolishly as it happened, since it stirred you
so profoundly as to almost resurrect your buried remembrances.  That
it came into the hands of your precious dame by some feat of robbery
I have no doubt whatever.  How it came into mine you will presently
see.  Your excited gesture, as it seemed to me, might afford me some
clue to the progress of the quarrel, which I presumed had arisen as
to the fate of your booty, but I had scarcely awakened up
sufficiently to pull my reasoning faculties together, when the whole
thing ended in an, even to me, unexpectedly horrible manner.  You
suddenly pushed a pail (which stood hard by) beneath the back of the
unsuspecting crone, and flashing a hanger from under your rags you
swept off her grey head into the bucket with the single shearing
stroke of a seasoned cut-throat.  Then throwing upon the floor the
glittering bauble of contention, you surprised me still more by
swiftly separating the hands and feet, then the arms at elbow, and
the legs at knee, then the stumps from the trunk, and finally the
trunk itself into smaller parcels.  That moment, and to-day, are the
two occasions of my life upon which I have loathed my calling.  By my
word and oath I was as sick as a dog upon the litter of your loft.
When I looked again you had cast down the weeping steel which had
been the unwilling instrument of your crime.  Packing all the
sections in a kind of bag or sack you rolled it up compactly.  Then
seizing the ensanguined pail in the hand that was not occupied by
that pitiful truss of what had just been humanity, you strode with
them both from the desecrated home, but how you disposed of your
burdens I neither know nor care.  That you had loaded your conscience
with a grislier deed than it could bear, I soon had good reason to
know.  Perturbed at my perturbation I had scrambled to _terra firma_,
and had recovered myself sufficiently only to secure that amulet
(which as you know I still wear), when you re-entered empty handed in
that same state of idiocy, which moved me to overcome my distaste for
associates and adjoin you to myself in my profession.  Besides, I
could not but admit (when once more fully myself) that you had shown
for it considerable vocation."

The face of the Illyrian rolled with beads of sweat.  For the third
time he was bound hard and fast by that same fascination which
already twice before had enthralled him.  And as each time before so
again it was for a different cause.  The first of these two prior
occasions resulted, as we know, from the sighting of the amulet.  The
second on the sighting of the divinity of the coach.  But this third
time was again different from the other two, in this respect, that
(although he would not have confessed it for all the riches entombed
in earth) he had now fully recognised the reason and connexion of all
three.  He rose deliberately and spoke:--

"Now, you have told me, to suit your own purposes, a certain amount
of the truth, I remember to your confusion the details you
intentionally omitted.  You lie in your throat when you say that when
I re-entered that room I was in the vacant state already.  I
re-entered that room (and you know it) as sane as when I left it.  I
found you standing there prepared with a glib story to the effect
that you were a stranger just stepped into the hut with the view of
seeing whether it was inhabited or not by anyone who could serve you
as a guide through the forest.  Not knowing you so well as I do now,
I was simple enough to believe you.  It never entered my head that
you could have witnessed the drama that had just been played, nor did
I think of the talisman in my momentary confusion at seeing in the
place a foreigner.  I have now no doubt but that if I had looked for
it I should not have been able to find it.  You diverted my attention
by inviting me to quaff from your spirit flask on the plea that I
looked unwell, as in truth I might, after the ordeal I had just
passed through.  In my innocence (for I was innocent) I accepted the
draught, and the drug which you had placed in the liquor beforehand
destroyed my memory, never to return, until this eventful day.  Yet I
think there was, however, one former occasion which it just missed a
return.  That was when you showed me that ill-omened amulet, and it
awakened in me sentiment inexplicable then, but which now I am no
longer at a loss to understand.  That jewel was wrought by the
science of my kinswoman, in whose hands you surprised it--for my
people, too, were of the ancient religion, like your own, and
sorcerers of the Black Side."

At the commencement of this speech, Tosca seemed momentarily
disconcerted, but, as it continued, this sentiment was succeeded by
something very like prostration, and when he replied it was with
reverence.

"What a galliard this is, and how aright I guessed when I saw in him
the making of a master in my trade.  I thought to dash him with my
revelation of a monstrosity among crimes.  I was a fool, indeed, to
think that a younker would bleach over the dissection of a granny,
who had anointed him from his cradle with the grease of unbaptised
babes.  But I failed, and there's an end on't, and now sheer steel
must decide the issue, for we meet on equal ground.  Equal do I say?
Nay! the boy is my superior in callousness, for I dearly loved my own
old people, though I never say God rest their souls."

He rose, and both men laid their hands upon their hilts.  One of them
had not very long to live.  But before entering upon the fateful
lists, the Illyrian turned to speak again.

"In case you slay me, which I believe will not be the case (for God
does sometimes defend the right), I cannot forbear an answer to your
last taunt.  You did not understand, and you have never understood,
and you never will understand the real meaning of the scene you saw
enacted in that room upon that day.  I am not sure whether it was a
blessing or a curse upon our race that you did not catch the drift of
our remarks in our native language, which you contemptuously term
jargon.  Had you done so the fate of all three of us would have been
better or worse, but at any rate far different.  The tortures of the
Inquisition would not force from me the secret, which was confided to
me then by that ancient lady whom you saw me slay indeed, but only
after her own repeated prayers and instructions.  I shudder to think
what has become of her remains which she entrusted to my pious care,
and which for your accursed interference I have been unwillingly
prevented from attending to.  I know, indeed, the fate of her other
legacy (for the amulet was a legacy that you thought a theft); but it
is now too late (again through your accursed interference) for me to
make such use of that knowledge as she had enjoined upon me to do.
But to you (who know nothing of its use and profit) it shall hang as
a millstone round your neck, and whether you live or whether you die
it shall infallibly sink you now or hereafter to the undiscovered
bottom of that Bottomless Lake whose source we both do know.  And
whichever of us falls shall by the terms of that enactment (of so
short a while ago) be resented and avenged by that Master of ours,
who waits even at this moment for that most unhappy man."

The face of Tosca became white and red.  He flashed that
time-honoured blade of his from its sheath, and motioned with it to
the Illyrian to take up a position opposite to him.  Janko turned
round for one second to do so, and in that second the sword of his
faithless foe was plunged remorselessly through his back.  The point
protruded through his breast.  The next instant the sword had been
withdrawn, and the Illyrian lay upon the turf among the ragged hedge
pirates, who had fallen before by the same trained hand.  But this
time the Venetian took the trouble to assure himself of the death of
his foe before returning his sword to its bed.  That was the only
honour he paid to the body that had once been only less dear to him
than his own.  That done, he threw himself down at the road side, and
took out from under his doublet that very talisman of which we have
heard so much.  It had gained greatly in his estimation by the
mystery which had lately thickened round it.  We have already
mentioned that it was suspended round his neck by a gold chain; but
we must now give a more particular description of the gem itself.  It
had undoubtedly originally been intended for a seal, or, to speak
more correctly, seven seals, for it had (and this constituted its
particularity) seven sides or facets, and on each of these engraved a
sigil or cabalistic monogram, and each sigil was that of a different
planet of the seven that rule over the seven days of the week.  All
this the bravo, from his early environment, was sufficiently skilled
to know.  He also recognised at once that the person wishing to use
the stone for its original purpose of sealing, would choose on each
day that facet of the gem which bore the signature of the planet that
presided over the day in question.  But this, though no doubt of
considerable efficiency, was not by any means of so great virtue as
to sufficiently explain the very enigmatical manner in which the
amulet had been alluded to by the hapless boy, whose present fate he
shuddered to reflect on.  He endeavoured, with more or less success,
to banish speculation on that point by returning to his examination
of the ring, if we may apply that term to a jewel which was not
pierced with sufficiently large a hole to fit even upon the smallest
of fingers.  Such hole as it had, and through which its chain now
passed, he conjectured must have been originally intended to receive
the handle of the seal, upon which, fitting loosely, the gem turning
round and round could be made to present any facet desired to the
paper which its owner intended to impress.  At this point of his
meditation the bravo was aroused by the sound of footsteps.  A number
of officials, both on horse and otherwise, had arrived from the
neighbouring town.  These he recognised at once as belonging to that
inconvenient class (the guardians, let us say, of public safety) from
whom he had fled on many another well remembered occasion besides the
one he had just made mention of in his story to the ill-starred
Illyrian.  Yet at the present moment he had no fear of them.  Perhaps
this was because he knew that they came on account of the depositions
of the lodestar of his dreams, and that he would have run any risk to
be brought once more into chain with her.  A less hardened adventurer
might have been embarrassed by the presence of Janko's body.  But to
a fertility of resource such as Tosca had needs acquired, it
presented no obstacle whatever.  He rose, and bowed with a grace he
had learned in the very highest society.  The officers returned his
salute.  They conjectured rightly that this stranger of distinguished
appearance was the beaten blade who had performed the prodigies of
valour, which when told them in the city they had deemed to be
fabulous, but of which they now saw the proofs before their eyes.
The obliging champion was quite willing to relate his own private
version of the affair.  He paused only to consider whether it would
be advisable to have been wounded slightly, but he decided against
this fiction as liable to lead to trouble.

"Yes; as you say, I naturally wished to rest awhile after the
fatigues of such a combat.  Besides, I guessed, of course, that I
should soon see upon the field of battle you gentlemen of justice,
whose promptness in these matters has become proverbial, and with
whom I would not for the world have lost the chance of an interview.
I might, it is true, have foisted myself into the carriage for its
journey to town.  But the lady, as she doubtless told you, had
fainted right away, and I was therefore debarred from obtaining that
permission, without which no man of breeding could venture to take
such a liberty.  And before I had time to achieve a seat on the box,
the coachman was off; for the fellow was drunk, as your penetration
must have perceived from the muddled state of his evidence.  Of the
valour you so kindly allude to, my modesty forbids me to speak.  But
I am bound in honour to temper your flattering opinion of the
achievement by confessing that I am a fencing master by profession,
and that a score or so of thrusts and parries is merely a matter of
daily bread with me.  I must add, in this connexion, that I am also a
physician, and one possessed of medicaments that cure all ills.
Further, I was proceeding to your town with the view of establishing
a dual practice among you, when this trifle we are discussing fell
athwart the even tenor of my way, and I hope still to establish
myself there, and even to continue my journey in your company (which
is such as I most affect) now this accident has given me, as I
perceive, introduction to all the most desirable connexions in the
place.  You will notice yonder, by the way, a fellow of better
apparal than the rest of the run-a-gates, and whom I take to be their
captain.  The other scaramouches gave me no trouble whatever, but I
must confess that the spadassin in question was a little bit more of
a customer.  I had the lady on one arm (as she doubtless told you),
and had the rabble been able to get on all sides of me at once, the
affair would indeed have been the devil's delight.  But since I kept
my back, like an old campaigner, to the coach, I felt no kind of
flurry; and, as I knew from the first that I should, I came at length
to disarm him.  The poltroon then turned to save his skin (I had
thought him braver stuff); but I, as you may suppose, was far too
limber for him, and skewered him through the back.  You can see for
yourselves how my point protruded through his breast.  In my humble
opinion he might well dance in chains here on a gibbet upon the scene
of his crime, as a warning to the rest of his riff-raff that scuttled
away from my invincible arm as soon as their leader fell."

This Tosca considered the master-stroke of his dissimulation.  No
suspicion could now light upon him.  The lady had seen but him, and
knew nothing of his companion.  The coachman had either seen two men
or none.  If he spoke of two they would ascribe it to his
drunkenness, and inquire if he did not also see two ladies.  Tosca
was furthest of all from suspecting that by this very suggestion he
thought to be so masterly he was forging the bolt that should destroy
him.  With delight he perceived that the officers had clutched at his
idea, and immediately set their underlings to work upon the gallows,
after first entombing the raggeder ruffians ignominiously in a ditch.
Leaving them to their congenial work Tosca proceeded with the
officers to town, and gathered as he went all the particulars that he
could of his enchantress.  And her name, which he heard for the first
time, seemed familiar as a household word.  Vergilia had resided for
months in the city, but was by birth a stranger, from what country no
one knew.  It was only known that she had sojourned for similar
periods in other principal places.  She was an orphan, she was
unmarried, she was an heiress.  Wherever she pleased to set her
wandering feet men flocked in shoals to be trampled beneath them.
And of these, Tosca shrewdly guessed, were the majority of his
present companions.  She consistently refused all offers, and this
was the unanswerable argument of the more logical sex to their women,
who hated her like poison, and who would have it that she made use of
love philtres to effect her endless conquests.  The only ground for
this assertion seemed to be that wherever she travelled her bed
chamber was always sacredly reserved to her own person, entered by no
one else under any circumstances whatever, and locked when she was
not within, she herself performing all domestic duties connected with
it.  Those admirers of hers, who had not yet put their fate to the
touch, all indignantly scouted the theory advanced by the rejected
that she concealed a lover in this sanctum.  Nor was such an idea
surely possible to any one who looked with unjaundiced eye, even once
on her virginal purity.  Tosca gazed on her for the second time that
day, and swore within his heart of hearts (quite drowning all
recollection of that prior oath) that the very first lover she should
have would be none other than himself.


(_End of Part I._)




PART II.

THE DEVIL'S CANDLE.

The revolution of our legend brings us once more round to that same
direful boundary hour, with which it was commenced between midnight
and the first born of the day.  But on the hills a gibbet stands that
stood not there before, a beacon to the minions of the moon.  Alas
for the misguided youth that hangs there helpless and unhouseled.
His brave attire the cupidity of his topsmen had appropriated to
their own use.  His body they had arrayed for the sake of decency in
rags stripped from the verminiferous trunks of his several supposed
followers, and these huddled him like the swathings of some
dismantled mummy.  A gorged carrion bird dozes upon each of his
shoulders.  The hinds, whom their business brought upon the road even
so late as twilight, had run afield copiously crossing themselves.
Who, then, is this--a woman, too--that comes at the awfullest hour of
all, and to the very foot of the gallows?  Nothing but her eyes can
be seen from under her hood.  Are those the eyes of Vergilia that
Tosca dreams of and deems unfathomable as the Bottomless Lake itself?
Is the intuition of her sex, then, unfailing after all, and she a
witch, that with love philtres works her syren spell, and seeks at
this dread hour for the wherewithal?  And what, then, can she peer
for about the foundations of a gibbet, save alone that fetid and
fearsome white-flowered orange-berried Devil's Candle mandragora that
is engendered in the womb of earth from a gibbeted murderer's
drippings on the midnight of his death?  The Illyrian bravo had been
seven times a murderer (if not seventy times seven), and many a lost
soul rejoiced in Hell that night over the weird that the witch woman
was to work.  She has found it at last, the favourable specimen, by
her long sought through fruitless years.  She has found the root in
human form complete--two armed, two legged--the Microcosm
caricaturing man.  And now her low whistle brings her black hound
forward out of the black night.  Even she is affected as she kisses
him for the last time.  Iscariotical kiss!  With a cord from her
youthful waist she attaches animal and plant together, and flees from
thence, stopping her ears as she runs.  The hound (whose faith is to
strike his death-knell) seeks to follow her, and finds himself held
back.  He wrestles with the invisible obstacle and conquers, but to
die, for as the unholy mannikin root is perforce torn out of its
mother earth it utters a piercing shriek that makes rattle the chains
of its father above, and the hound, in an instant foaming at the
mouth, in fits expires.  Then, and then only, turns the murderess
back on her blood-stained steps.  The carcase of her sole unvenial
follower she casts falteringly apart,  The girdle is already attached
by one end to the gruesome plant.  By throwing round to it the other
end she completes the circuit of her shapely throat, and held fast by
this improvised necklace tucks the loathsome herb creature into her
lovely bosom, which no being of its sex had ever yet been free of.
Hence now to develop him, for to this is that secret chamber destined
that had never seen denizen but herself before.  There is her
laboratory, and there shall this earth child be magically tendered
and nourished, and most magically grow to more and more of man's
resemblance.  Since in a manner by his mystical birth he is one flesh
and blood with the murderer that begot him, he is perforce of Hell,
and can Hell's secrets impart to the enchantress that holds him in
her power.  To what her cravings tend, which by his means or any
other that affords itself, she must and will by hook or crook attain,
we now shall shortly see.  In spite of her evident youth, Vergilia
was far too accomplished an actress, of course, to reveal by word or
sign her secret studies to the gilded youth that continue to throng
her halls.  But Tosca visited her upon a different footing.  Spending
his days with her in the body, and his nights with her in the
spirit--spacing out with drink and dice the unutterable intervals
when he could do neither one nor the other--he neglected his
professional avocations altogether, and existed absolutely for her.
On her part she had shown him, as we have seen, particular favour
from the first moment she saw him, and this became continuously more
and more after she had wormed his story from him--as much as he chose
to tell, and which of course excluded entirely the existence of the
Illyrian--until at length she requited him with like confidence.
What the butterflies that sought their own purposes about her chose
to think of her preference she cared not, but her modesty at length
obliged her to account for it in private to the preferred one himself
by alleging the similarity of their descent (for that she also came
of old necromantic stock), and to explain her refusal of all suitors
(even to coronets) on the grounds that none of them could satisfy,
till Tosca came, her yearnings for the occult.  To an archimage alone
would she give her right hand, and his right hand she meant to be.
The blessing of the Church would be a curse to such a pair.  Heedless
then of what, in their position, they needs must deem the degradation
of any such ceremony, she had herself devised her own test piece by
which a favoured suitor could be at the same time tried, and by its
failure or success dismissed or indissolubly wedded.  She had sworn
in fact to bestow herself without reserve upon the student (his
person being also to her fancy) who could call up for her substantial
from the vasty deep a magical palace in which her fantastic
imagination had long run riot, and in which carnal love and
cabalistic lore should wander hand in hand the livelong day without
let or hindrance from the outer world well lost.  Prone to such
thoughts from her cradle, this aerial architecture of hers had taken
final shape in the first days of her visit to that town, when
disdaining the legend of the boors, she had penetrated the precincts
of the Bottomless Lake, and quickened her brain with the idea of how
suitable to a lover and his mistress would be retreat into a
never-visited seclusion such as that.  Then the thing grew.  She
pictured and demolished one after another various enchanted buildings
floating upon the waters themselves (and that was the common thread
that ran through them all) sailing to the shore upon the wish of the
dwellers in them, but entirely inaccessible to any outward authority,
either human or divine.  Now that she had discovered the Venetian to
be the one man to whom she would accord permission to substantialise
her dreams (supposing he could find the power) she submitted to him
with much shy laughter her latest ground plan of this castle in the
air.  She had borrowed from the sensuous East its key-hole arches and
quadrangular bowers built round, and enclosing court yards glowing
with flowers from every region of the earth, and never the same at
two successive visits.  Birds interchanged at every inspection in
like manner were to agitate the air with their antiphonies.  And the
fountains in the centres of all the court yards (fed from the waters
of the Bottomless Lake) when lapped into the beakers of the lovers
would become the rarest wine.  The outermost waters would glister
with gold and silver fish, shot through with the plungings of white
aquatic birds.  Within the building, the rooms kaleidoscopically
should never meet them twice with the same face.  Their servants
should be automata scattered through every chamber, and ready at a
touch to fly to master or mistress like genii of the Arabian Nights,
but instantly relapsing after service into their first stony
insensibility.  Of much more Vergilia whispered such as at times
frenzied in Tosca the knowledge of his impotence to win her upon her
terms.  Had he but inherited the secrets of his fathers!  Had he but
the knowledge stored up in the grey brain of that hairless blear-eyed
Hell-sent hag of Illyria!  Could he but solve the enigma of the Seven
Sigils, that at any rate might bring him somewhat nearer to his end!
And his rivals envied him.  Closer and closer there seemed to flutter
to him the moth they thought he had singed.  But never close enough.
Then came an event that led up to his climax of fruition found green
in the mouth.  Stated in short, it fell somewhat as follows: At the
end of her daily banquet she was wont to leave her guests to their
wine, while she paid one of her frequent visits to that unseen
chamber.  One of those disappointed suitors of hers (as it chanced,
or was fated on a certain day), inspired with the valour of much wine
imbibed after she had left her table, swore roundly that he would
follow her, and pluck out at any hazard the heart of that mystery.
Before he could be stopped by fellow guest or flunkey he had stumbled
up the stairway, and burst open the door she had but lately closed
behind her.  The next moment a most frightful shriek resounded
through every corner of the house.  It was not Vergilia's.  It was
uttered by the fool-hardy intruder.  The company started from their
seats.  But before they could do anything he staggered into the room
again with hair as white as snow, and lips that gibbered loathsomely.
Amid a scene of indescribable confusion he was carried off by his
friends insane and inpenetrable as to the cause of his fright, nor
did he ever recover sufficiently to give an explanation of it.  When
all the rest of the terrified crowd of loungers and lackeys had
hustled pell mell from the house, Tosca alone remained.  His hour he
thought had come.  But it was only in a measure so.  The lady of the
house re-appeared, it is true, after the hurried exodus of masters
and servants, and agitated as he had expected, but not to his
surprise by their defection.  She babbled brokenly, instead, of some
one else whom she had lost through the unexpected intrusion of that
venturesome drunkard, now sobered for good and all.  Thus she rooted
from that moment in the mind of Tosca the horrible suspicion that the
story of the concealed lover might have some truth in it after all.
How could he know aught of her experimental mandrake culture, for of
course it was the mandrake she referred to?  The only creature
besides herself that had witnessed her infernal arcana had just been
borne a mouthing maniac from the seat of her operations, and perhaps
not even had time enough to notice the nature of the disaster, which
his untimely interference had brought about.  However, for the time
Tosca dismissed his suspicions when she fell into his arms and
telling him between laughter and tears that he was now the only hope
that remained to her, she begged him at once to summon together all
his scattered occult acquirements, and make an incantation that very
night that should yield them both their heart's desire.  He swore to
do so, hardly knowing what he swore, and fled from her in a wind of
excited passion and passionate resolve.  For some time after this he
endeavoured to put his ideas coherently together by dint of pacing
madly through the streets.  It was already dusk, and at first he
elicited no remark.  But presently he noticed that his footsteps were
being dogged.  He was a connoisseur in such matters.  This must be a
rival more fixed than the remainder of the craven herd that had so
readily taken flight, and one that had watched the bravo during the
time that he stayed behind.  Or perchance nothing more mysterious
than a dunning creditor, for Tosca had lately run out of ready money,
and while exercising no trade still maintained a splendid appearance.
Nor had this also been altogether without weight with him when he
accepted the challenge of his bewitching mistress.  Not wishing to
embroil himself with the person whom he supposed to be shadowing him,
he entered a tavern and called for wine.  He had scarcely seated
himself when a masked stranger of short stature and somewhat uncouth
appearance entered the same inn, and sat down at the same table,
giving the same order.  The nerves of our Venetian were more shaken
by the extraordinary episode of the afternoon than he would himself
have cared to own.  Not liking the looks of his would-be boon
companion, and conjecturing some connexion between that individual
and the counter of his paces, Tosca got up and left the tavern
without awaiting the execution of his command.  To his consternation
the stranger followed him.  An exciting chase ensued.  The bravo
entered house after house, seating himself in each case, and always
closely hugged by his mysterious hanger on, who as regularly seated
himself by the bravo's side, and as soon as he withdrew followed him
out into the street.  A kind of panic seized the fearless swordsman.
A challenge to the inexplicable stranger stuck again and again in his
throat.  At last the houses began to close their shutters.  The
baffled fugitive struck desperately out of the town into the open
country, and made his way in the direction of the Bottomless Lake.
As the footfalls of his ghostly visitant pattered still behind him he
consoled himself with the grim reflection that right up to that
ill-omened shore, at any rate, the spy would not dare to venture.
But he was mistaken.  As he paused breathless on the brink of that
Stygian sea and faced round boldly on to what he deemed to be
invisibility, he found it was instead the form of his fear that stood
there as before.  He was seized with the boldness of desperation, and
addressed the mysterious and still masked being with a voice of
tolerable calm.

"Who are you, and what is your need of me?"

"I am Magloire, a necromancer of France, and it is you that have need
of me."

"You are over bold to say so."

"I say what I know.  Dare you deny that you entertain the intention
of making an incantation here this very night, and that you lack only
the means to do so?  A scheme of geomancy acquainted me with your
design, and being entangled in your fate, for reasons that you must
not know (for you will know them if anything too soon) I sped from
afar upon wings of wind to conduct your conjuration for you."

"You have a price for this?"

"I see you are a man of the world, and are aware that nothing is
usually given for nothing.  I ask you merely to sign this bond."

"I understand your interest in me better than you seem to think, and
on no account will I barter away my immortal soul."

"Your immortal soul, do you say?  By the Nine Legions of Hell, does
the man think that the cross was stretched on Calvary for any such
scum as he?  Your immortal soul, of which you hug yourself the
possessor, was lost irredeemably from your cradle up.  The signature
to the bond is a matter of form."

"You do not think so since you ask me to sign it.  But ask of me
anything else, and it shall be given to you."

"By the tie of which I spoke, that is stronger than blood as blood is
thicker than water (so they say), I will help you, though you
vouchsafe me a mere keepsake.  Make over to me that amulet that you
wear around your neck, and the bargain is firm and true.  The dawn
shall caress a tenement based on the shifting foundation of these
waters, such as even shall satisfy the caprices of Vergilia."

The bravo had recovered himself, as we have said, but these evidences
of an intimate knowledge of his affairs filled him again with
apprehension.  And the stranger still continued masked.  After a
short deliberation, however, Tosca decided not to let slip an
opportunity as welcome as unexpected, and granted apparently in
exchange for a trinket of no worth to him whatever, though he was not
unaware that it might be of inestimable value to any one who knew (as
this Frenchman presumably did) the secret of the Seven Sigils.  With
a parting sigh for its enigma still unsolved, so often the toy of his
leisure hours, he detached it from his neck, and passed it on to the
Gaul, who fastened it about his own.  That he was a wizard of his
word became immediately apparent.  Taking up a piece of chalk he
scored out rapidly a double circle, one circumference within the
other, upon the shelf of rock upon which they stood.  Between the two
circumferences he drew a ring of symbols of purport to the Venetian
unknown, but which he endeavoured to retain in his memory for
possible future use.  Within the innermost of these two lines of
defence the sorcerer collected a quantity of brushwood, and after
having ignited these materials he entrusted the bravo with sundry
perfumes, some in the shape of evil smelling dried stuffs, and some
sealed up in phials, with minute instructions as to the order and
quantities in which (the incantation having commenced) they were to
feed the fire.  To Magloire would fall the duty of reciting the
continuous charge which for the whole duration of the work was to
hold the evil angels in thrall.  Lastly, the Gaul drew his
companion's attention to the fact that as soon as midnight sounded
the conjuration was to commence, and before one must end.  For that
hour alone would signatory protectors avail him against the furies he
evoked.  But this Tosca already knew.  He was, as we have seen, no
such novice in the worship of powers retrograde as this schooling
showed his colleague to believe.  The distant clock now struck (how
well the bravo remembered all the circumstances in which he had heard
that sound from this spot before), and the sorcerer began in a
thunderous voice to recite his litanies.  Couched throughout in
somewhat dubious Latinity they were by the bravo only partially
understood, but he perceived that commencing with extravagant bead
roll of the Heavenly powers with which they two had fortified
themselves, and with impudent encomiums of their own matchless
courage and endurance among men, Magloire proceeded to eulogise the
nine princes of the lower world in terms the most complimentary,
exhorting them to satisfy their good friends the exorcists in the
mere trifle they demanded.  As this modest request was not responded
to, the reciter gradually changed his tone.  The compliments became
thinned by degrees and beautifully less, and were fairly well mixed
with horrible threats, and approbrious epithets, which again meeting
with no recognition, the theme of the chant now ceased to contain any
allusion whatever of a gratifying character.  All was menace piled on
menace and insult piled on insult, Pelion upon Ossa till the riotous
whirl of words merged into one continuous curse, in the midst of
which reverberated again and again (amid the shudders of the waters
and the trembling of the earth) that ineffable sacred and secret Name
of Names, at which the celestials and the terrestrials and the
infernals do shake together and are troubled and confused.  And with
that there rumbled thunders round the skirts of earth and belched
forth lightnings from their midst.  And the lightnings continued to
lighten without pause, until they seemed all one meteor of fire that
hovered over the surface of the Bottomless Lake.  And the meteor
burst and shot forth myriads upon myriads of shapeless forms down
towards the surface, whilst upwards from the surface rose a sort of
scum or mist.  And this scum or mist, meeting those shapeless forms,
they seemed to seize upon it--and work it--and make it build as it
were walls.  But all was seen as through a glass darkly, and,
besides, the bravo was still employed in casting priceless balsams
upon hissing flames that many a time and oft became half extinguished
(to his terror) by the sweat that rained from his brow.  By his side
the French enchanter still swayed his arms towards on high, and on
high unceasingly rolled his incomprehensible cabala.  The slightest
fear or the slightest hesitation, and what might not be their fate?
For such a slip innumerable infernal skirmishers were hovering hard
by in readiness.  But now the danger is almost over.  The gangs have
done their grudging work, and a palace hangs between wind and water
seductive and serene where nothing hung before.  The last odours are
burning.  The weird wailing of the magus is slackening into the
majestic formulæ of dismissal.  Without this termination to the
ritual the magicians on leaving their sanctuary would have been torn
limb from limb by the awaiting fiends.  But being expelled as
ceremoniously as they had been evoked, the filmy hosts had no choice
for it but to crumble into the nothingness from which they came.

"Go in peace unto your place!  Peace be between you and us!  Be you
ready to come when you are called."

These culminating words of the oration were uttered at the very
moment that the faithful distant watchman proclaimed it the hour of
one.  As the two daring trespassers upon realms forbid stepped out
from their double breast-work, the bravo in vain endeavoured to make
out the exact architectural details of his palace in the darkness.
It was pretty clear to him, however, that instructions given had been
faithfully fulfilled.  He considered that he had done a very good
night's work.  How unexpected when he left Vergilia's house was this
chance rencounter that fate had in store for him.  He began to have
some regard for Providence.  He paid no attention to the wizard who
was commencing to obliterate his signs.  Magloire had done his work
well, but he had been paid for it in advance.  So much for Monsieur
Magloire (of France), who, he presumed, would now be off again about
his own affairs.  Tosca strolled towards the city.  His business was
to wait upon his betrothed (for such she now surely was), and drag
her off at once to the castle of her behest.  A day of luxury
followed by a night of love.  That was his bill of fare.  But he had
reckoned without his host.  He was ignorant that, in exchange for the
palace, he had bartered the true key to the situation and most
stringent claim of all upon the regard of his Vergilia.  He was far
from suspecting that essential clue to the labyrinth which Janko had
recovered only just before his death, but which world without end
would never have wrung from him to the advantage of his assassin.
This essential clue consisted in the recognition of the hag of
Illyria and the beautiful Vergilia as one and the same person.  Now
Janko had been her kinsman, and her intimate in her former existence,
and had been privy and assistant (as we know) to the rite by which
her youth was to be renewed.  To him the inheritance was destined of
the seal which she had constructed for this end, and by the existence
of which alone her rejuvenescence could be effected.  Upon the
success of her experiment, after seven days of seeming death, it was
intended that he should restore it to her; but we are already aware
that, through the interference of the Venetian, that success he had
never seen.  The memory of his obligation being destroyed by the drug
of the poisoner, the talisman that was bound up with it became the
plaything of the bravo.  The plaything of the bravo we repeat, and it
could never be anything else to him, so long as he remained in
ignorance of the peculiar power it exerted over the transfigurated
witch.  For the amulet was the invisible load-stone that at the
moment when first they met had drawn her head down irresistibly to
his breast, where it lay concealed.  Hold out as she might, she must
nevertheless infallibly have ultimately yielded to the spell by which
the Seven Sigils gave its holder power over her life.  And Tosca had
unwittingly exchanged it for Dead Sea fruit.  The fantastical
personage calling himself Magloire was, on the other hand, well aware
(for reasons which, for the moment, we leave in the dark) of the
power of the pawn he thus obtained.  His proffer of the bond, in the
first instance, was a ruse (for he knew it would not be signed), and
it served very well its end of diverting suspicion from his real
purpose by making that appear an after thought.  Now that he had
obtained the long-sought-for prize, he stopped in his work of
demolishing his geometry (the bravo being no longer in sight), and
stood for a long time collecting in the jewel every possible ray of
light.  Then he did a most extraordinary thing, even for him, whose
every deed was extraordinary.  He took it off its chain, which he
threw carelessly away, and conveying the glittering heptagon to his
mouth, he swallowed it.  There was method in his apparent madness.
Its virtues would not suffer in the slightest from its imprisonment.
The fortunes borne by its Seven Sigils for good or for evil were
henceforth indissolubly bound up with his being.  In this way he
avoided any possible chance of its ever passing out of his
possession.  But the most urgent reason for his caution was the
imminent return of his late assistant.  He had gauged the character
of that individual too deeply to feel safe while in his company.  And
in his company he evidently intended to remain.  The sun had now
risen, and the structure he had wrought by a word out of nothing was
at last entirely visible.  And he saw that it was good.  The waters
around it swarmed with love and feud between fishes gold and silver
and white aquatic birds.  Other feathered life hopped the countless
little streamers which adorned the shining turrets.  A broad landing
stage fronted the chief gate which was the higher of it to the extent
of a magnificent flight of steps.  As to the interior the Moorish
lattices were inscrutable.  But curiosity need not long remain
unsatisfied.  The handsome pair for whom this casket was destined
were already joyously approaching.  The bravo started when he came in
sight of the secretive Gaul still masked, and as at the moment when
he left him rubbing out the traces of his circles.  Vergilia started,
as if in recognition of some acquaintance perchance of her youth.
The vaguely mysterious Seven Sigils had launched their erotic work.
The bravo surprised the attention which the Frenchman had
excited--remembered that he had never liked him from the first--and
began to look upon him as a possible rival.  But the desire to take
French leave of him begot the bewildering discovery that although the
castle floated, complete as per contract, he was powerless himself by
any exertion of wish or will to cause it to sail to shore that they
might enter in according to the original plan sketched out by its
fair young architect.  In this dilemma the Gaul came bowing and
scraping to his aid, and showed that by a simple signal of his hand
he could attract it to him as a magnet attracts iron.  And now Tosca
began to suspect the lurking of some design in all this.  His
suspicions were confirmed when Magloire stepped with them upon the
threshold of their new home, and the palace immediately resumed its
place in the centre of the Bottomless Lake.  There was now no chance
for it but to admit the unwelcome guest.  Their feet were lost to the
ankles in the carpet that covered the nakedness of that royal flight
of stairs we have already alluded to.  They passed into a banqueting
hall of exquisite proportion, and sculpt with a fairy chisel.
Through keyhole arches that overlooked a central court, the melodies
of all kinds of singing birds were wafted contrapuntally across the
strains of the equally invisible musicians inside the banqueting hall
itself, while the sun-litten flashings of a fountain formed the organ
point that threaded through the whole--so much as this the Venetian
came, and saw, and enjoyed; but as to the laced and liveried
semblances of life with which the banqueting hall was alive, they
were semblances of death for all the service which the wish and will
of Tosca sought to exact from them.  And here again the Frenchman
came to his aid, and these genii, at his command, throbbed with
obsequious ichor.  Tables (in a second, magnificently clothed)
groaned under the newest of foods and beakers filled at the central
spring (fed from the waters of the Bottomless Lake) brimmed with the
oldest of wines.  Vergilia and Magloire appeared infused with perfect
life, but to the bravo all was bitter in the mouth.  He saw by the
action of the genii of the place that the contract agreed to, and
possibly only too literally carried out, had not been sufficiently
comprehensive.  The day had dawned, it is true, upon a tenement that
eminently satisfied the caprices of Vergilia.  But the bravo was only
in name its master and hers.  The castle that mocked his efforts to
move it came and went at the motion of his rival, the servants that
were automata to Tosca were alive to the bidding of Magloire, and
Vergilia had forsaken her old love and beamed only upon the new.
Nay, she cast upon Magloire the self-same love light which had fired
Tosca's blood in her defence when he snatched her from her ravishers,
that never to be forgotten day when first they met.  He had thought
his valour saved her from a fortune worse than death, which now he
feared would have affected her not at all.  For he saw that all the
signs of an apparently virgin love could rise up like phoenix from
the ashes of a past one.  And he shuddered to think how often this
process might have been repeated.  Had all her lovers then enjoyed
her perchance save Tosca alone?  And yet all the more she sank in his
estimation, the fuller swelled the tide of his desire.  The long
luxurious banquet was a torture to him with this death's head at his
feast.  His rage increased steadily with the jealousy it fed upon.
The long drawn courses were no sooner over than he seized upon some
trifling pretext (we know not what) to leave Vergilia alone for a few
moments while he drew his rival to that central court, whence
perfumed zephyrs blew.  The stranger still continued masked.  To this
Tosca first alluded laying his hand upon the hilt of that famous old
sword of his.

"Unmask your face that I may know you."

"You shall know me too well ere long."

"Restore me that amulet unearned by your accursed jugglery."

"You will never see it again."

"Then let this sword of justice decide between us that has settled
many a case for me before, and the Devil help his own!  But first
reveal to me your real style and title (and a fig for the assumed one
that you go by), that I may learn with what enemy I have to deal that
has cause to hunt me down as you have hunted me."

"You deal with the Resenter and Avenger of the murder of the
Illyrian."

A shiver ran down the spine of the Venetian.  Yet his blade
nevertheless flashed from its sheath, and he motioned to the stranger
to take up a position opposite to him.  Magloire turned round for one
second to do so, and in that second the sword of his faithless foe
was plunged remorselessly through his back.  The point protruded
through his breast.  The next instant the sword had been withdrawn,
and the still unexplained Frenchman lay prone upon the ground by the
self-same stratagem that had availed with the man of whom he styled
himself avenger.  And this time also the Venetian took the trouble to
assure himself of the death of his victim before returning his sword
to its scabbard.  That done, he proceeded next to ascertain the real
identity of this mysterious being whom he had supposed to be one of
his numerous enemies working out a long delayed vendetta.  With a
clutch the mask was torn to ribbons, and with a shriek the bravest of
the brave recoiled from the Mandrake it revealed; and, as the
shrieker heard his shriek, he recognised its kind.  It was fellow to
that one he had heard the day before from the chamber of Vergilia,
never deeming that he himself in turn would be frighted with the same
basilisk face.  But it frighted him (after all) with a difference.
The soul of the pot valiant courtier had been reft from its silken
frame, but the tempered ribs of the Man of War held fast their trust
within.  His brain whirled and steadied itself--his blood shot forth
and back again--his eye grew dark and cleared.  On to his knees he
sank, indeed, that never had bent to conquered (or unconquered) foe
before, but that was the only abatement from his pride of place.
That was his only homage to the escaped familiar of the sorceress'
privacy, that grim guardian whose gorgon glimpse had yesterday
sobered the drunkard and petrified the itching flesh of lust.  And
the situation brought its panacea.  Ignorant still of the effect of
the Seven Sigils, he fancied he had discovered now why the sorceress
had favoured the Mandragorean watchman with the love glance once
reserved for Tosca.  It must be because that monster also had
rendered service to her virtue as the bravo had rendered it before.
One question still remained unanswered.  Had Vergilia herself never
seen the face of this awful animated root?  Or had she, by daily
touch, kept up from the very first plucking of the plant, so grown up
along with its progressing hideosity as to feel no inception of
abhorrence?  At any rate, his Mandrakeship was now placed finally
_hors de boudoir_.  And the bravo reflected that he laughs best who
laughs the last.  Take heed, though, Tosca, there rests one yet
unslain till the day of final doom, in whose danger you still stand,
and whose claws are creeping towards you from the dark places of the
earth!  Who sups with the Devil had need have a very long spoon.  But
now there flashes like a sunbeam through the court the golden-haired
vision of whose destiny he now hoped himself sole arbiter.  Roused by
that fell shriek, her anxiety nevertheless was far from being for the
utterer of it.  With a cry of agonised acute despair she flung past
the outstretched arms of the bravo on to the prostrate body of the
lover still bound to her in death by the magic of the talisman he had
swallowed with so justified a foresight.  The bravo knelt no longer
to the Mandrake, but to her, and with a cry plucked up the thoughts
of his deepest soul.

"Thou wanton and thing of many lovers, yet whom still I madly love!
By the love you once bore me, have pity on me now and vouchsafe me
but the leavings of this man or monster.  A living dog is better than
a dead lion, so they say.  Call me your dog or what you will, so that
you call me yours.  For you I placed my soul in pledge, and would you
now desert me in my indignity?  Nay then, if your choice be
irrevocably riveted to this carrion, so be it!  But you shall share
the fate of him whom you so fancy.  The Grand Seignieur is
connoisseur in the art of fittest punishing the faithless.  With my
own eyes I have seen his favourite odalisques sewn up in sacks, and
dropped into the Bosphorus.  And with my own hands I will deal with
you even so.  You shall have your fill of local colour ere you have
done with your palace of the East."

The bravo was now crouching instead of kneeling, and gathering
himself up into a spring as of a panther he plunged upon the still
disconsolable mourner.  Twining his fingers recklessly about the
golden hair he oft had kissed, he dragged her, not without difficulty
from the corpse of the Thing, whose fall she wept, jerking her
spasmodically into the hall and overturning its furniture right and
left.  Amid the crashing of shattered bric-a-brac, he grabbed at the
nearest cushion from a divan that stood hard by, and ripping out its
entrails with the ferocity of an attack upon a living thing, he
felled the shrieking girl to the ground with a blow that would have
startled an ox, and forced his contrived receptacle somehow and
anyhow over her body, she uttering never a syllable the while.  Did
she think that he had no heart to carry to a finish such a deed?  Or
was it still the eccentric influence of the Seven Sigils that made
death to her preferable to life apart from the one beloved?  This we
cannot answer.  Enough that Tosca seemed in deadly earnest as he
shook together the members of his mistress, and compressing the mouth
of his improvised sarcophagus, tied it up with the belt from his
waist.  This done he left it on the couch, and returned to the
central court drowsy with incense laden flowers.  He intended to
yield Vergilia one more chance.  Left to herself, and already wrapped
in her winding sheet, the present expectation of a painful death
would surely lead to second thoughts, and induce her to lavish less
carelessly the future of her youth and beauty--the splash that
heralded the committal of her paramour to the water would be echoed
by her appeal for mercy--and he had resolved in that case to forgive
her the worst she dared confess to him.  But now to the work.  Not
entirely without spasms of fresh fear he re-entered the courtyard of
the fateful duel, and where the duellist who had fallen lay.  His
body the bravo now conveyed down the steps to the landing stage in
front of the main building.  It did not fail to occur to the
practical mind of the Venetian as he strained under the repulsive
corpse of his quondam adversary that somewhere upon "his person (as
he thought) must lie concealed the talisman of the Seven Sigils.  He
did not know that to find it he should have to search for it within
and not without.  The consequence naturally was that his search was
unrewarded by any trace whatever of the coveted gem.  But the more he
searched and pondered--and pondered and searched again--the more he
became convinced of the necessity for finding it, and the clearer
became to him the momentous part it had played in recent events.  He
remembered now too late that while he had it in his possession his
suit with Vergilia had prospered, whereas Heaven had begun to frown
upon him as soon as he had parted with it to Magloire.  He was too
shrewd a conjuror to fail to connect the one fact with the other, and
with them both the anxiety of the Mandrake to possess the talisman of
whose virtues he had obviously knowledge.  Yet still it could not be
found upon his person.  With a fearful oath the Venetian at length
gave up the search, and consigned the fruitless body to the
Bottomless Lake.  He would find the bauble yet (he swore) by all his
left hand gods in whatsoever nook of earth it lay.  And with that
very oath upon his lips he cast it off unwittingly for ever, deep
buried in the body that he spurned.  Flotsam and jetsam whatsoever
touched the surface of those Stygian waves became the forfeit of the
Fiend.  Such was the fate of body and gem.  No more to appear in
substance in our story, the seal of the Seven Sigils shall,
nevertheless, ride through it to the end, completing the curse of the
Illyrian.  The Venetian (ignorant as we have said of the loss he had
inflicted upon himself) once more re-entered the banqueting hall.
His purpose, before dealing with the question of his lady-love, was
to order up a second collation accompanied by fresh founts of wine.
This _tete-a-tete_ (as he ordained it in his mind) should obliterate
the memory of the previous banquet with its presence of an
inconvenient third.  He gave his order roundly to the servants, quite
forgetting how impotent his commands.  The automata remained unmoved,
save for the fancy of the bravo that they leered somewhat upon him
with an unmistakeable expression of contempt.  Stung to sudden rage
he drew his keen ancestral blade, and made a lunge at the vitals of
the nearest one.  In a moment he saw his mistake.  The steel shivered
into a thousand fragments, and shattered in its flight all the
mirrors of the room.  The hilt alone remained in his hand, which was
jarred through and through by the shock.  But the mental effect was
even worse.  For the first time a sense of impending Nemesis began to
steal upon him.  This unique companion of all his vicissitudes had
been beloved of his inmost soul.  From his jeopardous early days up
he had been accustomed never to sleep without it, until it had become
almost necessary to his slumbers that he should clap it to his
breast.  Slowly he recovered, and even comforted himself.  What could
his ancient hanger on avail him in his imprisonment on that island of
enchantment?  And had he not at hand metal far more
attractive--damaskeened with gold--and suppler than Damascus steel?
He gathered together lingeringly the shards of his faithful
bedfellow, that he might cast those also into that Bottomless Lake
that had just received their latest victim.  But when he had them all
embraced together in his arms, and had thrown aside the portal that
he might descend the steps to the landing stage--he was blasted with
a shock not so easy to rebound from as this matter of a broken
weapon--there existed no longer a landing stage at all!  Where it
formerly stood the remorseless tide of the Bottomless Lake now swept
the foot of the steps!  The bravo reeled.  For a moment the air was
thick with curses loud and deep upon the day when the Seven Sigils
had first flashed its baleful light athwart his path.  He now saw the
full significance of the fact that Magloire alone could shift the
castle's site, and vivify its phlegmatic flunkeydom.  The castle
having been created by Magloire, for him alone existed.  The handing
over of his body to Beelzebub, of which the bravo himself had been
the unthinking agent, had finally snapped the charm which held the
building in existence.  It was now slowly sinking into the waters
from which it rose, and would continue to slowly sink till not a
stone of it was visible above the surface of the darkling deep.
Tosca reeled at this slap in the face that his fortune dealt him.  He
never knew how he found himself once more within the central court, a
beaker in his hand, filling it to the brim with a vintage of the
fountains of which we made mention before.  He raised the vessel to
his lips.  The next moment it fell from his palsied hand and dashed
into a thousand pieces.  The fluid he had tried to drink slobbered
over his knees as he rolled ignominiously upon the tesselated
pavement.  It was no longer wine that the fountain had yielded, but
the fetid water of the Bottomless Lake!  And this also resulted from
the breaking of the charm by burial of the body of Magloire.  The
curse of the Illyrian was closing in upon its victim.  The fate of
the Venetian was written large upon his forehead.  Abrupt Despair
gripped upon his heart-strings.  Yet still the honour of the bout
remained with Tosca.  For he remembered in his extremity that the
bundle on the couch with all its possibilities was his.  In despite
of all that Doom had done he still remained the owner of a wallet
that beggared Forturiatus.  He sprang to his feet like an Antæus, all
the tenser for his momentary lapse to earth.  He stretched out his
arms towards the Bottomless Lake, and roared in tones of thunder:--

"Hell from beneath is moved for me to meet me at my coming!  Now runs
my sand apace, and I am ripe for my enrolment in the legions that
eternally curse God and do not die!  Yet still the victory of
victories is mine, and eyeless Death shall not outstare me from it!
Is it for this you work (you who sit in the High Places of the Pit),
that I should flaunt in your faces the most fragrant hour of Life?
Oh, how you have wrought your work awry!  And you--you myriad victims
of the dagger or the bowl that I have ushered unannealed to the
account--I invite you every one to my bridal!  Is this then your
vengeance (oh, viperine Magloire!) that fruition should wait on my
desire?  And you, Illyrian Janko, is this then your revenge that you
watch my wedding eve from the impotent other side of that great gulf
fixed between?  Here, on this side, I exact value in advance for the
eternal price I pay.  Here shall our ardent heat outblaze your fires,
and when your ruffian waters reach our level shall the floor above
receive us--and still the floor above--till on the roof itself at
last we still out-laugh you!  Hours must elapse or ever your icy
billows reach our hearts, and wash them to the portal of Infinity!
These hours shall be mine (though all Gehenna gnash its teeth), and
our content shall give the lie to Hell."

Firm as a rock, he strode to his bag and cast off the belt from its
mouth.  A head appeared.  But not a golden one.  Its scanty hair was
grey.  Tosca recoiled.  The ground reeled beneath him.  His brain was
furnace, and his blood arterial snow.  With a mighty effort he
recovered himself, and leaped like a madman into the sack, rending it
seam from seam.  The whole fabric parted, and disclosed, not the
nonpareil that he had placed in its safe keeping, but the withered
stubs of limbs and yellow disjected trunk of that ancient harridan of
Illyria, whom he had seen on that never to be forgotten former
occasion anatomised by the hand of Janko.  And as he stared dead eyed
upon that death, he was mercifully unaware that his feet were being
swept by the inexorable waves of the advancing Bottomless Lake.




THE HAND OF GLORY.


PART I.

MINE HOST OF THE FOUR CROSS ROADS.

The year of grace 1609.  Our scene, a tavern within, and yet apart
from, the bustle of a seaport town.  Damned by its site upon an
ill-omened juncture of cross-roads, which, at a time when the town
had not straggled so far, had been the burial ground of suicide and
sorcerer: haunted by bones still sleepless, although centuries had
gone since their last rag of flesh reeked off into the medicinal air;
solitary in a crowd, except for such strangers as never learnt the
local traditions.  For these very reasons it attracted the attention
of a class that feared men more than ghosts; and thus it came to be
whispered among the neighbours as the house of call for the wizards
of the Basque Provinces.

Such was the situation upon which the curtain rises.  Our readers may
now form a guess as to the character of the traveller that sought
admittance upon the evening in question.  This traveller was
apparently alone--only apparently--for another sentient being
suddenly makes known to us his presence on the scene.  The cabalistic
ring which graced the finger of our traveller shot a double-lightning
from its tenant stone as the fist of its lord beat a devil's tattoo
on the tavern door.  The demon that was imprisoned within the ring
had lifted for one second his pendulous eyelids.  Foreknowledge of
his approaching freedom to be wrought under that roof (as this
chronicle shall in due order tell), had touched up buried fires; but
patience born of immortality resumed its pride of place, and the
Demon dissembling again a hope too soon revealed, there died in the
instant all light from the gem, and left it fuscous as before.  The
fist in knocking was naturally raised above the head of the cabalist
that wore the ring.  The traveller consequently failed to perceive
the eyebeams of his familiar.  Be sure if he caught sight of that
glint of evil glee he would have read in it an omen of impending
disaster to the enterprise that turned him to that tavern.  The
future of cabalist and demon would then have hung upon his decision
whether to dree the weird or 'scape it.  But the significants that
ruled his horoscope withheld the timely warning, and the traveller
continued his endeavours to get hearing from the all too early
retired household.  Thus the moment of possible retreat passed
irrevocably by.  A wicket sunk in the stubborn thickness of the door,
was thrown suddenly open.  A pair of eyes appeared--luminous,
terrible.  They fixed those of the cabalist unflinchingly, beams to
beams, lights to lights, and the cabalist recognised in the eyes of
his adversary the self-same, tell-tale film through which he flashed
his own.  Not the film of the eagle neither, that may enable the king
of birds to peruse the noonday sun, but would impotently shrivel
before the venomous exhalations that stream from fiery pits that
blaze under fallen angels' brows, no, the eyes of the intervisible
twain were sheathed with the shard of the born exorcist--the heir of
the secrets and physical gifts of a line of wizard sires.  From
behind these horny casements they had measured the frown of Satan's
self, and danced undaunted and undulled.  Sparse were the mortals
whom the cabalist reckoned fellow-men; but here, at any rate, was one
of them.  The cabalist waxed kindly, as he proceeded to interrogate
what he felt to be a kindred spirit.

"Is this the hostelry of the Four Cross Roads?"

"By some such name is it noted among the Vulgar."

"And are you he of whom they whisper, under the name of Aquelarre?"

"I am the master of this house."

"You are then he to whom I am recommended by one I have good reason
to trust."

"May I trouble you for his name?"

"To me he is known as Lisaldo."

"Under that name, at any rate, I do not know him; but that argues
nothing.  A thousand soldiers know the lieutenant whom the lieutenant
does not know."

"By this token you may know him, that he gave you a name of praise
and fear--that of the devil's correspondent for the viscounty of
Labourt."

"And if it were so?"

"Then over and above being yourself sunk from sole to crown in the
study of supernature you have traced the gigantic plan of linking
yourself together with all else that tread untrodden ways.  And I saw
that the design was good--for in union there is strength--and if we
in the far New World from which I come, are to-day unthreatened by
the bigotry of the church, it would nevertheless be short sight
indeed if we played the spectator, while among you runs the writ of
cord and faggot.  To-morrow, mayhap, we shall be persecuted in our
turn, and ashes the brethren that could have bettered us.  For this,
then, am I travelled hither, as I may say at your bidding, since the
suggestion proceeded from one who knows you, though him you may not
know; that we may survey together the field of your danger, and in
consort draft such measure of defiance and defence as shall eat up
this persecution at the root.  This evening disembarked and
understanding from that same Lisaldo, that under cover of the tavern
of the Four Cross Roads your pursue your devil's procuracy, I have
hustled hither straight to take up my quarters beneath your kindly
roof."

"Are you then alone or do I rightly see two others that linger in
your rear among the shadows?"

"The one of them is this Lisaldo that I speak of, to whom I owe your
name, and who has attached himself to my personal service; and in
this connexion I may mention that I shall require two communicating
bedrooms (or be it one with a dressing-room adjacent) to gratify my
long, and now invincible, vogue of keeping my servant all night
within my call.  My other follower is a Creole of the family
Ataurresagasti; by trade an honest seaman, but not, I believe, too
honest to be of possible use to our cause.  Told off to do us service
during the long and perilous passage he has been only too anxious to
be of comfort to us, and we are indebted to him for countless little
offices.  Arrived at your wharves we could satisfy him with nothing
less than the porterage of half our effects, and since the whole were
too heavy for Lisaldo, 'twas but policy to accept his friendly offer,
rather than initiate a stranger into our destination.  Accommodated
with a bed in this same house, he will be under our united
ken--should you consider him metal that may be moulded to our purpose
he need never return to his ship."

"Nor for the matter of that in the contrary case either, since it
were unsafe for him to have even touched the skirts of our common
secret.  'Tis child's play for such as you and I to rot the thread of
life with an oblivious gruel."

"We will confer upon that matter in the bedroom which you allot me,
while Lisaldo and the sailor are refreshing themselves below.  You
are satisfied with my credentials, and will admit us without delay,
since the night is wasting shrewdly?"

"There is one thing wanting--your name."

"My name I have never syllabled since my birth, nor would it be
possible to deceive you with a false one, you being what you are and
I wearing this ring by whose fame you and all of life occult may know
me."

The cabalist jerked his slender hand from out of the folds of his
cloak, where he had thrust it after the opening of the wicket.  Its
crouching prisoner (wiser than before) allowed never a wink to escape
him.  But that it was in sooth the very ring that contained the
familiar (renowned among the sorcerers of the whole round world)
Aquelarre well could see.  An insane impulse to strike down the
insolent owner, and incontinently seize the matchless gem, contracted
every fibre of his body.  Had the door not stood between them, he
would have made the rash attempt, only to remember, when too late,
that the allegiance of the Demon could never by violence transfer
from man to man.  He ground the wicket into its place to hide the
distortion of his features, and busied himself with bolts and bars
that they might clatter above the gnashing of his teeth.  By the time
he had undone the fastenings the impulse had passed.  Recollecting
all the restrictions that fenced the ring around, he had become once
more himself.  Meanwhile the nameless cabalist had summoned with a
whistle his two attendants forward.  Youths of about an equal age,
the one was white as a cosset page, and the other tanned like a
galley-slave.

The massive portal swung a-side with a suddenness that even drew a
start from the seasoned nerves of the cabalist, though it must be
evident that one who had put together such a ring must be steeped in
no ordinary course of sciences and surprises.  A blaze of light shot
through the widening passage into the dark deserted street.  A host
of obsequious hands stretched out of the blinding drift and relieved
the two bearers of their luggage.  Before the three newcomers had
acquired the proper focus to even perceive who had thus helped them,
the helpers were out of sight.  Viands and vintages which had
appeared with startling rapidity alone remained to prove to their
eyes which the travellers rubbed, the substantiality of the just
present bodies.  Also the master of the house stood there,
unbonneted, and bowing his welcome.  The cabalist refused to break a
fast which was integral to some experiment in hand; leaving this,
then, to the more congenial age of Lisaldo and the sailor, he
withdrew with Aquelarre to his apartments.  Thus the youths so like,
and yet so unlike, at last were left alone together.

The footfalls of the brothers of the black art had hardly died away
above stairs when the sailor turned to Lisaldo abruptly and whispered
in a tone attuned to every sweetness--;

"Lisalda!"

The page started as if stung to death, at thus hearing an address in
the feminine form of the name, instead of in the masculine.  His face
at first blanched with sudden terror, and then flooded with rosy red.
He made a confused attempt at correction.

"You mean Lisaldo."

"Lisalda, and Lisalda, and Lisalda."

The sailor persisted--this apparent error seemed to water in his
mouth--then remembering himself he became sheepish as a chidden
child, and sank presently on to his knees.  The page eyed him
guiltily, then the sailor took courage in his hands and made sensible
his inmost heart.

"I love you, Lisalda, and love has keener sight than many that call
it blind.  I felt your sex from the first hour you stepped aboard.  I
kindled to it with an instinct that strangled reason.  It possessed
every fibre of me through all our days becalmed on Sargasso seas that
to me seemed flower shotten meads.  I clenched my teeth on it our
tropic nights when hand in hand you walked my watch with me, and
learnt from me the blazonry of heaven.  Months ago I should have
given throat to the heart that hungered within me.  But in my surly
sailor fashion I only tightened my belt around it.  I am no saint,
Lisalda, I have served apprentice to buccaneers on Carribean
seas--men that never set a hand to honest tool save when they planted
chests of gold in the earth, I have swam o' days in blood and o'
nights in wine.  But the hand that scattered the brains of Don and
Dutchman was an aspen held in yours.  Terror tremendously overruled
me, when I would fain have slipped the cable of my desire, and it is
a marvel to me now that I kneel at your feet, though I know full well
that my revealment is wrung from me by the parting asunder of our
ways.  Here must I speak or ever after hold my peace, here you may
infuse yourself with a heart no less honest than rough, that has beat
for naught nor will beat for aught save you; or here you may rule me
unworthy of more that has already enjoyed overmuch.  It bodes me ill
I fear, Lisalda, that you never read a heart so confounded with your
own; but, whatever you say will be for me the voice of oracle that is
worshipped whether good or ill."

"The oracle is dumb to-night, Ataurresagasti, though you have taught
me that I knew your love from the first.  I cannot decide at once
whether I have done you irreparable wrong, or added to your fulness
of life.  To-morrow, friend (if that title does not jar upon you)
shall learn you all your heart's desire.  And (whatever that morrow's
disillusion) to-night at any rate, your image will disturb my no
longer virgin sleep."

"Your sleep, Lisalda, there's the rub that galls my jealous loin.
To-night that I have a share in you (though it be but for to-night) I
shudder at the thought of your retiring to the ante-room of the
bed-chamber of that other man.  Throughout the voyage every lip
before the mast has shriven him with curses (not loud, but deep) for
the wayward winds his Jonah presence fetched athwart our course.  The
bated breath of the forecastle credited him with the wearing of a
familiar spirit imprisoned in the setting of that ring upon his hand.
How did such as you come to foregather with one so unkindly, and
withal so far from this your birthplace?  And what is his need of you
that one so powerful should claim you close at heel?"

"Ataurresagasti, it were too long to tell you how I came to be
orphaned, and at buffet with the world.  Too long again to recount
the chances that transferred me from here to the Indies.  Enough that
I must have been in desperate straits when I donned the disguise I
still wear, and entered the vacant service of my present lord and
master.  That he lived in evil odour had come to my ears, and that he
never kept his servants long, but that they either went mad or died
was more than gossip to me that first attended my master to the
funeral of my predecessor.  I was situated so sorely that I would
have worn Satan's livery to earn me bed and board.  Now the secret of
the wants of my master and the wastage amongst his servants is this:
his nerves are completely shattered by terrible experiments, the
nature of which I never dare to know.  He sees through the veil that
round us wraps impenetrably.  He is haunted day and night by hosts of
beings incorporately awful.  Over these, indeed, some sway of his
extends (else were he long since torn to shreds), but only by the
continual strain of every resource of his science.  The demon that is
familiar of the ring you speak of--the loathsome creepiness that
writhes within a crystal cell and impotently spits at such as dare to
see--is on the one hand the crowning glory of his labours, and the
envy of the wizard world--and on the other hand an anxious horror
that makes cheap the mere routine of Hell.  Day it turns to night,
night to nightmare, and still the worst of all remains--the hour
between midnight and cockcrow when the heavenly patrols are relieving
guard and the nether gates swing open and all the rout of Hell are
free to seek their own devilish devices.  Now you can guess, can you
not, Ataurresagasti, why the cabalist never remains alone in the
dark?"

"By the God I never praised till I met you, Lisalda, this passes the
worst I had imagined.  But do you still think so ill of me (after the
centuries of mingled life we have crushed into so curt an orbit), do
you still so little value my self esteem as to believe me capable
(now I know what your service is) of allowing you to continue it for
even yet one grain of the hour glass?  To the devil with this enemy
and friend of his, and let the poor prisoner of the ring have his
day!  I, too, am a prisoner and feel for all in bonds."

"You are the best of men, Ataurresagasti, and fittest to be free.
But for this night at any rate (however your reasons may touch me) I
must fulfil my contract, as of use and wont.  Whatever new
combination to-morrow's sun may bring, it is too late to-night, at
any rate, to find a substitute to comrade the broken slumbers of the
cabalist."

"It is never too late, Lisalda, to crown my broad shoulders with the
lightness of a burden saved from yours.  I beseech you, as a lover
whom you may yet reject, not to refuse me this (as it may be) last
sad privilege--chance itself (if all be not fated from the first)
plays patron to my innocent stratagem.  The landlord of this tavern
of the Four Cross Roads (and may I die the day I see a more
ill-favoured fellow) has heard our names, it is true, but can have no
means of telling which is which.  Do you call yourself the cabin-boy,
Ataurresagasti, and vouchsafe me for one brief snatch, to be bone of
the bone, and flesh of the flesh with Lisalda (or Lisaldo).  The
certainty that you are bolted and barred once more in a room alone,
will bear me up through all that teems from Tophet.  The cabalist is
the only eye that could detect the substitution, and he keeps (or you
would never have remained his) respectfully on his own side the
partition until morning.  The dawn may see him damned, so far as his
hold on either of us is concerned, and we will set forth (together I
trust) about our own peace and pleasure."

"As to that I can give you no promise, Ataurresagasti, save to
remember you in any case until the last sigh of life.  But this, as
you say, is all the more reason why I should let you be my proxy, if
it will give you any unfeigned satisfaction.  And here comes back our
host on the heels of our accord, and the curtain rises on our play."

The sailor rose to his feet.  It was as Lisalda said, for such (her
secret once revealed) we may as well henceforth style her, Aquelarre
having finished his business with the cabalist come to summon the
page to his attendance.  But he first drew a bottle and three goblets
from a press and placed the latter on one of the tables.  Filling
them to the overflow, he appointed one to each to drink a parting
cup.  All three raised on high and touched together their goblets in
token of sentiment, somewhat hollow.  Ataurresagasti had scarcely put
his lips to the liquid, when memory started armed from his brain.  It
was hocussed.  There was no doubt about it.  He had been drugged once
before by the pressgang of the pirate, with whom he had served out
his buccaneer articles.  Once bit, twice shy.  He replaced the goblet
on the table, the other two mechanically followed his example.  The
good fellowship that shone upon his weather-beaten face was in
inverse ratio to the ready subtlety that scanned every loophole from
within; and presently he swooped down with unerring instinct upon the
only possible coign of vantage.  The meaning eyes of the landlord had
turned upon the innocent eyes of Lisalda.  He was staring out her
inmost soul.  Taking advantage of this absorption of the two,
Ataurresagasti reversed the positions of the drugged goblet and that
of the landlord.  So smartly did he execute this manoeuvre that it
would most certainly have escaped the notice of an ordinary observer.
But had it escaped the lynx-eyed Aquelarre?  The sailor breathed more
freely when, upon all three once more raising their goblets, the
whole of the hocussed stuff disappeared without question down the
landlord's corded throat.  All having drained to the dregs, Aquelarre
turned and addressed himself to the quondam buccaneer:--

"May I be burnt by the Parliament of Bordeaux if my customer upstairs
let me into the secret as to which of you two he mastered.  Now I'll
be bound 'tis you, my jolly Roger (and not this queasy cabin-boy)
that has chaffered for gold his rest o' nights to the wandering Jew
up aloft there."

"Your guess does honour to your penetration, Monsieur Four Cross
Roads, though you did overshoot your bolt a bit when you called me
Jolly Roger."

"Ho, ho, Monsieur Lisaldo, so you turned your skin then with your
livery, and no longer acknowledge the Black Flag?"

"How do you know that I had ever anything in common with the Black
Flag?"

"Easy as lying, Monsieur Lisaldo, easy as lying.  Your face, my
friend (and for the matter of that, everyone's face), is as an open
book whereon I read.  Nay, your hand alone, my friend, shouts your
past, your present, and your future to such as I that have ears to
hear."

"Of the past and of the present I am already sick at heart, but I am
open to receive any index (what it may befit me to know) as to how
the future shall shape itself before me."

"A good wish upon you!  I am permitted to tell you, at any rate, that
you chose your vocation under a healthy star, for you were never born
to be drowned!"

The sailor hardly knew whether to be amused or annoyed at the tone
adopted by the chiromantist.  He continued to balance the matter in a
confused sort of way, after he had taken shy leave of Lisalda.
Arrived in his room, he barred and bolted the outer door with a
thoroughness born of much adventuring.  He loosened a hanger that he
wore at his side, and tied it by its belt as with a sword knot to his
wrist.  That had been the _toilet de rigueur_ for the night among his
former messmates, the pirates of the Antilles.  In this array then,
supine upon the bed, he confidently awaited developments.  To keep
himself awake he continued to agitate the mysterious character and
conduct of Aquelarre.  The events of the evening, since the
ill-assorted three had left their ship together, all forced
themselves into the question.  This opened the road to a review of
the whole voyage and the change it had wrought in his life.  And that
life--what turn would it take on the morrow?  What result from the
heart-probing of Lisalda?  The singularity was that the more
plausible he painted the future, the darker shaded the present, and
the past, of his sweetheart.  He felt it was an insult to her to
question her about that past of which she had denied the recital.
And yet he longed--and how he longed--to rise to her from his very
bed to question her.  And her relations with the cabalist--how long
before the voyage she had served him Ataurresagasti never knew, but
apart from that it was gall and wormwood to him that she should even
have shared his state room at sea.  The fancy forced itself upon the
sailor that the cabalist--who saw through all things--had seen
through her disguise.  The more he turned over the reasons assigned
by Lisalda for the cabalist never sleeping alone, the more unlikely
it appeared that a prince of all the Magi, and tamer of the Demon of
the Ring, should show a side so puny.  In spite of his better self
there forced itself upon him another, and quite opposite, picture of
the nights that these two had passed together.  Yet why (and here for
a moment he threw off that thraldom) yet why had Lisalda, this
particular evening, apparently willingly exchanged with him the
place, which by that hateful theory she should have found a
pleasance.  Again wider issues loomed in every direction, until he
returned again bewildered to what seemed willy-nilly his keynote for
that night.  He tossed from side to side.  Picture after picture
stood out before his mind's eye, until he even reached the length of
fancying Lisalda at that moment on the other side with the cabalist,
while Ataurresagasti on his side lay befooled.  That she could not
have got there by any human means was a difficulty which did not even
occur to him for solution.  The sweat stood out thick upon his brow.
He positively saw Lisalda twined about the body of his rival.  His
hair (he felt it) was turning grey.  He saw the cabalist (a wonder of
satiety) remove that ring of rings from his finger and fit it
jestingly upon hers.  At this precise juncture of his nightmare,
Ataurresagasti suddenly started broad awake to his feet.  Dream or no
dream--whatever the rest of the night had been--there was certainly
now something awful in progress in the adjoining apartment.
Something (which he instinctively felt was not human) was struggling
for life and death with the luckless cabalist.  The hair of the
sailor stood on end.  There was no mistake about it this time.  Time
had been when he fancied he felt fear, but he knew now that only at
this moment had he learnt its kind.  All at once a most terrible
shriek rang out through every corner of the house.  Ataurresagasti
dashed the partition into splinters with a blow that would have
shattered steel.  He leaped into the room just in time to arrest the
escape of some huge incredible beast, that stood sullenly at bay, in
the strangling streak of dawn.  The mystery was solved.  Down came
the hanger with an impulse so irresistible that it sheared off a
whole limb of the accursed one.  The point of the hanger actually
penetrated so deeply into the flooring that it was a moment of
anxiety (during which his quarry, although maimed, might have bested
him) before Ataurresagasti succeeded in getting it out again.  But
when he had recovered it, the animal had disappeared, impossible to
find out how or where.  This alone he saw in the imperfect light (or
rather in the imperfect darkness) that the whole room was scattered
from end to end with blood and bones and brain, which was all that
was left of that most unhappy man.

A sickness came upon the victor.  He mopped his dripping forehead.
He turned to leave the presence-chamber of death and doom; he picked
up as he did so the severed limb, a casual glance at which confirmed
his general impression that the gaunt game had been but a
particularly large and loathly wolf, such as occasionally penetrated
the precincts of towns in the neighbourhood of the Pyrenees.
Ataurresagasti walked down straight into the reception room of the
night before.  For the moment the possible alarm of Lisalda at that
terrible shriek of dissolution of the cabalist had not even entered
his mind.  His object was to summon Aquelarre.  To his surprise he
found him crouching there already white as a ghost apparently with
fear.  He sprang to his feet at sight of the sailor, and barely
suppressed a cry.  This time it was the sailor that read, and the
landlord's face that provided reading matter.  Amazement was writ
legibly in every line of it, and his eyes were opened to the size of
saucers.  And Ataurresagasti asked himself, without finding answer,
what connexion all this had with the attempt to drug him, which he
had discovered the preceding evening.  The two men stared at one
another for some minutes without finding speech, of which indeed the
innkeeper, at any rate, seemed incapable.  The word when taken up was
taken up by Ataurresagasti.

"My pharmaceutical friend seems somewhat upset by my early appearance
after draining the drowsy cup which he compounded for me overnight."

"And it is not natural that a landlord should be fearful for his
slate when he sees an uncancelled score slinking downstairs to the
outlet at such unearthly hour?"

"Alas, for your slate (if that touch you so nearly) a fiscal fleeter
than yourself has attended here this night, and collected your other
lodger's scot."

"What means this matin pleasantry?  How goes it with the cabalist?"

"Well, I hope, although I dare not think it well.  His reckoning, I
fear, will overreach him."

"Is he dead?"

"As much of him as can still be traced is unquestionably dead."

"That then undid my beauty sleep.  I thought I dreamed an unforgetful
shriek."

"'Twas murder mouthed it.  God rest his soul, that died in such a
case as he was overtaken in."

"He died, you say, by the hand of God?"

"I say by the limb of a wolf, rather, which I arriving overdue did
incontinently lop from its trunk.  The felon then evading by exit to
me invisible, I descended hither by what impulse I scarcely know save
that my intentions tended justiceward."

"You meant perchance to summon authority to certify to cause of
death.  But this must be looked to by myself before anyone else is
admitted.  What became of the piece of conviction?"

"Behold it!"

"Out upon you!  What providence have we here!  O perjured windpipe
you are most miraculously self-accused by this mischosen joint!  Limb
of a wolf did you dare to say?  Nay, behold assassin, to your
confusion, 'tis the disjointed member of your master that you have
brought away with you from the presence chamber."

A cry of horror burst from the palsied lips of the sailor.  It was as
Aquelarre stated.  Not the hacked-off trophy of his prowess had he
carried in his hand; by some inexplicable equivocation it was the
sundered fist of the cabalist still bearing the ring of the familiar.
Chilled to the marrow by the ghastly riddle Ataurresagasti stammered
some broken of explanation; but the landlord cut him short.

"Hold your peace, rogue (and fool as much as rogue), you have miscast
your account if you think to cope in a game of brag with a man of the
world like Aquelarre.  You do but squander breath which you may want
ere long when the hangman ties your cravat.  'Twas then the bauble on
yonder finger whose fatuous fire lured you into slippery sin--I
misfancied even yesternight your gallows visage, that will ere long
grin through a halter: 'twill clog my conscience till the day I die
that I whispered no warning to that gentle sage.  But by these five
bones!  I will lay no second blood to my debit.  Rather than see a
gallant (if misguided) boy turn rope-dancer I will hold the nose of
correction from your trail.  But think not that I shall also permit
you to lay that flattering booty to your soul--you must make over to
me the gaud that cozened you to crime.  Indeed, if I left it in your
possession, you would never dare to look a clothes-line in the face.
Whereas, never doubt but that I shall make the best possible use of
it, such as I have no time to bethink myself of at the moment.
Masses (perchance) for the soul of its late owner done to death
unofficed by Holy Church.  Whatever he would have liked to do for me
had I been slain, and he Aquelarre.  Oh, I can promise you a binding
promise of that.  But we palter out the time of opportunity.  Your
safety lies in instant flight.  The Bidassoa lies within easy avail.
Take the bridge that throws over it at Behobia.  Once on the Spanish
side of the river, the hemp is not sown that shall throttle you.  For
this crime at any rate, I remaining shall run the risk, if risk there
be to run.  Quick then with the gewgaw--'tis a dull stone at
best--why do you hesitate when the path divides before you?  One way
leads to length of life, the other is a short cut to cordage."

"You son of a burnt witch!  The broom-ridden hag that taught you to
spell out the Devil's books, and to find fortunes in hands--past,
present, and future forsooth--she taught you all askew.  I have done
no such deeds as your second sight credits me with.  The matter
squared precisely with my account of it, but I am fortune's fool, and
in change for my own handiwork I took hold (I know not how) of this
Hand of Glory.  In view of the public opinion that whispers you a
wizard I should not exclaim over and above if it turned out to be
your own hocus pocus that brought about the barter.  Nay, it is
possible and even probable that the wolf was but a go-between, guided
by a hand not a hundred miles from here (and I spit upon mine that
grasped it in friendship yester-even) but you are seemingly only an
understrapper in the Devil's workshop since you cut only yourself
with your unnecessary tool.  We did not do these things by deputy
upon the Spanish Main.  Viewed in the light of your press for the
possession of the ring (of whose virtues you apparently believe me to
be ignorant) the riddle of last night's sleeping draught need not
long remain unread.  That after stripping you to this nakedness I
should clothe you with the purple and fine linen of the ring would be
too much for any but yourself to expect."

"Cry you mercy!  You have signed your own death-warrant.  What you
cast in my teeth is guess-work.  But you are rivetted hand and foot
to the matter of fact.  Pass me the ring and you go free--refuse, and
you shall play the pendulum."

"And would you play the gatesman?  Odds my life, and do you think I
dare not go free until Aquelarre lifts the latch?  Deputy devil, look
to yourself!"

Aquelarre placed his back to the door.  The buccaneer swooped down
upon him with a yell that split the throat of echo.  With all his
force he struck him in the face with the abominable relic of the
cabalist.  The effect was electric.  Aquelarre threw up his arms, and
fell like a log dumb and blind to the ground.  The buccaneer wrenched
open the door and disappeared down one of the Four Cross Roads.


(_End of Part I._)




PART II.

THE DEVIL'S ATTORNEY.

The dial had sweat twelve hours of day ere we resume the broken
thread of our story.  At the sign of the Four Cross Roads (whether
accident or design) matters stood in some such case as when we opened
our first part.  The cabalist having paid the debt which he had owed
so lightly and so long, the ring now graced the little finger of the
sailor.  The inscrutable door strained under his muscular fist, that
this time summoned passage.  It opened, and again, with startling
abruptness, Ataurresagasti crossed the fateful lintel.  The door
(which apparently worked of itself) flew back with a horrid, ominous
jar.  Aquelarre stood with his arms crossed in an attitude of
expectation.  Sailor and sorcerer took stock of one another from head
to foot.  But when the latter caught sight of the ring, he burst (as
if inspired) into speech.

"So you have returned upon your tracks; I foresaw you would, and have
awaited you.  You remembered, when in safety yonder side of the
frontier, that you had left a jewel in danger behind, outweighing
that you wear.  Desire came uppermost in the throw with fear."

"You man of second sight, is she still here,--since you know it is a
she I seek?"

"You set me a painful task (my friend and admirer), if you are so
ignorant of all that has happened during your somewhat protracted
constitutional as to require the rigmarole of it from me.  However,
since you already doubtless know (and at any rate I care not to
conceal from you) that I am the official representative in Labourt of
a certain proud and damned Prince, you doubtless look to me as to the
fountain head.  So be it then, and to the task.  But you did a black
day's work as ever you did under the Black Flag, when you saved your
hide this morning at the expense of your mistress's skin.  Nay, hear
me out.  I know that you were shaken out of all self.  But you had
scarcely kicked my dust from off your feet, when the officers of
justice, whom you so churlishly evaded had plucked me by the beard.
The swan song of him from whom you filched that ring had pierced the
universal ear.  That murder had deflowered the bed you wot of, the
constables had no room to doubt.  Indeed, your Carib fashion of
piece-mealing a victim put them to the unsavoury task of making out
an inventory of the deceased.  My own good fame being above
suspicion, it fell from the first upon Lisalda, unearthed and laid
willy nilly by the heels.  Her sex (another item of distrust about
her) was of necessity discovered in the Torture Chamber."

"The Torture Chamber!"

"Aye, the Torture Chamber.  You saved your four limbs.  She will
never use again one of her arms, that was crippled in their grips of
hellish engines.  The surgeon (save the mark) pronounced that she
could bear no more to-day.  To-morrow they practice upon the other
arm.  And after that there will be enough of her sweet body to feed
their tools a week."

"But she is innocent--my God, how innocent--and I, who begin almost
to believe that I am guilty, will surrender at once in her place."

"Small good (my untutored friend), save the melancholy satisfaction
of pressing the same rack with her.  The Parliament of Bordeaux never
let slip a single victim, nor is it any longer merely the indictment
for the murder of the Cabalist that piles the faggots for her.  You
are a babe and suckling in these horrors.  I am prematurely grey with
them.  Had you but seen (as I have) the mother burnt with the child
at her breast--the loving pair chilled at the same stake--the
friendship of years dissolved in smoke, but enough--to get out of the
Torture Chamber (as you should readily guess) the corpus vile reduced
to a crushed craze will sign any depositions that may be held out as
a bait.  The consequence is that your girl has already avowed her
identity with a desperate, long-sought-for witch and sacristan to one
of the most noted of our Black Priests.  So much for the wringing of
one set of nerves.  To what may they not confess her before they have
writhed her into a bag of quivering pulp?"

"Enough, enough, enough, can nothing be done to save her?  O, you
whom all this persecution has left upright (and a refuge as men
whisper to the threatened) from whatever source your commission
comes, I wrap about me the hem of your mantle.  Be your aid of God,
or Devil, I invoke it!"

"Do you know what you ask?  The Indians of Darian are charity,
compared to me and mine.  Be my aid of God, or Devil do you say?  You
shall rest in no doubt upon that head.  The bare mention of the name
of God is a source of danger among us of the opposition, save when we
take it (for our own purposes) in vain.  And of the opposition I have
been, am, and shall be.  That with which surmise is rife be here with
certainty known to you!  You treat with one having authority deputed
from the Most High, the Prince of this World and of Hell."

"I have never shrunk from any, save one woman, and I do not shrink
from you.  In all this storm you are my sheet anchor."

"Then in my character of the Devil's proxy I offer you your heart's
ease in tender for your soul!"

"In the event of my agreeing to your proposition how do you set to
work to save her?"

"By the substitution for her of a golem, a device that I learnt from
a Rabbi of Provence that was my teacher in the art of cabala.  It is
a doll of wax (or indeed of any substance), no matter how uncouth,
and upon the forehead of which in angelical letters one writes a
chosen name--in your case the name Lisalda--I shall then conjure for
you in a strong circle.  You will clinch the bargain with my master
in person by striking hands with him.  And his claw will leave you
for your lifetime branded with his private brand.  This done he will
breathe upon the golem.  Obedient to the breath of life it starts (to
all outward appearance) into a perfect double of the person in whose
name it may have been inscribed.  In your case the name Lisalda.  Nor
will you yourself be able to tell whether Lisalda or the devil's coin
stands before you.  You will forgive my suggesting that in some
respects you might be better off with the ideal than the real, since
it starts in life (like a child) with a clear slate and you may teach
it in what sort you will."

"How now!  Do you libel my love?"

"I speak but as a man of the world and to some extent of the next
world also.  However, to resume our ways and means.  My Prince having
bestowed upon the golem such life as it is only his and God's to
give, I then smuggle the innocent know-nothing into the prison of
your Lisalda and carry off Lisalda in exchange.  Then to horse and
hey for love and leisure--on the further side of the Bidassoa; but
the cheat will never be discovered, and in fine and in finish the
golem will run to ash like so many of her betters."

"Is there no other way?"

"There is no other way.  Bethink yourself.  The offer is there to
take it or leave it.  Shake hands with my Master or shake your fist
at him.  Be one of us or one of her executioners."

"I cannot boggle long at that.  Death of my soul!  Have with you then
Aquelarre and let fruition crowd the heels of haste."

"There is yet one thing that you may boggle at.  You have ratified
the bargain with my Master but not the fee of my procuracy.  You
cannot do anything without me and I cannot do anything without that
Ring which you wear upon your finger as my handsel."

"Your fee is a fleabite to your Master's.  The ring I wear is yours
but not as earnest money.  I pass it over to you only after service
rendered.  And now lead on to this golem you speak of."

"Be it as you say.  The preliminaries being all settled between the
high contracting parties, I usher you to the actual presence of my
principal."

As he thus concluded the negotiation a covetous light (like to
nothing in heaven or earth) shot through the lashes of the devil's
attorney.  He stood at last upon the brink of attainment of that Ring
so thirstily craved.  With an imperious gesture he summoned the
sailor to follow him and turned off behind the staircase.  Directly
the sorcerer's back was turned Ataurresagasti could not forbear a
broad grin.  He had outwitted (at any rate he thought so) both the
infernal furious spirit and his attorney.  And first as to the
latter.  The fact was that the only ring worn by the sailor himself,
and pledged to Aquelarre by the letter of the bond, was a tawdry hoop
of silver.  The Ring that contained the familiar had never left the
dead man's hand.  How then had the inn-keeper imagined otherwise?
Simply because the sailor, with a view to better protection, had
drawn up his right arm within his sleeve and held the Hand of Glory
by the wrist in such a position as to appear his own.  The Ring which
thus appeared to adorn the sailor's little finger was in reality
still upon that of its architect.  And, therefore, it was still
unpawned to Aquelarre.  But this was not the only or even the first
fruits of the trick which Ataurresagasti (or his good angel) had set
in motion.  As he gathered from the sorcerer that the devil would
imprint his private mark upon him by means of a grip of hands,
Ataurresagasti (or, again, his good angel) jumped at once to the
obvious deduction that by going through with the same sleight of
hand, Beelzebub would come claw to claw with only the dead Cabalist
and earn no soul but his.

Earn no Soul but his, which was undoubtedly already long-earned and
already in heats of hell.  Thus, by a single piece of hugger-mugger,
the buccaneer hoped to go free with his sweetheart and do no harm to
anyone.  Or, at any rate, to anyone that stood within the reach of
harm, the only sufferers being the devil and his lost.  How the
whirligig of time brought round its revenges the sequel of this story
will show.  Now that the reader is conversant with what was passing
through the mind of the sailor we must return to where we left him at
the back of the staircase.  Aquelarre, stooping down, by some device
which the sailor did not fathom, raised one of the stone slabs of the
flooring from its place.  This impromptu trap-door disclosed a flight
of steps that fell down into absolute darkness.  A motion from the
landlord and Ataurresagasti fearlessly stalked down them to some
distance, where he stopped until he had seen his confederate also
enter.  Aquelarre drew down the trap-door after him.  This last
action was fatal, of course, to such light as had previously washed
the upper part of the stairs.  All was now equal night.  Yet the
buccaneer continued his descent.  The steps seemed endless.  At last
he stopped.  He listened.  To his surprise and horror no footfall
sounded above.  What had become of Aquelarre?  The sailor suspected
some deception put upon him.  He retraced his steps as quickly as was
possible under the difficult circumstances of the ascent.  That he
reached the top was made apparent to him by the crash of his head
against the stone.  He reeled and all but fell.  What had become of
Aquelarre?  Recovering himself he tried with all his might to obtain
egress but not unnaturally without avail.  He mopped his brow and
tried to think.  Escape being impossible in this direction he decided
to recommence the descent; come what might he could be no worse off
than where he was even if he went down, down, down to the earth's
centre.  He tried to persuade himself that worse things happen at
sea, but his heart of hearts nailed the lie.  Down, down, down!  He
counted (as he thought) a thousand steps but not without dizzy
doubts.  And then he lost all count--all doubt--all but damned
certainty.  He had never been sick at sea but now--and then suddenly
he staggered against some obstacle.  It yielded.  It was a door.
Firelight danced in his eyes.  He rolled into a corner and stood up
against a wall.  He was in an underground chamber and before him was
Aquelarre.  How the devil's advocate had got there before him who can
tell?  Doubtless in some devil's way.  Aquelarre made no remark upon
the sailor's entrance nor ceased from his work of drawing (on the
ground) circle within circle, distant from one another about a
hand's-breadth.  The sailor rubbed his eyes and looked about him.
The space (at one end of the vault) reserved for the circles was
scrupulously clean, as well it might be, since one speck of pollution
would have nullified their every virtue.  The rest of the subterrane
was a hotchpotch of horrors--the disjecta membra of a magical
laboratory scattered broadcast over every inch of the floor.  Here
were receptacles of unsightly shapes, crucible and cucurbit, alembic
and aludel.  Here were the spoils of charnel-house and churchyard,
ear and eye, excrement and entrail.  Here squat phials bore charges
of price, poison and philtre, lac virginis, and elixir vitae.  In one
corner gibbered a gigantic skeleton.  In another lay a Jacob's Staff
and a Pentacle of Solomon.  In a third heaped up musty vellums,
presumably occult; and of these last Ataurresagasti picked up one,
and was about to open it at random, when Aquelarre turned suddenly
white, and fetched a roar so sudden that the startled sailor dropped
it as if it burnt him.  The magician (who had just finished
inscribing his series of circles) came forward with a brow of night.
His fist was clenched as if to strike.  But after glaring some
moments at the buccaneer, he twisted his nails out of his palm again
where they left four bleeding scars.  He calmed down still farther
before he could speak.

"Madman let this teach you never more to tamper with such wild-fire
as a magic book.  There are spells on every page of that volume which
(had you exposed even one of them to the air) would have dissolved us
both into death and hell.  It is easy to see that this is your maiden
bout as sidesman to an exorcist.  Were you an ordinary neophyte, even
your failure to play Paul Pry, would have quenched you the light of
day.  But take heart of grace and fear nothing mortal, for on your
life great issues hang.  But lest you should make another slip (and
perchance to perdition) mark well what I am now about to teach you.
And firstly to instal our golem--yonder it hangs in the fourth corner
of the vault, suspended and swinging above our heads.  You ask me why
it so suspends and swings.  I will tell you.  Look at its forehead
and you will see a name, which if you could read our angelical
letters you would find to be the name of De Lancre, of the Parliament
of Bordeaux.  De Lancre, that is the torturer of our wizardry and of
your bride, and the touchwood of a thousand fires that depopulate
Labourt.  But his turn shall yet be served.  By the sympathy which I
have established between this mannikin and him (by only the sealing
of it with his name) I have got into my hands more power over his
body than your untortured fancy would conceive.  I could even bring
his life to a close at this very second, by piercing his heart with a
pin.  But at the moment I am content by this swinging between earth
and sky (as they say swings Mahomet's coffin) to afflict him with
horrors, to which death were meat and drink,--to afflict him with
dizziness, vertigo, and whirlpool, with falling sickness and
ceaseless belching, yea, to the innermost membrane of his soul.  But
that your need of this lay figure is greater than his, he should
sleep never a wink to-night.  Nay, not all the drowsy drinks of the
Herbal should gum his eyelids up.  But behold I release him and lean
him against this wall, and erase his name with my finger.  'Tis done,
and De Lancre at the very instant far away is restored to perfect
health.  Some charlatan will doubtless get the credit for a cure."

He broke into a peal of horrible laughter.  But the sailor scarcely
heeded.  He was gazing at the figure which he understood was to be
transformed with a blasphemous breath into an exact simulacrum of his
betrothed.  A greater difference than at present existed between the
two could scarcely be imagined.  Lisalda was--well we will not
attempt the impossible task of reproducing a lover's raptures.  The
golem was a rude lump of modelling wax with five projections,
occupying respectively such parts of the main body as suggested that
they were meant for its legs, arms, and head.  The last distinguished
itself from the four limbs by several additional clues to its
identity.  It had eyes indicated by a couple of stones.  It had ears,
or, at any rate, handles, on either side, and a third in front for
nose.  It had a mouth which left even more to the imagination, since
its hieroglyphic was a herring bone.  Lastly, it was thatched
(somewhat scantily, it must be confessed), with what appeared to be
the bristles of a hog.  With a view no doubt to decency, the devil's
attorney tied a rag about its middle.  Another about its right arm he
explained as representing the prison bandages which swathed the
tortured limb of the real Lisalda.  Finally, he inscribed upon its
brow a name, and declared it to be complete.  And now for a lesson in
ceremonial magic.  Seven circles Aquelarre had compassed, waxing
smaller and smaller within each other.  In the innermost (which is
where the two daring exorcists should stand) the devil's advocate
placed a pan of coals, the same that had hitherto only given light to
the room, but of which the real use and purpose was suffumigation.
This suffumigation was that part of the work which was to fall to the
lot of Ataurresagasti.  For this the landlord placed beside the pan
various packets of perfumes each numbered in the order with which
they were to feed the flames.  And woe unto the exorcists, if in the
flurry of even one second Ataurresagasti changed the order of
succession.  They had better have never been born!  And now Aquelarre
girt him with his magic sword and hung a pentacle about his neck.
The time had come to pass the series of circles.

"Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou
standest is holy ground."

Ataurresagasti assimilated himself to the guise of his companion.  He
entered the inmost circle.  Aquelarre took once more his crayon and
inserted within each circle (one and all being yet in blank) a symbol
illegible to the sailor, but which the devil's advocate translated as
he proceeded somewhat as follows:

"The name of the hour wherein you do the work, the name of the angel
of the hour, the seal of the angel of the hour, the name of the angel
that rules the day in which you work and the names of his ministers,
the name of the present time, the names of the spirits ruling in that
part of time and their presidents, the name of the head of the sign
ruling in that time."

This done all appeared to be in order and the exorcism forthwith
commenced.  Aquelarre commanded the sailor to cast the first packet
upon the flames ("and unwrap it not lest it skin thy hand"); the
which being done the former brightness of the light burns directly a
hideous red of leaping blood and every object in the room tinges to
match.  The magician draws his sword and makes passes with it in his
right hand.  He places his left upon the pentacle on his breast and
commences in the following strain:--

"In the name of the holy, blessed, and glorious Trinity proceed we to
work in these mysteries to accomplish that which we desire.  We,
therefore, in the name aforesaid, consecrate this piece of ground for
our defence, so that no spirit whatsoever shall be able to break
these boundaries, neither be able to cause injury, nor detriment to
either of us here assembled.  But that he may be compelled to stand
before this circle and answer truly on demand, so far as it pleaseth
Him who liveth for ever and ever, and who says I am Alpha and Omega,
the beginning and the end, which is and which was, and which is to
come--the Almighty.  I am the first and the last who am living and
was dead, and, behold!  I live for ever and ever, and I have the keys
of death and hell.  Bless, O Lord, this creature of earth wherein we
stand.  Confirm, O God, thy strength in us so that neither the
adversary nor any evil thing may cause us to fail."

The chant of the magus grows shriller and shriller, till it thins
into a final continuous shriek.  And there mingles with it thunder,
and the re-echoed echo of shriek and thunder, to the splitting of ear
and brain.  And the earth rocks until there remains no longer floor
nor roof, but sometimes one was uppermost and sometimes the other,
and only the rapidity of the motion makes it possible to keep place
in the circle.  Thus, alternately, the venturous pair stood erect or
head downwards.  In this part of the ordeal, however, the sailor's
professional habit stands his friend in need; but his teeth were
twisted out of rank by clenching, to avoid a cry.  The fire (now
yellow) burns foul in the nose and hangs upon the hair in folds of
smoke.  Ceaseless lightnings lash the streaming eye.  Clothed as it
were, in those folds of smoke, there gradually appears to incorporate
itself a large, full, and gross body--sanguine and gross--in a gold
colour, with the tincture of blood; its motion is like the lightnings
of heaven; the sign of its becoming visible is that it moves the
person to sweat that calls it; the sorcerer becomes mute before the
majesty of that presence and the thunder is hushed in its breath.
There creeps a claw from out the draping clouds and steals towards
the right hand of the sailor--say the right hand of the Cabalist
rather, for it is that which the sailor clasps fearlessly to the arch
fiend's itching grip.  A second's compress--a grit of bone against
bone--a hiss, as of a branding iron, and the talon is withdrawn.  The
sailor gazes appalled for a moment at the blackening, indelible sign
manual, now seared upon the palm of the Cabalist.  His heart of
hearts sings a pean of victory over a lie palmed off upon even the
Father of lies.  The blowing of the Fiend now falls upon the golem
and a gradual inflation swells out that pitiful suggestion into full
and female form.  Eyes like orbs of night light the vault and outburn
the yellow jealousy of the brazier.  Ears like seashells, and teeth
like pearls of the sea, hair that paragons Godiva.  O God, and is
this but a counterfeit that can so kindle our sailor's senses?  But
he is recalled to gruff reality by the sight of her prison dress and
bleeding bandaged arm.  He is about to step out of the circle when a
buffet from his companion fells him like an ox to the ground,
scattering splashes of yellow flame in his fall.  The magician
indicates by signs rather than words, that the devil called up has
yet to be laid before either of the callers can venture forth with
safety.  And then Aquelarre proceeds with full strength of lung (lest
haply further risk betide) to recite the accepted form of dismissal.

"Go in peace unto your place.  Peace be between us and you.  Be you
ready to come when you are called."

Ataurresagasti awakened to his sense of duty, sacrifices yet another
packet of incense.  Blue of heaven burns the flame, and sweet the
savour that (after a struggle) overpowers its predecessor.  The
Prince of fallen pride dissolves into fulgurant reek.  Earth recovers
its footing.  The fire at last resumes its work-a-day tone.  Nothing
but a grateful suspicion of the incense still about the convalescent
air remains to betray what manner of work has been done.  And now
with assurance the exorcists may leave their circle.  Aquelarre
cannot forbear to bring home to his sidesman the gravity of that
false step he nearly made.

"Should your stars ever fate you again to dally with infernal fire,
be never tempted to leave your circle until the spirit is dismissed;
nay, even when the spirit refuses to appear at your call you must
still formally dismiss him according to the rules of art, lest haply
he be actually present (though to you invisible) with intent to pluck
your soul."

"'Tis a lesson I shall never need to learn again."

"But now to the next step in our progress.  From the opposite end of
this vault to that by which you entered there is a subway to the
condemned cell.  Many a time and oft has this been useful to me
before, for you need not plume yourself the first that has
self-sacrificed upon the altar of his love.  Parent or child--lover
or spouse--have employed me as middleman over and over again.  My
memory teems triumphant with case after case where the burners,
unknowingly have burnt but the shadow of a witch.  And so shall it be
again.  I take the golem with me and rejoin you with your prize."

He touched a spring in the opposite wall which threw open the
indicated door.  The bottom of a flight of steps appeared, the
pendant of that which the sailor had descended.  Aquelarre took the
apparently bewildered golem by the hand and with her disappeared.
The door closed with a vicious snap.  The sailor was left alone in a
chamber hermetically sealed and Heaven knows how far beneath the
foundation of the tavern of the Four Cross Roads.  There were none of
mortal kind around save bones of unshriven suicides who dreamed of
judgment and woke up shrieking that they made the blood of youth run
cold to hear them.  These were his brothers in exile.  He was fain to
shout aloud, that corner to re-echoing corner of the vault might make
him colloquy.  But was this jangled terror his that they groaned into
his ears?  Was this the note to which the lung of storm gave
precedence in happier days upon the sea?  How long this weird
conversation lasted the sailor never knew.  At length his straining
ear caught the footfall which he had dared so much to hear again.  To
snatch Lisalda into his arms as she entered, to feel that she yielded
to his embrace was breath and blood to our hero.  But the devil's
attorney touched him on the shoulder.  He pointed sternly to the
other door that led again to the inn.  In Indian file (there was room
for but one on a step) all three commenced the ascent.  How quickly
it sped compared with that well remembered descent.  But the sailor
found time to hide in his waistband the Cabalist's branded hand.
When they reached their wonted level Aquelarre closed the trap, and
throwing open the door of the street disclosed (he did not do things
by halves) a fully caparisoned horse waiting outside.  His whole face
brightened into a smile of supreme content with himself and (for the
nonce) all the world.  His work was done.  He held out his hand for
the payment.  The sailor did not smile.  He took the silver ring
ostentatiously from his little finger and placed it upon that of the
devil's attorney.  The face of Aquelarre underwent a very sudden
change.

"Gates and gulfs of Hell!  Do you realise with whom it is you jest?"

"Jest do you say?  It is sober, serious, earnest."

"What the devil's name!  You pledged me the ring you wear on your
finger."

"I pledged it to you and I have passed it you--the only ring I ever
wore--but if you refer to the Ring of the demon, that has never left
the dead man's hand since for its sake you left him dead."

Before Aquelarre could recover from his stupefaction at this
thunderbolt, Ataurresagasti swept Lisalda into the crupper and sprang
to the saddle in front of her.  And then loose rein and bloody heel,
they dashed down one of the cross roads from which the tavern derived
its name.  Ride, ride, ride.  Dark though the way and cold the wind,
Ataurresagasti rolls a name upon his tongue that lights the path and
warms the ambient air.  Lisalda!  Lisalda!  Lisalda!  Shock snowy
polls of Pyrenean hills start up behind the haze.  The lights of
Behobia star the drift.  Its cobbles fly to sparks beneath the
horse's hoofs.  The river cuts athwart the highway; the bridge is
reached.  Another stride and the _fleur de lys_ is left behind for
good.  A customs officer leaps out of his box and seizes the horse's
head; he is dragged several yards along the track.  A torrent of
imprecations in Basque, French and Spanish.  Ataurresagasti pulls his
mount back on to its haunches.  The officer is ultimately convinced
that he is no smuggler, and relinquishes somewhat charily his prey;
Ataurresagasti winds gently along the bank.  When beyond the range of
pry or spy he dismounted and swung Lisalda to the ground.  Once in
his arms he did not readily let her go but showered kiss after kiss.
The horse unheeded proceeded to explore on his own account and soon
was lost to sight.  Ataurresagasti showered kiss after kiss upon her
wounded arm, her neck, her mouth, her eyes, her brow; but what is
this--his lips are blistered in contact with the hair that shades
that brow; he pushes the hair aside.  A name in fiery angelical
characters is flaring there.  Horror of horrors, 'tis the golem!  In
his far off tavern Aquelarre is laughing in his sleeve.
Ataurresagasti stands aghast.  The creature regards him with puzzled
eyes.  She does not understand this sudden change; her mouth smiles
and the first word she has ever uttered crosses her lips.  It is her
own name picked up, parrot-like from the iteration of the sailor.  It
had a different effect from what the poor thing expected.

"Lisalda!"

His cry of agony jarred her dulcet note.  Every cord of his body was
strung in an instant to one thought.  To destroy this soulless
creature--to annihilate--to erase her--to have her from God's earth.
He pounced upon her.  But the poor pretty monster seemed to feel by
instinct that this was another guess embrace from the first ardent
one.  And instinctively she wrestled with him.  It was an awful
unheard-of bout.  Not a syllable was spoken, nor a cry.  The blood
now streamed like rain from her wounded arm.  They slipped in the
puddling soil.  And Ataurresagasti could not get rid of the horrible
idea that it was, after all, the real Lisalda that he was wiping out
of life.  Bit by bit, and one by one he obliterated the cursed
characters.  And bit by bit as the execution proceeded a horrible
change came over her.  Her limbs grew lean and spidery that she
twisted about him.  Her eyes grew dull and fishy.  Her hair fell out
by handfuls.  She was dying letter meal.  At length he forced her to
his feet still clinging to his knees.  The last figure of the
angelical name disappeared beneath his thumb.  Before him there lay
no longer She but It.  No longer a Lisalda, but a battered waxen doll
with two pebbles and a herring-bone clapped on to one side of its
head to distinguish front from back.  Laughable--yes, perhaps--but
Ataurresagasti did not laugh.  He fell upon his face and wept.
Something like an hour passed before he rose.  Then drawing his
hanger, and selecting the greenest spot, he proceeded to dig a grave.
This he lined with masses of such wild flowers as he could find, and
then reverently disposed the golem upon them.  He shovelled back the
earth upon the body, as he could not help but call it.  He stamped it
down obliterating all traces of his handiwork.  He had said no
prayer, but prayers crowded into his mind.  He seemed in his tangled
consciousness to have buried the real Lisalda, and with her all his
love.  He drew towards the river and stared into its inscrutable
depths, turning over in his mind the pro and con as touching suicide.
But after mature deliberation he decided, in preference, to return to
that officer at Behobia, and give himself up for wife murder.  He
took a gloomy pleasure in this idea, and might even have carried it
through.  But suddenly a mocking peal of laughter--fiendish
laughter--struck, as he thought, familiarly on his ears.  He rubbed
his eyes and looked across the river.  On the French side of the
boundary stream, there stood facing him the devil's attorney, hand in
hand with what the now crazed sailor took for a golem.  The existence
in the world of a real Lisalda never occurred to his wandering wits.
Aquelarre knew full well what had transpired.  The sight of the
discomfiture of his rival seemed balsam to his wounded self-esteem.
Nor did he evidently as yet despair of making all things square.  He
addressed Ataurresagasti at first with real or assumed jocularity.

"Hola? master gaff topsail, and have you found the truth of what I
once told you, that two can play in a game of brag?  Come, we are
surely quits by this time.  Let bygones be bygones, and let us adjust
our contra accounts.  You hold on your side what is of value to me,
and I on my side what is of value to you.  Exchange is no robbery.
Cast me the Ring across the stream, and Lisalda shall join you at
Behobia."

"Lisalda, do you say?  And do you really think to befool me with a
golem, in the making of which I myself had a hand?  Lisalda, I know,
is dead.  By this hand she died, and I would cut it from me were it
not that the bloody crust on it is the only relic of her that remains
to me."

"Madman, you rave!  Oh this I never dreamed of, that his reason
should wander so untimely.  Pull yourself together, man.  'Tis no
golem that stands beside me.  'Tis your own Lisalda,--your cutest
medicine--could I but get you to take it.  Oh, be but for an hour
sane, and then put eternity out of joint if you will!  Again I say,
the Ring across the stream, and take Lisalda in exchange; that turns
the scale against your immortal soul!"

"Never waste your lies on me, man!  'Tis nothing but a golem that you
seek to palm off upon me.  Lisalda, I know too well, is dead,--by the
token that these same impious hands that snatched her into darkness
have just smothered her into a heathen grave.  I had thought to have
bedded her in other guise, but it seems my fondest star had never
appraised me as so worthy.  Take away your golem, and I shall keep
the devil's autograph."

"Perdition be your speed!  This passes patience.  All is indeed at an
end between us.  All save my vengeance.  For I will tell you now a
secret that shall open your eyes to the imminent deadly breach
between us.  This Lisalda (whose name you would add to the long list
already tattooed upon your hairy bosom) has not, does not, nor will
ever love any other but myself.  Sacristan at my Sabbaths from her
earliest years--my living altar at the Black Mass--she is more to me
than all your Ring.  Nay the very plot and plan for conveying that
Ring from its rightful owner was conceived and carried out by her.
For that she undertook a special trip to the New World; for that she
donned the disguise in which she wormed herself into the confidence
of the Cabalist, and ultimately persuaded him to visit me at the Four
Cross Roads.  Unfortunately (you gentleman swab) you took it into
your cursed costard to see further into a millstone than other
people.  We tried to make account of your sea-dogged persistency by
drugging your nightcap with a view to palm you off upon justice (save
the mark) as the murderer of the Cabalist.  But again, through your
ferreting foresight (darkened be your eyes), you tripped upon the
tragedy in the worst possible moment (trust you for that), and even
blundered into possession of the Ring.  And now keep your ill-gotten
gear, and Aquelarre for the first time in life is content to be
bought and sold."

He broke off abruptly as if unable to contain himself, and throwing
himself upon the girl with ferocious ardour he covered all her face
with kisses.  Kisses that absolutely foamed at the mouth.  Kisses
which she with even greater abandonment returned.  Ataurresagasti
caught fire at the sight (as mayhap it was intended with devilish
cunning that he should) and cried out across the stream, every muscle
of his face quivering with jealousy.

"This is the stroke that beggars fate!  All is indeed at an end
between us!  Bought and sold!  Ataurresagasti is bought and sold!
But I can touch you in what (in spite of all you say) I know is still
a raw.  The devil bless you, and thus to the devil with demon and
ring!"

"Stop, stop, stop!  'Tis no hand of the Cabalist upon which the ring
sparkles but the hand of his murderess whom you love!  Through you in
your ignorance it was branded with the brand of Beelzebub, and if you
relinquish it her soul will be struck from her!"

He crowded the words together incredibly in his eagerness, but yet he
was too late.  The Hand of Glory now acknowledged to be hand of
Lisalda, had already left the sailor's touch.  It flew through the
air and as it flew, shot a double lightning of great joy.  For the
Demon (so long imprisoned within the crystal) knew at length that his
appointed hour was come.  Too late, the sailor grasped the stupendous
revelation of Aquelarre.  Too late, he recognised Lisalda in the
supposed golem, and in Lisalda the murderess, whose shorn hand he had
so long carried about him.  The moment that he hurled it violently
from him a startling change took place in the girl.  Her garments
became shaggy hair.  Her glorious eyes narrow and slanting.  Her
teeth protruded at great length and yellow.  Name of Mercy!  This was
then that large and loathly wolf (a werewolf as he now astounded saw)
that had scattered the life of the Cabalist.  The huge incredible
beast (with a mournful howl that curdled the sailor to the marrow)
sprang desperately after the brand which bound her soul.  But being
short of one paw she failed to arrest it.  The Hand of Glory crashed
down upon the water with an impact that shivered its crystal setting.
It burst with a flame and smoke, and a hellish explosion with which
mingled the dying shriek of the werewolf.  With a roar that made rock
the whole Pyrenean chain, the demon thus set free had darted upon
her!  He shot up as it seemed through her very body in a column like
a waterspout that seemed to pierce the skies.  She was instantly
riven into a million shreds and sprinkled in a red rain as far as eye
could reach over the length and breadth of the stream.




THE RABBI LION.

The clock of the Jewish quarter of Prague moves in the opposite
direction to its brethren of the Christian town, yet each in its own
way arrives second by second at the same inexorable facts of time.

It was an hour short of midnight by both baptised and unbaptised
reckoning--a misty rain was falling and mingled with the mist that
rose from the river.  Black obscure clouds veiled the face of the
moon.  Thunder roared at intervals.  A flash of lightning that lifted
momentarily the edge of the darkness revealed nothing kindlier than a
gibbet.  Dead bones that once had lived were creaking in its chains.
The flesh had taken wing, the fowls of the air knew whither.  Another
flash showed a living man who crouched smothered up in a cloak at the
foot of the unsightly tree.  This unhappy outlaw if he dared seek no
choicer shelter was, perhaps, even more to be pitied than his brother
above.  Whatever his reason, he made no motion in the direction of a
light that shone afar and presaged warmth and shelter.

It was an inn.  Its occupants concern us.  They consisted of a
company of half-a-dozen youths that had palpably imbibed both long
and deep.  Their carouse, however, was drawing to an end.  The
landlord hovered near cogitating over his bill, and yet with an ear
to the conversation of his guests, lest haply he might catch some
word.  In this he was unsuccessful, and no wonder.  The language they
spoke was not only foreign to the landlord, but was that one of all
others of which the angels themselves are traditionally supposed to
be ignorant.  In a word, it was Chaldee.  But how did these
youngsters come to speak in the secret language of Cabala?  The
reason is not far to seek.  They were students of the Cabala and of
magic under a Rabbi--one of the most esteemed of his time.  The
occasion they were celebrating with the flowing bowl was, indeed, no
other than the conclusion of their seven years' apprenticeship.  So
far so good.  But there was more in it than that.  There was a
death's head at their feast.  Something that necessitated for its
discussion their gift of tongues, something that took the heat from
food and made the red wine show white through their skins.  Upon
entering their course they had set their hands in blood to the
customary indentures of the magical schools of that period.  After
seven years (so the bond provided) only five of the pupils were to
leave their Alma Mater their occult education complete; the sixth was
forfeit to the devil, his due for acquiescence and assistance in
their studies.  A point on which the academies differed was the
method of selecting among the apprentices which was to suffer as
damned soul.  Some held a kind of glorified race in which the runner
that last attained the winning-post was torn asunder by the fiend.
But the Rabbi who conducted the reading party in which we are
interested had laughed at a decision made on physical grounds.  The
graduates should be chosen (he thought) not for fleetness of foot,
but for the foremost quality of their sorcery.  The scapegoat should
similarly be thrown out not for unsoundness of wind or limb, but for
the inadequate result of Black Art cramming.  Logical enough all
this.  There remained but to discriminate between the competitors.
To do this the Rabbi had decided that on the morrow of the night when
our story opens he would hold a solemn incantation.  It would be the
first serious function of which the neophytes could boast.  Their
seven years' candidacy had been occupied with theory and had never
ventured on practice.  They would now find out the difference between
knowing how to raise the devil and doing it.  A difference which is
even greater in this particular case than between word and deed in
other arts and sciences.  The idea of the Rabbi was that beginning
gradually the terror should be accumulated ever thicker and faster
until it reached a point where one of the men would break.  This then
would be the victim to be forced instantly from his circle and
snatched soul from body by the enemy.

The reader is now cognizant of the mysterious business that fluttered
these young hearts.  We may add that their use of a dead language had
another source besides the need for secrecy.  No two of these
ill-fated ones were natives of the same country, no two of them spoke
a common speech.  Such was the cosmopolitan fame of the Rabbi at
whose feet they sat that he could pick his lads from Arctica to
Cancer.

We have already remarked that the supper drew to an end.  The six had
tried their manfullest to drown care, but they had found it
impossible to get rightly drunk in the shadow of Death and of Hell.
With despair for their toastmaster they drank every time the health
of five, and thought the more that they spoke no word of the eternal
ruin of the sixth.  The roofless wretch outside was less to be pitied
than these.  They had discussed without hope every loophole of escape
and hopeless rejected all.  There was nothing for it now but to
return home.  The Rabbi would never have allowed them out so late on
any less momentous eve, but he had no fear of losing them now they
had run out their course of lessons.  He had done his part, they had
received their consideration, trust him to look after his own that
keeps the tally of the damned.

The reckoning had been adjusted to the satisfaction of the landlord,
by the chairman of the feast.  That youth (who was apparently a
Bohemian by birth) now led his companions out of the house which some
one of them was never to re-enter.  And each turned back to look at
it uncertain to what tune beggarly Fortune next might dance.  They
proceeded in the direction of the gallows we have already alluded to.
Rain was still falling.  The outlaw had disappeared, but will turn up
later in our path.  As they approached the grisly standard even the
seasoned nerves of the sorcerers were troubled at the sight of its
charge.  They would have turned aside but for the Bohemian, who
sturdily harangued them on their cowardice.

"The Devil walk arm in arm with you!  Is this the way you stand to
your guns at the sight of a gutted envelope--of a cast peascod--you
that are due in but a few hours' space to outfront the root of all
evil!  I tell you the pit is digging deep for him that shows such
favour then.  But my liver is of another colour.  What, fear a
sloughed garment, and more rags than ribbons at that!  Why I have
only to set my hand to it"----

The incident ended in a manner entirely unforeseen.  The Bohemian had
barely touched the corpse when it dropped upon his shoulders.  At
this the other sorcerers shod with fear incontinently fled.  The
Bohemian stood his ground for only a moment.  It had been in his mind
that the thing would fall to pieces, but when he felt a burning
breath, and the bony arms closing round his throat his brave soul
shrunk like the kernel of a nut, and rattled against his sides.  With
the horrible revenant ever tightening its grasp the Bohemian started
to flee.  In doing this he followed in the footsteps of his
companions, who had made their way back to the tavern.  The landlord
was in the act of putting up his shutters when his late guests
tumultuously helter-skeltered to his door, and shrieked for immediate
rations of strong waters.  Nothing loath he planted them again at his
tables and exchanged their solids for his fluids.  At this juncture
the Bohemian appeared, alone, but sweating to the very palms.  He
steadied himself against the wall and drank off the landlord's
proffer at a gulp.

"Your health!" cried out a mocking voice from the very midst of the
Convives.

The Bohemian dropped his glass with a crash that sowed its fragments
wide.  There was a stranger sitting in the midst of their company,
and drinking as if one of themselves; no one had seen him enter.  The
host appeared as much at a loss as they were.  But the unknown being
obviously man of mortal mould the Bohemian soon recovered his wits.
He challenged the unbidden guest.

"Who are you?  And why do you drink to me?"

The stranger rose to his full height, which was more than common
tall.  We repeat that none of those present knew him; but to continue
our practice of dealing fairly with the reader we identify him with
the outlaw with whom we commenced our story huddled up at the feet of
justice.  This understood, we record the stranger's speech:--

"Walls have ears, and if you would know me you must breathe the outer
air.  As to my drinking of your health, between man and man, do you
not look as if you needed it?"

The obvious truth of this remark was only fuel to the Bohemian's
fire.  The more anxious on that account to know who the mysterious
one was, he signed to his companions to come outside.  The rain had
now ceased.  As they retraced--not without trepidation--the path they
had so hastily left, they noticed that the gibbet was again occupied,
but no one dared to ask the Bohemian how he had got rid of his
unwelcome visitant.  It was the stranger who renewed the conversation
by abruptly mentioning his name.

"I am Iron Haquin!"

His hearers started.  They had expected nothing like this.  It was a
name proscribed, and upon which a heavy price was set.  It was the
name of the comrade (still at large)--of him that shook a leg on the
gallows.  But Iron Haquin knew that these men were nothing to be
feared.  The affair of the dead bandit had given them their fill--of
thief-taking, at any rate--for that one night.  The living might
safely laugh them out of countenance about that exploit.  He
addressed himself accordingly to the Bohemian.

"What! frightened with the rattling of bones that ride the gale?
Would have me believe that the unrepentant thief descended from the
cross?  A sorrow on your fears!  Take such tales to your confessor,
for I'll have none of them, be sure!  You had looked too long upon
the jewelled wine, and that's the long and the short of it.  I'll
even touch hands with my dead mate myself, just to show you how
unfounded your stampede.  You will see no windfall vouchsafed to me,
shake I never so shrewdly the tree."

He suited the action to the word and the event proved him right.  The
sorcerers would have turned tail at half a suspicion.  But never a
miracle occurred this time.  The corpse continued to hug its chains.
The Bohemian waxed wilder and still more wild, but he did not cease
to listen to Iron Haquin.

"Fear has no share in life of mine--death has been all too long my
fellow--familiarity breeds contempt.  I believe I could make the
Devil's pulse jump could I only obtain an interview.  That, at any
rate, is the one thing left that might fathom the resources of my
heart.  I saved the life of a Hebrew once, who, in return, gave me
lessons in magic.  I never worked so hard in my life.  I looked to
shortly kiss the mouth of hell, but, as ill luck would have it, I
quarrelled with my Rabbi, and never found a chance."

The Bohemian could scarcely help showing his incredulity, nor did he
care much for the stranger's feelings.

"What possible cause of quarrel could you have with a man whose life
you saved?"

"Cause enough for anything and everything since he introduced me to
his betrothed and I fell in love with her.  He poisoned her mind
against me, and on a chance cast me into a well.  The water, however,
was sufficient to break my fall, and I escaped after starving many
days.  It was twenty years ago, but I have never been able to forget
it.  He shall yet curse the mother that bore him.  I tell you all
this frankly as I told you my name, because I know that you are not
what you seem!"

The Bohemian followed this relation, and chewed the cud of it.  An
idea had occurred to him fraught with unholy joy.  He saw (as he
thought) how he could achieve his own salvation at one stroke with
the death of the intruder.  How it worked out we shall see in the
sequel.  This is how the Bohemian set it going.

"What do you mean by saying that we are not what we seem?"

"Because, although your outer man is clad in this world's uniform,
your hearts are of the livery colours of hell; you are students of
sorcery, and no later than to-morrow you are to conjure in your
strength.  Do I not read you rightly?"

The Bohemian stared in something very much like stupor.  Where on
earth could the man have got his information?  It sealed his death
warrant, in any event.  He knew too much for sure!  The Bohemian, by
this time, had matured his plans, which he now expressed in words.

"Whatever your source of knowledge you have hit us off correctly, I
admit; nor can we deny hospitality to such a man.  We are within (as
you say) a few hours of a magical ceremony.  If you are so anxious as
you pretend to face such odds I will go so far as to yield my place
to you."

For the life of him the Bohemian could not help something of a smile
as he made this handsome offer.  He was ignorant still whether the
bandit was aware of the exceptional nature of this incantation.  His
reply would decide that point.  If he knew the rules of the
approaching contest he would certainly refuse.  If he did not, he
could hardly maintain his fame without becoming a substitute for the
Bohemian.  To do him justice, Iron Haquin did not hesitate for a
moment.

"Your hand upon the bargain, man, and never fear but I shall do you
credit.  Since the beginning of recorded time there shall have been
no such conjuration.  We will quench the light of adverse stars.
Hell's idiom has no word for what we shall do."

Still wearing the same sardonic grin, the Bohemian broke in upon this
enthusiasm.  His department was the practical.

"Permit me to draw your attention to the fact that we have been
drifting slowly on and shall soon have reached the Rabbi's house.  It
befits us, therefore, to arrange our order of business.  It may not
have occurred to you that the Rabbi must know nothing about this.  If
he did he might possibly veto the affair.  But there will be no
difficulty in circumventing him.  The house is built square around a
central court where the conjuration will take place in open air.  You
will enter with us muffled in your cloak, and your presence will not
be detected among so many; you will conceal yourself under the
staircase while the Rabbi takes us to our bedrooms, which are the
topmost of the house.  The old gentleman locks us in all night, for
we are strictly looked after, I can assure you.  When we are released
(after a brief slumber) it will still be dark, and if I slip into
your hiding-place and you assume my authority I do not see why the
Rabbi should be the wiser.  As to the risk you run that is, of
course, more your affair than mine.  I shall pray for you from my
coign of vantage if I can remember any but backward prayers.  But
now, confess, are you not moved at length with fear?"

"Nay, by horn and hoof!  I shall weather the devil as I have got the
weather of death, and be hail-fellow-well-met with both!  At the
worst a man can die but once--I had rather thus than a prod and a sod
like so many that I have sent to their account.  And, to end all, is
this your destination?  Why, it is the house of Rabbi Lion!"

"The Rabbi Lion is our teacher."

The Bohemian was only too glad that the matter was thus settled.  His
fears for himself, and of the other, were disposed of in one
ingenious coup.  The remaining five sorcerers had followed the
negotiations with mixed admiration and envy.  From them no
remonstrance was to be expected, quite the contrary, since they
believed and hoped that the bandit as a novice in magical matters
would be the one to pay penalty to the fiend.  They had yet to find
out that their dupe had more knowledge than they bargained for.
Meanwhile the Bohemian has knocked at the door.  From within there
comes a clangour of bolt and bars.  The door is opened, and the Rabbi
appears.  His pupils enter in as much of a hustle as possible,
allowing Iron Haquin to conceal himself as arranged.  The students
file upstairs to be disposed of by their tutor, who will presently
return alone.

During this absence of the Rabbi, Iron Haquin took by the forelock
the opportunity of looking around.  The courtyard itself was bare,
the lofty walls of the house built it in on all four sides.  Under
the roof half-a-dozen windows seemed to indicate the garrets of as
many students.  On the level of the ground there was nothing but two
doors to break the monotonous courses of stone.  One of these massive
portals was that of the street through which Iron Haquin had entered.
The other, which faced it on the opposite side, had been left ajar by
the Rabbi.  It was of a certainty the passage way to his sanctum.
The bandit approached it and looked through.  A mighty chamber lay
behind.  The light which streamed from it into the courtyard was
engendered by a central lamp, one of that sort which are
traditionally reputed to burn with an everlasting flame; from the
ceiling hung stuffed reptiles and other grotesques that seemed to
shiver in the current of fresh air.  Tables conveniently disposed for
work were loaded with books and manuscripts; every available niche
and nook was piled with tools of necromancy that the bandit had no
time to identify.  Hearing the steps of the Rabbi descending, he
slipped to his covert just in time.  The ancient Israelite re-entered
his studio and slammed the door behind him.  The wondrous light was
thus extinguished, and the courtyard plunged in darkness.  But not
for long.  The outlaw had scarcely disposed himself for sleep--better
quarters this than the gibbet's foot--when the door was again thrown
wide.  He looked in the expectation of seeing once more the Rabbi's
work-room; but to his utter surprise and consternation it was a
different room altogether, though indisputably the self-same door.
This time it was a lady's boudoir that was revealed, of immense size,
imperially furnished--a thousand mirrors flashing back its
chandeliers.  There was no trace of the Rabbi who had just entered
that very door, instead, a beautiful girl of about twenty summers
glided out to the cooling breeze.  Had it not been for her Iron
Haquin would have been dumbfounded at the inexplicable shift of
rooms.  But the moment he set eyes on her so much greater a surprise
beset him that it drove all other out of mind.

It was the woman of whom he had spoken to the Bohemian--the woman who
had cut friendship, and all but wrought his death--the woman whom
still he loved.  He strode forth without a second thought.

"It is her very self!" he cried.

The girl smiled at him as in recognition.  Not the least surprise did
she show at this strange meeting.  She called him by his name.

"Iron Haquin!"

"You know me after all these years?"

"Who better among men should I know after all that passed between us?
And did you not first know me?"

"That is not the same thing.  I am twenty years older, but you--I can
hardly believe my eyes--are the girl of twenty years ago.  Has time,
too, been fooled by those eyes of yours which I have often said would
split a lover's coffin?"

"Believe me, my friend, Time's ravages are here as surely as that you
will never see them.  It is your love now, as ever, that blinds your
eyes and drapes a faded woman in your poetry.  When I am dead, and my
body an ordinary for worms, you will see me still in fancy's eye just
the girl you see me now.  And by the same token you, that speak of
being twenty years older, are in my eyes the brave and innocent boy
whose lips were once my food."

"Then you loved me all the time, after all?"

"At that age, what did I know of love--or loathing?"

"But the Rabbi?"

"He is old," she cried, "past passion.  Ah, Haquin, you would not
know him now!"

"I cannot make it out that you are still sweet and twenty.  Here is a
waist would warm the arm of death!  You are, if anything, lovelier,
transfigured, haloed.  You would hurry the pace of a star!  Tell me
true now, is it not some elixir of the Rabbi's that has pinnacled you
beyond the teeth of Time?"

She laughed.

"Elixir of his!  Why he would swallow it himself!  And to prove how
little I lean on him you may kill him if you will!

"An assassination!" gasped the bandit, "the man knows no sword play."

He was thinking, as he spoke, of the primitive device by which his
rival had once tried to get rid of him.

"A duel!" returned the Jewess, "for if he knows no sword play he can
measure swords with steel they forge below.  You are a tall man of
your hands when knives are stripping, but at his trade you are the
Rabbi's fool.  You will need all you know to join issue with him in
ceremonial of magic.  No later than this morning must you pit your
strength against him, for to that you were decoyed hither."

"Decoyed!  I came of my own free will, for an adventure to my mind.
The story is worth telling.  I was dying for a sensation, so I
decided to cut down a comrade and give him more decent sepulchre than
a gizzard.  I had just got his corpse in safety to the ground when I
heard a confusion of coming footsteps.  Fearing it might be noticed
that the gibbet was naked I swung myself into the chains.  I knew
from their conversation they were magical students that passed.  I
had a yearning to foregather with such once more, as I did in the
days of my youth.  A practical joke gave me the opportunity, and
Heaven be praised for the good hap!"

Iron Haquin was about to improve the occasion, but, at this
interesting juncture, a howl of rage discharged through the upper
air.  It came from the head of the Bohemian thrust out of his window.
The Jewess snatched up the two hands of her lover and pressed them to
her fervid lips.  Almost before he was aware of it she had retreated
to her bower, and closed the door behind her.  At the same moment the
Bohemian, having wriggled through his window, leaped headlong into
the courtyard.  He came down unskilfully.  Iron Haquin thought he
heard his leg go.  He lay there groaning, and then burst into
invective against the outlaw.

"The devil rough-ride you that have seen, so close, a dream I only
sighted from afar.  Bestride me the succubus, if I would have brought
you hither had I known she would come out to-night.  The skies are
dark as a wolf's throat, and I believed she only walked in the moon.
Full many a night I watched it shine on her silken hair--silken as
the touch of sin--long, so that when she unbound it she stumbled in
her locks.  Her silver body was fragrant as the boundaries of hell.
Death and dissolvement!  Let me get you in my grips, and you shall
never see her twice!  Help me to my feet and unfold your blade, and
then bite on what prayers you know!"

The bandit surveyed this unexpected rival with something very much
like fellow-feeling.  Then he voiced the question that was uppermost
in him.

"How old did you suppose her?"

"How old?  What do I care how old?  Old enough to be loved and to
love."

"How old did you suppose her?"

"If you insist on it, I suppose she wears some twenty years, and a
queenly garment they!"

"What!  Twenty years in your sight also!  Why I tell you this very
girl is the one of whom I spoke to you that I loved twenty years ago."

"You lie, by the Father of Lies!"

The bandit clapped his hand to hilt, and as instantly snatched it
away.

"I fight with no cripple," he hissed in his teeth, "but you shall
hear from herself God's truth!"

So saying he ran his great strength against that door.  Twice and
thrice he rammed it.  It did not flinch.  He went back a few steps to
acquire a fresh impetus.  But before he could return to the attack it
flew abruptly open, as if moved by some hidden spring.  Iron Haquin
uttered an astonished cry.  The boudoir was no longer there!

The mysterious chamber had undergone another Protean change.  To
speak more by the book, there was no longer any chamber.  The door
framed nothing but blackest darkness.  Neither ceiling, nor walls,
nor floor could be distinguished.  By this time the Bohemian had
struggled to his feet, and now hobbled in the direction of the door.

"Back, back," cried the bandit, "this is no place for you, nor for
any christened man.  The foundations of this house are laid in hell.
Back, back, as you value your infinite soul!"

"To heel," shrieked the Bohemian, and he whipped our his sword, "lest
I strike you in the place where you live!  This is my hour, and you
shall not be the only one to take her between your hands."

Before Haquin could forestall him, he had leaped the grinning door,
and disappeared in enigmatical gloom.  He was scarcely lost to sight,
when a shriek rang out, beyond conception awful.  It was his
death-note.  The whole air curdled.  Iron Haquin fell upon his knees.
What grimmest of riddles the victim solved no man shall ever know.
His body--even as his soul--was lost in that abysmal horror.  For a
while Haquin gazed at it, and saw no sign, nor heard what could be
called a sound.  It was a grave that gave up no dead.

At last, the outlaw rose and crossed himself, and closed the door
upon its secret.  Withdrawn to his corner, he set himself to think
what monstrous enigma couched behind there.  The worst of it was that
it threw still more suspicion on the woman.  But was she a woman at
all?  In his wanderings across Europe, from sea to sea, he had never
lost the Jewess out of mind.  Whenever it was possible to acquire
later news of her, he spared no pains to do so.  But the gossip,
through which alone at such a distance he could keep himself in touch
with her circumstances, was always vague, and often contradictory.
He had been circumstantially assured of her death, and as
circumstantially undeceived.  But now he began to wonder if that
report might have had foundation.  To assume that upon losing her the
Rabbi had supplied her place with a familiar culled from the females
of the pit, would explain nearly all that he had seen.  Was it woman
or nightmare that couched behind there?  He had arrived at no
decision when the door again flew open, and he stretched out his head
for the next development.  But the panoramic capacity of the door
seemed, for the time being, to have played itself out.  The view was
only the old one of the laboratory out of which the Rabbi stepped.

He was loaded with apparatus of ceremonial magic; he deposited it
upon the ground; he closed the wonder-working door.  His next step
was to trace out two enormous circles, one within the other.  The
outer one embraced the whole area of the courtyard, the other one ran
inside it at a distance of about a yard all round.  Between the
circumferences of these two circles he inscribed seven smaller ones,
at equal distances apart.  The outlaw, who, though disappointed at
the drying-up of the resources of the door, watched all these
proceedings with attention, perceived that the seven circles were
intended--one each--for the Rabbi and his six attendants.  He
concluded that the ill-starred Bohemian, as having been undoubtedly
cock of the school, would be assigned one of the two circles next the
master, which was precisely the post Iron Haquin would have chosen.
He was in some doubt, however, as to whether there might, or might
not, be a miscarriage when the bedroom was found to be unaccountably
empty.  Fortunately, the Rabbi (after placing a pan of living coal in
each circle) went upstairs to unlock each door, and came down again
at once, without opening any.  This may have been intended to allow
time for his disciples to dress, but he bore as well the air of one
having forgotten something, and ran as fast as his years would permit
him to that door of doors.  The outlaw noted as the Rabbi passed
through that it was the boudoir this time visible.  Apparently the
thing worked round in a cycle.  The Rabbi emerged again almost at
once with a look of considerable relief.  All this was Greek to the
onlooker.  The five candidates now appeared and took up the circles
pointed out to them.  The outlaw pulled his hat well over his
features, and (as it was still dark) hoped to pass muster.  He saw,
as he had expected, one of the places of honour was left for the
Bohemian.  He boldly took his stand there; he had now burnt his
boats, and must go through.  The Rabbi had not yet syllabled a word,
reserving his strength for the strain to come.  He silently divided
among his assistants the remainder of what he had brought out of his
store room.  This consisted of civet, amber and musk, of benzoin,
camphor and myrrh, of every fragrance that wizards burn.

The Rabbi then stepped into his own circle and commenced a
preliminary prayer.  The supreme moment had come.

A sudden glow invaded the veins of the amateur exorcist (late Iron
Haquin) as he heard that well-known voice.  Bit by bit, as he warmed
to the work, he remembered the ritual which this very man had once
been at pains to teach him.  From time to time the other five chimed
in with the responses.  Iron Haquin dared not risk the recognition of
his voice.  As the ceremony proceeded the air seemed to grow more
dense until it became a matter of difficulty to breathe.  It was
thickening with, as yet, invisible elementals.  Anon the outlaw's
attention was drawn to the glances of his fellows, which timorously
sought the empty space enclosed by the inmost of the two circles.  He
was somewhat dashed--even he--to see that this empty space had sunk
below the level of the courtyard.  Worse, it continued to sink until
it disappeared altogether.  The magicians now stood in their seven
circles, around the circumference of a well.  Even this was not the
worst, as the bottom, though out of sight, must still be sinking, and
would sink to the very confines of the underworld.  Connexion was to
be opened with the bottomless pit by means of this bottomless shaft.
Having arrived at this by no means engaging conclusion, Iron Haquin
had only to wait for the end.  It came with a sudden smother and
smoke that belched from the mouth of the chimney.  The Rabbi threw
instantly perfumes upon his fire, and his acolytes did likewise.
Essence and quintessence fought desperately with the evil odours of
this smoke that came straight from eternal fires.  And there was
borne up with the smoke a weird hubbub of voices, that blasphemed in
every tongue.  Cracked lips of the damned shrieked execrations in
languages long dead, whose accents unintelligible made heart stand
still.  In vain the Rabbi raised his voice that had never ceased from
the first onset.  His exorcisms were drowned in oaths both loud and
deep, and with the rush and roar of furnaces stoked with blood.  And
now the thick air showed faces that peered in their eyes, and
gibberings that were not faces, creeping and crawling things.  The
outlaw's skin had long ago wrung out its last drop of sweat.  The
Rabbi's white hair stood all on end.  The moment for the trial had
come.

Iron Haquin threw his hat out of the circle where it was instantly
torn into a million shreds; His face thrust abruptly into the Rabbi's
line of sight, he roared in tones of thunder:--

"Rabbi Lion, I am Iron Haquin!"

The effect upon the Rabbi was electric.  His eyes started out of his
head.  The chant died away upon his lips.  He dropped like a stone
into the pit.  One long low moan reverberated from side to side,
broken up by peals of hellish jubilee.  A terrible voice that hushed
all else cried out three times--

"Lost!  Lost!  Lost!"

This was the climax, and Iron Haquin the man to bear the brunt of it.
No help was to be expected from the five sucking sorcerers.  They
were ridden to rags.  The last events had crowded so quickly together
that the outlaw practically took up the litany where the Rabbi
dropped it.  He gave it such voice as would have been a surprise to
the others, were they in a state to make the observation.  The fact
is, Iron Haquin was drunk with the cup of revenge.  For two pins he
would have bearded the fiend.  The infernals shrunk from the lash and
lather of such magnificent rage expressed in the highest terms of
art.  They of the pit sucked in their smoke and hushed the outlet of
despair.  The centre of the courtyard reappeared, air refined itself,
victorious sweet scents flung wide their banners.

"Go in peace unto your place.  Peace be between us and you.  Be you
ready to come when you are called."

This final, formal leave-taking of the spirits, without which no
magician worth his salt would ever abandon his circle, wound up what
had once looked a serious business.  The six could now quit in safety
the circles which a moment before had been their only bulwark against
perdition.  The students were too limp to pay any attention to the
giant that had taken their world upon his shoulders.  Their little
remaining sanity was all bent to the desire to get away from an
accursed house.  They stumbled out of the front gate, which the
outlaw had to open for them, and scattered to the four winds of
heaven.

The coast being now clear the bandit made for that other door which
had played so many parts.  On what would the curtain now arise?  He
opened and discovered the boudoir.  A repetition of its last role.
The cycle theory was thus effectually disposed of.  There was nothing
for it but that the door obeyed some arbitrary will.  Scarcely its
own.  The Rabbi was dead, and worse.  There remained then only the
Jewess.  But where was she?  The chamber had no outlet.  She could in
no wise have left it.  Our hero ransacked every corner, he upset, and
set up, and upset again every priceless piece of furniture, tore down
silk and satin, and threw jewels under foot, ground beneath his heel
the command of armies, and the price of the honour of queens.  At
last his eye was arrested by a common glass bottle, he was fascinated
by it, he held it to the light, he all but dropped it.  It contained
the object of his search.

Yes, there was no doubt now of the death of his former love.  No
doubt but that the Rabbi's diabolical art and craft had replaced her
by a familiar spirit.  This was the receptacle in which he confined
the familiar at seasons when he was not in need of her.  This was the
familiar herself within the bottle, reduced most delicately small.
She still wore the guise of his long lost wife with which her master
had endowed her.  She still caused a pang to the iron heart of Haquin
to see her down to such poor prison.  And she knew her power over
him.  She knew that he would find a way.  She smiled at him divinely,
she clasped her tiny hands in prayer to him.  But he was aware that
he must needs release her.  He neither thought nor would have cared
that, now her master was dead, once released there was no controlling
her.  It just had to be done.  But how to set about it?  The stopper
was sealed down and with a talismanic character on the seal.  It was
the uttermost secret of the Rabbi.  Iron Haquin could not read it,
and without reading it could never open the bottle.  There remained
but one avenue of escape--the bottle must be broken.  With all the
strength of his iron arm he dashed it to the ground.  There was a
tremendous explosion, a roar like thunder, a flash before his eyes.
Not a mirror in the chamber but was shattered and scattered.  A
rapidly enlarging female form escaped from the shards of the broken
bottle.  It lost as it enlarged all resemblance to the
well-remembered Jewess.  It became indefinite, it thinned into little
more than a mist.  It gradually disappeared, yet, as the last waft of
it brushed his face the passionate lover thought he felt once more
his sweetheart's lips.  But he looked around and saw himself alone
with solitude, and wreckage, and desire of death.




THE EVIL EYE.

Our story opens upon a gloomy function; the burning of a gang of
wizards and witches.

The bells were ringing, but it was a muffled peal, and the hammers
were subdued that wrought the scaffolding in the market place.  The
steps of the citizens were as those that seek pleasure or plunder by
night, and the very soldier trailed a pike most unsoldierly silent.
A stranger, who, from the singularity of his appearance, would have
attracted notice on any other occasion, to-day threaded unchallenged
this German town.

Tall he was, worn down to the bone, gaunt and prematurely grey,
hollow-cheeked and hollow-eyed.  His dress might be described, with
no great stretch of language, as little but nakedness visible.  But
it was sweet with the scent of the sea, and the roll of the sea was
in his long legs, as he wound his way to the central square.  He
looked neither to the right nor to the left.  Arrived at his
destination he took no heed of the ominous carpenters, nor of the
wood-work to which they were putting the finishing touch.  He walked
straight--and as if by instinct rather than by eye--into a certain
tavern of those that debouched upon that place.  He might have been
supposed to be dumb as well as blind, since he merely made a
pantomime expressive of hunger as he sank into one of the seats.  The
landlord looked with doubt at his visible assets.  A sad thing of the
nature of a smile flickered upon the burnt and blistered visage of
the sailor.  He evolved a coin from some miraculous hiding-place in
the cobweb that was his apology for raiment.  The landlord bit it,
rang it, and bit it again.  Ultimately he appeared satisfied, and
placed food before his customer.  The speed with which it vanished
would have justified an observer in antedating considerably the
stranger's previous meal.  Leaving a clean plate he threw himself
back in his chair and steadily regarded the landlord.

Then he asked, not without emotion,

"Don't you know me, old comrade?"

The landlord started as if shot.

"By all the saints and saintesses!  _Marquard!_"

"Aye, Marquard it is; but not the Marquard you knew of old.  It was
an evil hour I ran away to sea."

"But why have you not returned these years?"

"Returned!  He asks me why I did not return!  I that--before I had
been long enough aboard to be on good terms with my inner man--was
captured by the Algerine!  I that have been chained to an oar in the
galley of Barbarossa every day of these years of which you speak!
But pay no heed to what I say.  There is news for which I burn.  You
that have lived humdrum can tell me of _her_, for whose coquetries I
lost patience and exiled myself."

"She lives," murmured the landlord, in a half-hearted way, and he
looked upon the floor.

"She lives!  And what of my rival that I thought she preferred to me?"

"He lives, if you mean the Hungarian, whose name we could never
pronounce, and whom we used to call Teremtette from his favourite
oath."

"Come, tell more about them both."

The landlord cast a troubled eye upon him, and again looked down.  He
spoke with distinct embarrassment.

"Prepare yourself for the worst, my friend.  Remember that he of whom
we speak was always a hobnobber with sorcerers, and a sorcerer
suspect.  After your departure he became a sorcerer confessed."

"And _she_, man!  What of her?"

"Alas!  She followed wherever he led, though the devil's shadow was
all his light.  She lived with him for a time after you abandoned the
field to him."

"I knew it!  In my dreams they were husband and wife, the while I
hugged a bare board to my aching heart."

"Husband and wife!  They were never that, save at some witches'
sabbath, mated by priests unfrocked and anathematised, but not in the
sight of gods or men."

"Then she is free, and I shall steal her from him yet.  I will marry
her, but I will kill him first."

"You know not what you say.  He is swollen in power until he is
acknowledged the master magician of all Germany.  It is _whispered_
that he made a pact with Satan, and in pledge thereof exchanged one
of his eyes for an eye of the fiend's.  It is _known_ that he walks
abroad with one eye shut until he wishes to perform some evil.  Then
he lifts the eyelid and shoots forth a spear of light from that eye
which is not his own.  And it blasts whereever it falls.  For this
reason we call him the Evil Eye."

"His backbone shall be limp for me, his front abased, his star is
set, his grave is dug, his flesh already rots!  I will bury him in a
church that he may hug false hopes of salvation, and then I will set
my feet on his gravestone when I stand with her before the priest.
He shall shriek curses from his coffin while I knit her life to mine,
until the scandalised sacred earth shall spit him forth to those that
lie in wait."

"Unhappy man, you are still dreaming of the girl you left behind!  Do
you not realise that, now years have rolled over her, she is a mother
witch?  Nay, there is worse that I had hoped to spare you.  Did you
not notice the stakes erected outside in the market place?  To-day a
host of women, and not a few evil men, are to wipe out their crimes
with the last payment.  At this very moment the sad procession is
entering the square.  Do you recognise no prisoner among them?"

He threw open the door.  It was even as he said.  The sailor sprang
to his feet and scanned the accused.

"I do not see him there!"

"Not he, he flies too high for judge or jury, the devil's true
knight, hell sublimate!  But look again.  Do you not recognise one of
the women?"

With a terrible foreboding Marquard strained his eyes, but saw no
face that corresponded to his memories.  They were, without
exception, abominable hags that were to suffer.  But one of them had
at once recognised _him_.  Recognised him, in spite of the awful
change wrought by his captivity.  The foulest beldame of them all
stretched her skinny arms to him.  Her cracked voice called his name.

"Marquard!"

An icy hand gripped the galley-slave's heart-strings.  In that second
he lived all the years since last he had seen her.  He saw (in his
mind's eye) golden hair shade to grey, skin become parchment, roses
and lilies scatter in dust.  He recognised her, and he leaped forward
to her like an arrow from a bow.  The spectators parted in amaze, to
right and left.  Guards and executioners fell back from his foot and
hand.  He caught the outstretched hands of the witch in his.  He
devoured her with his looks, and she him.  He was as one in a dream.
He scarcely felt her press something round into one of his palms.
She whispered so that he alone heard her:--

"Marquard!  It is a charm I am giving you that has cost me dear.  It
will protect you from all evil, and especially from _him_.  As you
love me, never part with it while you live.  I dare not wish you well
lest my prayer should blast you.  Good-bye, and think sometimes
kindly of me."

He would have retained her, but she drew her fingers away, leaving
with him that globular thing to which he paid no attention.  She
kissed him with her eyes.  He tried to speak, but words were choked
in sobs.  And now the soldiers, both horse and foot, bore down upon
him.  A cry of rescue was raised by some of the crowd that were
interested in the prisoners.  Others shouted them down, and shook
their fists in Marquard's face.  The wildest confusion reigned.  His
rags were torn from his back.  A hundred blades were thrust into his
flesh.  Those that had taken his part pulled him one way, the more
law-abiding citizens pulled him another.  His head swam, he lost his
footing, he fell, and was trampled alike by friend and foe, in the
pitched battle that was fought over his body.  He lost consciousness,
and knew no more.

When he recovered his painful identity, it was some time before he
could remember what had passed.  He was sick, as he fancied, from the
rollings of the galley, and sore from the laying-on of the
taskmaster's whip.  It was the possession of a certain ball, which he
still clutched in his palm, which, after he had stared at it for a
while, led him back to truth.  When, by degrees, he had recovered his
memory, he tried to make out of what substance it was formed, but
without arriving at any conclusion, he carefully stowed it away.  He
was most puzzled by the fact that he was in a room.  It was dark, so
that a considerable time must have elapsed.  He rose, and felt all
round the walls.  There was no doubt about it.  Presently he came
upon the door.  He tried it.  It opened.  He was evidently not a
prisoner.  He stepped into a passage, and up to another door.  This
one was locked, but the key was in it.  He turned it, and opening the
door disclosed the square.  The mystery was now solved.  He was in
the precincts of the tavern.  He had been saved, perhaps from death,
by his good friend, the inn-keeper.

The night was magnificently clear.  A single star hung low in the ear
of the moon.  He looked all around the deserted place that during his
swoon must have been the scene of butcherly justice.  The remnants of
the stakes were evidence that the decrees of the law had really been
executed.  A few fragments of charred bone were now all that remained
of the girl he had loved.  He seemed to scent the odour of burnt
flesh in the air.  Suddenly, he became aware that he was not alone in
his contemplation of this field of blood.  Some man was ferreting
about the bases of the stakes, and sifting the human dust that paved
the square.  It needed no second look to tell the galley-slave who
this was, so much keener than love is hate.  It was the man--or more
than man--of whom Marquard had conferred with the inn-keeper.  It was
the Hungarian--Teremtette--the Evil Eye.

For what then was he a-search among this life that had ceased to
live?  Marquard thought that he could answer this question.  The ball
of so much mystery had been given to him by the witch, as a charm
that would protect from this very man.  The association of the
Hungarian with her made it probable that he was acquainted with her
possession of it, and with its powers.  Such being the case, it was a
property that he must itch to lay his fingers upon.  Perhaps he had
even attempted, and failed, to obtain it from her while she was alive
At any rate it was this, presumably, which he was agog for on the
scene of her death.  As a charm it would be unconsumable by fire, and
had Marquard not been before him the Hungarian might have attained
his end.  The one weak point in the theory was that it supposed the
wizard ignorant of Marquard's return.  Yet this was not impossible,
since surely even wizards have their limitations.  Having decided
Upon this explanation of his rival's presence, Marquard burned to
confront him face to face.  He strode boldly out of his protecting
doorway.  The Hungarian heard his step, looked up, and sprang to his
feet.  The galley-slave noted with a thrill that one of his eyes was
closed.  It was the Evil Eye against which he was soon to test his
powers of endurance.  For the wizard had evidently recognised him at
once.  His whole face was writhen with diabolical glee.  Slowly he
raised the lid that covered the Evil Eye.  There was a gush of
blinding light from under that veil.  The square was lit up as by
noonday sun.  The ray struck remorselessly upon the sailor.  He stood
erect unshaken.  Astonishment was legible upon the magician's
features at this evident failure of his trusted weapon.  He raised
the lid to its fullest extent, and put all he was worth into the
uncanny stare.  But the sailor stood erect, unscathed.  The charm was
doing the work which its donor had foreseen, and doing that work
right well.  The galley-slave registered a vow never to part with it.
Suddenly the magician dropped his eyelid, and the market-place once
more was dark.  He had apparently arrived at some decision, for
now--for the first time--he spoke.

"Antlers of Belial!!  Do I see before me my old friend Marquard?"

"Your enemy to the hilts you see."

"You must pardon my defective sight which obliged me to call in the
aid of science before I recognised you.  Who would have thought of
seeing you here?  But now I know you I shall not readily part with
you.  You shall sleep under no other roof than mine this night of
your home-coming."

"Dare you speak thus to _me_, knowing that this day the woman we both
loved has died a horrible death at hangman's hands, and all for
following the course _you_ set and staked for her?"

"Nonsense, my friend.  You have been deceived by a chance
resemblance, if indeed any could exist between such wrinkles as were
smoothed out to-day and a face that made the stars ashamed.  I regret
to say that I have lost sight of her for many a year--that maiden we
both knew and loved; I would give all I have left to give to see her
before me as she was.  Her waist was slender as the waist of death--I
cannot conceive her as blue flame and grey ash.  Again I say you have
deceived yourself, my friend."

"Friend me no friends!  What I feel for you is unscabbarded, naked
hate."

"Death and the judgment!  If you do not love me, you _fear_ me,
coward that you are!"

"Were I the crowning coward--the bye-word and mock of cowards--there
would be one man beneath my fear."

"And do you mean that I am that man?  I challenge you then to
accompany me to my castle.  It is worth the seeing."

"You need not press me.  I ask nothing better than your company.  You
shall tire of me ere I tire of you.  Lead, and I will follow you to
the fringes of the Pit."

"We'll needs ride sabbatical post."

He plucked up two charred logs that lay near at hand.  He thrust one
between the knees of the galley-slave and the other between his own.
He uttered a magic word, sharp, pungent, and obeyed.  The logs became
two stallions, black as grief and fleet as joy.  Before Marquard had
grasped the fact that he was mounted, they were out of the town.

The weather, as we have said, was of the clearest.  A train of
obscene hags, bound for some witches' frolic, was the only thing that
rode the night.  They passed it and left it easily in their rear.
Their pace, in fact, was a pace to kill.  They shook off a mile with
every sweat drop.  It took them a second to shoot through a forest.
They cleared, not one river, but twos and threes at a time; the wind,
striving to keep up with them, fell breathless.  Huge mountains
tossed their grandsire heads and deemed themselves impassable.  These
also the chargers crossed, and left them shrugging their fat
shoulders far behind.  But now a peak of peaks appeared--a Babel that
overlooked earth, and peered into heaven--would they double that?
They reached its summit, but at the instant, with a word from the
sorcerer, they were logs again.

Marquard reeled as his feet touched ground.  He steadied himself with
an effort, and took a step forward.  The Hungarian seized him by the
collar, just in time to save him from a fall.  They were standing
upon the edge of a precipice.  The sailor looked down and saw no
bottom--a gulf that staggered reason.  He shuddered at his escape,
and reeled again.  When he had somewhat recovered, he rubbed his
eyes, and took a careful survey of the position.

They had been deposited at the extreme altitude of the mountain.  But
it was not a single peak, it formed a ring like the crater of a
volcano, but of a diameter so stupendous that its further side was
barely visible to the naked eye.  Of its depth we have already given
some idea, but the most singular feature of the whole strange
place--the feature which made it impossible to regard it as a mere
giant volcano--was a slender spire of rock that shot up from its
unknown floor to about the same height as the surrounding rim.  It
might be compared to a Cleopatra's Needle set in a well, or else to
the stamen of some egregious petrified flower.  Or from the sailor's
point of view (considering the spot where he stood as mainland) it
was an islet left bare by a dried-up sea.  Nor was it a desert
island.  It was inhabited, or at any rate it was built upon.  There
was a castle on it which it was just large enough to hold.  The outer
walls merged straight down as if one piece with the wall of rock upon
which they were founded.  From the front entrance, a bridge of
marble, with rails of gold, spanned the abyss that separated the
castle from the mountain.

While Marquard was making these observations, the Hungarian took
stock of him with his single eye.  When the sailor had apparently
sucked in all his environment, Teremtette asked him, what seemed on
the face of it, a neediest question.

"What do you see?"

"I see a castle, whiter than a bride, uplift upon yon mast of stone."

"What else do you see?"

"I see a bridge across the airy moat that parts us from that
fantastic crow's nest."

"That castle and that bridge are of my architecture.  If you consider
as child's play all that you _have_ dared--if you are willing to
_begin_ to show high courage--you can follow me within its gates."

He walked towards the bridge, crossed it, and disappeared within the
castle walls.  The galley slave sat down, and gazed at the fairy
fabric in something very much like indecision.  He felt among his
garments to see if he still possessed the talisman, the witch's
parting gift.  It was there.  He drew it forth and looked at it.  A
little shrivelled pellet, of some unknown dried substance, it was as
much of an enigma to him as ever.  He laid it upon the rock on which
he sat, and turned again towards the castle.  To his horror and
astonishment it was losing its clearness of outline.  It
became--along with the bridge--semi-transparent.  He could see
through them both.  They grew thinner, and thinner.  They faded into
little more than mist.  Ultimately nothing of either was any more
visible.  Only the bare pillar stood up in the midst of the chasm.
But no--there was a figure upon the now tonsured rock--it was the
figure of the Hungarian.  A moment's thought explained this.  The
castle alone was unsubstantial.  In disappearing it left revealed the
man that had been within it.  He was too far off for the sailor to be
sure of what he was engaged on.  There ran through all Marquard's
veins a current of fear.  He felt helpless in the presence of all
this glamour that he did not understand.  He looked round for his
only friend--the amulet--thank God! it was still there.  He snatched
it up, resolved never more to let it away from him.  And then another
wonderful thing occurred.  The castle and its bridge again gradually
appeared in sight.  The sailor began to suspect the rules of the
game.  He could not forbear to put the talisman down again for a
moment.  The outlines of the magical buildings grew immediately dim.
He took up the ball.  Their solidity was immediately restored.  He
now knew his bearings.  There could be no longer any doubt.  Apart
from their creator--the Hungarian--the castle and bridge were only
visible to the holder of that wizened trifle.  Marquard packed it
away, with heightened respect, and deliberately walked up to, and
across, the bridge.  It rang substantial enough under his feet, for
him to almost doubt the truth of what he had just seen.  He was too
near his enemy to hazard any more experiments.  He found him in a
goodly, square, and most singularly wall-papered room, inasmuch as
each of its walls--where not pierced for a door--was one vast mirror.
In the centre stood a table loaded with every delicacy in and out of
season.  At each side of the table was placed a luxurious chair.  The
Hungarian pointed to one of these and spoke.

"I bid you to this last supper, in the name of those that hold this
house, if you dare sit down and feast."

"I dare do anything in _your_ company."

"Then eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow one of us two dies.
That, I believe, was the intention, with which you accompanied me
hither?"

"You are right therein, as always."

"Then for an hour we will proclaim a truce to all our differences.
We will pledge the survivor in flowing bowls from vintages of a
thousand years.  Wine you shall have creating thirst and woman
creating desire.  That is if you can call her woman that tempted Adam
out of Paradise."

"To whom do you refer?"

"To Lilith, Eve's rival, queen of all damnations!"

"Was it for _her_, then, that you sold your soul and swopped an eye
with Satan?"

"Ha-ha, you have heard that story.  It is true that I left my eye in
pawn, but it is false that I received one in exchange.  This is not
an eye at all--this Evil Eye as they call it--whose beam is supposed
to blight wherever it falls.  In your own person you have tested its
perfect harmlessness."

He paused, as if to see whether the sailor had swallowed this more
than doubtful statement.  The latter made no sign.  The wizard then
proceeded to lift his sinister eyelid, until the fiery stab of the
Evil Eye was a second time unveiled.  As before it had no effect
whatever on Marquard.  The magician then lifted his finger to it, and
with a twist turned the apparent eye-ball out of its socket.  It
slipped over the finger that had released it, and in so doing shewed
what it really was.  It was a _ring_, set with an enormous blazing
stone!

Yes, this was the fabled Evil Eye, this innocent circlet of gold with
its flashing stone.  The magician obligingly extended the hand that
now wore it, to the end that Marquard might examine it more minutely.
As he got accustomed to its baleful glare, he perceived that this was
not generated by the gem itself.  The gem was hollow, and served
merely as a receptacle for something _alive_ that crouched within.
From the eyes of this living weevil--or devil--or whatever it
was--streamed the poison of ill-effect which the public had thought
to proceed from an Evil Eye.  Nor were they wrong after all, only
that there were two evil eyes, and their owner to boot--instead of
one.  But even this was only the beginning of the Hungarian's
surprises.  Having allowed the sailor to gaze long enough upon the
ring, he rested the hand that wore it upon a chair.  Then with the
other hand he just touched the gem at his side.  It flew open and the
creature that lived in it came forth.  She increased in size--the
sailor saw that it was a woman--a woman, whose beauty would have
blinded the severest eye.  She would have seduced an anchorite to
dimpled sin.

"You see," laughed the Hungarian, "that, if I got no eye from the
devil, he gave me a rib out of his side."

When she had reached the height of her companion Lilith stopped
growing, and sat down upon her chair.  The magician seated himself at
one hand of her, the sailor at the other, and looked inquiringly
towards the vacant place that fronted her.  The Hungarian intercepted
his glance, and grinned.

"Look at the mirror, man," he cried, "there are more guests here--and
more august--than you imagine."

The galley-slave looked at the mirror behind the vacant side of the
table, and started from his seat in sudden terror.  The mirror
reflected the back of someone as if occupying that chair, which
nevertheless still stood in front of it, empty.  The sailor looked
from chair to mirror--from mirror to chair again--but there was no
mistaking that weird fact.  His hair stood up.  He sank into his
seat.  He snatched to his white lips the first goblet that came to
hand.  The magician at once took up his own glass and cried out,
mockingly,

"I second your toast!  To the health of our guest--the Orb and
Sceptre of all the hells!"

From that the orgie waxed fast and furious.  They swam in music.  The
room was grey with incense.  Their lights were balls of coloured fire
that flashed in the air, and ever and anon dropping into their cups
hissed like snapdragons.  Songs were sung that fallen angels had
brought from paradise.  Tales were told of doings done before the
world was planned.  But who sung, and who narrated was beyond the
sailor's ken, a-swim as he was with wine and witchery.  He grew more
and more bemused.  The table whirled round and round.  The viands
slipped away from his hands, when he turned to look at his fair
neighbour he could only find the one eye of the Hungarian.  The
mirrors gave back distortions.  All was confusion and delusion, and
mocking laughter in his ears.  After a brave attempt to keep his
head, he rolled upon the floor.  The vintages of a thousand years had
done their work.

When he awoke, with a splitting headache, the room was clear.  The
Hungarian paced up and dawn at one end.  A glance at him sufficed to
show that the matchless ring had been restored to its socket.

"Ha-ha," laughed the sorcerer, "are you looking for the girl you were
so sweet on last night?  Behold her!"  He lifted his eyelid, and
there flashed forth coquettish lights from the prisoner of the gem.

The sailor sprang to his feet.

"Arch and unheard-of juggler," he cried, "your play is played, and
your curtain is nigh to ringing down.  You have done the devil's
work--beshrew the like!--and you shall get the devil's wages.  You
shall rue the day you brought me here."

"The nightmare be your bride!  Were you not girt with an adverse fate
you had dawned in a fiercer place than this!  And now, if you are
bent upon a duel--and the laws of hospitality do not protect me--I
will even let you take the lead."

"Then look to yourself, witch-master!" cried the sailor, drawing a
rusty pistol from his long sea-boot.  He took aim, and fired; the
bullet struck the Hungarian, and _rebounded_.  A peal of laughter
shook the hall.

"The devil kiss your lips!" cried the sorcerer; "you have no reach
for me!  But try again if you like before I set my foot on the neck
of your revenge."

The sailor considered.  It was no use wasting another leaden bullet
on a man who was evidently impregnable to such.  He remembered that a
silver button cut from one's coat was considered sovereign against a
wizard when all else failed.  But, unfortunately, Marquard wore no
silver buttons, and very few buttons of any kind.  An idea struck
him, there was the magic ball that the witch had given him.  It was
true that, if it flew wide of its mark, he would have staked, and
lost, his all; since he would no longer boast any influence to
protect him.  On the other hand, he felt a presentiment that it would
not fail him.  In any case the sorcerer, who was aware by this time
of his possession of the talisman, seemed, from his good humour, to
have forged some device by which he could counteract it.  Marquard
threw his scruples to the wind, and rammed the amulet into the pistol.

"I will bring your royal insolence a-dust," he cried, "in hackneyed,
unoriginal death for all that you are the devil's fetch and carry!"

He fired.  Thunder shook the furthest stars.  The room was full of
fœtid smoke.  As it partially cleared away, the galley-slave saw
his enemy lying supine upon the ground.  He crept up to him, still
misdoubting, and touched him gingerly.  He was dead.  But when
Marquard came to look upon his face, he started back surprised, all
trace of the ring had entirely disappeared.  Both the sorcerer's eyes
were open, and both were now a match.  But whence had come back this
long-lost eye?  It was the ball which the witch had handed over to
Marquard--the ball which Marquard had loaded into his pistol--the
ball which had steered unerring to its ancient seat, and ousted the
usurper which it found there.  Marquard reverently lifted the fallen
pride of wizardry and carried him gently to the outer gate.  This man
upon whom he had served the warrant of that bowelless
catch-poll--Death, this clay, after all was said and done, had once
been boyhood like himself.  Lovers of one girl the tunes of their two
lives were built upon the same bottom note.  It was with tenderness
that Marquard tossed the body into the abyss.  He did not know how
soon he was to follow it.  It had scarcely disappeared when he became
aware from the thinning of the castle that he had unwittingly got rid
of the power which enabled him to cross the bridge.  The golden
railing had already vanished.  He started to run, but the marble
under his feet was softening, and he sank in it to the ankles at
every step.  A little further and his legs went through to the knee.
With incredible exertions he reached the centre, but could go no
further.  He floundered in the fast ebbing material, hopelessly, to
the waist.  Then he sank to his armpits--spread out his arms so as to
hold yet a second to life--but finally the last remnants of the
bridge evaporated, and he fell plumb into the gulf, turning over and
over in his fall.




THE WITCHES' SABBATH.

Our scene is one of those terrific peaks set apart by tradition as
the trysting place of wizards and witches, and of every kind of folk
that prefers dark to day.

It might have been Mount Elias, or the Brocken, associated with
Doctor Faustus.  It might have been the Horsel or Venusberg of
Tannhaeuser, or the Black Forest.  Enough that it was one of these.

Not a star wrinkled the brow of night.  Only in the distance the
twinkling lights of some town could be seen.  Low down in the skirts
of the mountain rode a knight, followed closely by his page.  We say
a knight, because he had once owned that distinction.  But a wild and
bloody youth had tarnished his ancient shield; the while it kept
bright and busy his ancestral sword.  Behold him now, little better
than a highwayman.  Latterly he had wandered from border to border,
without finding where to rest his faithful steed.  All authority was
in arms against him; Hageck, the wild knight, was posted throughout
Germany.  More money was set upon his head than had ever been put
into his pocket.  Pikemen and pistoliers had dispersed his following.
None remained to him whom he could call his own, save this stripling
who still rode sturdily at the tail of his horse.  Him also, the
outlaw had besought, even with tears, to abandon one so ostensibly
cursed by stars and men.  But in vain.  The boy protested that he
would have no home, save in his master's shadow.

They were an ill-assorted pair.  The leader was all war-worn and
weather-worn.  Sin had marked him for its own and for the wages of
sin.  The page was young and slight, and marble pale.  He would have
looked more at home at the silken train of some great lady, than
following at these heels from which the gilded spurs had long been
hacked.  Nevertheless, the music of the spheres themselves sings not
more sweetly in accord than did these two hearts.

The wild knight, Hageck, had ascended the mountain as far as was
possible to four-legged roadsters.  Therefore he reined in his horse
and dismounted, and addressed his companion.  His voice was now quite
gentle, which on occasion could quench mutiny, and in due season dry
up the taste of blood in the mouths of desperate men.

"Time is that we must part, Enno."

"Master, you told me we need never part."

"Let be, child, do you not understand me?  I hope with your own
heart's hope that we shall meet again to-morrow in this same tarrying
place.  But I have not brought you to so cursed a place without some
object.  When I say that we must part, I mean that you must take
charge of our horses while I go further up the mountain upon
business, which for your own sake you must never share."

"And is this your reading of the oath of our brotherhood which we
swore together?"

"The oath of our brotherhood, I fear, was writ in water.  You are, in
fact, the only one of all my company that has kept faith with me.
For that very reason I would not spare your neck from the halter, nor
your limbs from the wheel.  But also for that very reason I will not
set your immortal soul in jeopardy."

"My immortal soul!  Is this business then unhallowed that you go
upon?  Now I remember me that this mountain at certain seasons is
said to be haunted by evil spirits.  Master, you also are bound by
our path to tell me all."

"You shall know all, Enno, were oaths even cheaper than they are.
You have deserved by your devotion to be the confessor of your
friend."

"Friend is no name for companionship such as ours.  I am sure you
would die for me.  I believe I could die for you, Hageck."

"Enough, you have been more than brother to me.  I had a brother
once, after the fashion of this world, and it is his envious hand
which has placed me where I stand.  That was before I knew you, Enno,
and it is some sweets in my cup at any rate, that had he not betrayed
me I should never have known you.  Nevertheless, you will admit that
since he robbed me of the girl I loved, even your loyal heart is a
poor set off for what fate and fraternity took from me.  In fine, we
both loved the same girl, but she loved me, and would have none of my
brother.  She was beautiful, Enno--how beautiful you can never guess
that have not yet loved."

"I have never conceived any other love than that I bear you."

"Tush, boy, you know not what you say.  But to return to my story.
One day that I was walking with her my brother would have stabbed me.
She threw herself between and was killed upon my breast."

He tore open his clothes at the throat and showed a great faded stain
upon his skin.

"The hangman's brand shall fade," he cried, "ere that wash out.
Accursed be the mother that bore me seeing that she also first bore
him!  The devil squat down with him in his resting, lie with him in
his sleeping, as the devil has sat and slept with me every noon and
night since that deed was done.  Never give way to love of woman,
Enno, lest you lose the one you love, and with her lose the balance
of your life."

"Alas!  Hageck, I fear I never shall."

"Since that miscalled day, blacker than any night, you know as well
as any one the sort of death in life I led.  I had the good or evil
luck to fall in with some broken men like myself, fortune's foes and
foes of all whom fortune cherishes, you among them.  Red blood, red
gold for a while ran through our fingers.  Then a turn of the wheel,
and, presto, my men are squandered to every wind that blows--I am a
fugitive with a price upon my head!"

"And with one comrade whom, believe me, wealth is too poor to buy."

"A heart above rubies.  Even so.  To such alone would I confide my
present purpose.  You must know that my brother was a student of
magic of no mean repute, and before we quarrelled had given me some
insight into its mysteries.  Now that I near the end of my tether I
have summed up all the little I knew, and am resolved to make a
desperate cast in this mountain of despair.  In a word, I intend to
hold converse with my dead sweetheart before I die.  The devil shall
help me to it for the love he bears me."

"You would invoke the enemy of all mankind?"

"Him and none other.  Aye, shudder not, nor seek to turn me from it.
I have gone over it again and again.  The gates of Hell are set no
firmer than this resolve."

"God keep Hell far from you when you call it!"

"I had feared my science was of too elementary an order to conduct an
exorcism under any but the most favourable circumstances.  Hence our
journey hither.  This place is one of those where parliaments of evil
are held, where dead and living meet on equal ground.  To-night is
the appointed night of one of these great Sabbaths.  I propose to
leave you here with the horses.  I shall climb to the topmost peak,
draw a circle that I may stand in for my defence, and with all the
vehemence of love deferred, pray for my desire."

"May all good angels speed you!"

"Nay, I have broken with such.  Your good wish, Enno, is enough."

"But did we not hear talk in the town about a hermit that spent his
life upon the mountain top, atoning for some sin in day-long prayer
and mortification?  Can this evil fellowship of which you speak still
hold its meetings upon a spot which has been attached in the name of
Heaven by one good man?"

"Of this hermit I knew nothing until we reached the town.  It was
then too late to seek another workshop.  Should what you say be
correct, and this holy man have purged this plague spot, I can do no
worse than pass the night with him, and return to you.  But should
the practices of witch and wizard continue as of yore, then the
powers of evil shall draw my love to me, be she where she may.  Aye,
be it in that most secret nook of heaven where God retires when He
would weep, and where even archangels are never suffered to tread."

"O all good go with you!"

"Farewell, Enno, and if I never return count my soul not so lost but
what you may say a prayer for it now and again, when you have
leisure."

"I will not outlive you!"

The passionate words were lost on Hageck, who had already climbed so
far as to be out of hearing.  He only knew vaguely that something was
shouted to him, and waved his hand above his head for a reply.  On
and on he climbed.  Time passed.  The way grew harder.  At last
exhausted, but fed with inward exaltation, he reached the summit.  It
was of considerable extent and extremely uneven.  The first thing our
hero noticed was the cave of the hermit.  It could be nothing else,
although it was closed with an iron door.  A new departure, thought
Hageck to himself, as he hammered upon it with the pommel of his
sword, for a hermit's cell to be locked in like a fortress.

"Open, friend," he cried, "in heaven's name, or in that of the other
place if you like it better."

The noise came from within of a bar being removed.  The door opened.
It revealed a mere hole in the rock, though large enough, it is true,
to hold a considerable number of persons.  Furniture was conspicuous
by its absence.  There was no sign even of a bed, unless a coffin
that grinned in one corner served the occupant's needs.  A skull, a
scourge, a crucifix, a knife for his food, what more does such a
hermit want?  His feet were bare, his head was tonsured, but his
eyebrows were long and matted, and fell like a screen over burning
maniacal eyes.  A fanatic, every inch of him.  He scrutinised the
invader from top to toe.  Apparently the result was unsatisfactory.
He frowned.

"A traveller," said he, "and at this unholy hour.  Back, back, do you
not know the sinister reputation of this time and place?"

"I know your reputation to be of the highest, reverend father; I
could not credit what rumour circulates about this mountain top when
I understood that one of such sanctity had taken up a perpetual abode
here."

"My abode is fixed here for the very reason that it is a realm of
untold horror.  My task is to win back, if I can, to the dominion of
the church this corner, which has been so long unloved that it cries
aloud to God and man.  This position of my own choice is no sinecure.
Hither at stated times the full brunt of the Sabbath sweeps to its
rendezvouz.  Here I defy the Sabbath.  You see that mighty door?"

"I had wondered, but feared to ask, what purpose such a barrier could
serve in such a miserable place."

"You may be glad to crouch behind it if you stay here much longer.
At midnight, Legion, with all the swirl of all the hells at his back,
will sweep this summit like a tornado.  Were you of the stuff that
never trembles, yet you shall hear such sounds as shall melt your
backbone.  Avoid hence while there is yet time."

"But you, if you remain here, why not I?"

"I remain here as a penance for a crime I did, a crime which almost
takes prisoner my reason, so different was it from the crime I set
out to do, so deadly death to all my hopes.  I am on my knees
throughout the whole duration of this pandemonium that I tell you of,
and count thick and fast my beads during the whole time.  Did I cease
for one second to pray, that second would be my last.  The roof of my
cavern would descend and efface body and soul.  But you, what would
you do here?"

"I seek my own ends, for which I am fully prepared.  To confer with a
shade from the other world I place my own soul in jeopardy.  For the
short time that must elapse, before the hour arrives when I can work,
I ask but a trifle of your light and fire."

"The will-o'-the-wisp be your light, Saint Anthony's your fire!  Do
you not recognise me?"

The wild knight bent forward and gazed into the hermit's inmost eye,
then started back, and would have fallen had his head not struck the
iron door.  This recalled him to his senses, and after a moment he
stood firm again, and murmured between his teeth, "My brother!"

"Your brother," repeated the holy man, "your brother, whose
sweetheart you stole and drove me to madness and crime."

"I drove you to no madness, I drove you to no crime.  The madness,
the crime you expiate here, were all of your own making.  She loved
me, and me alone--you shed her blood, by accident I confess, yet you
shed it, and not all the prayers of your lifetime can gather up one
drop of it.  What soaked into my own brain remains there for ever,
though I have sought to wash it out with an ocean of other men's
blood."

"And I," replied the hermit, and he tore his coarse frock off his
shoulders, "I have sought to drown it with an ocean of my own."

He spoke truth.  Blood still oozed from his naked flesh, ploughed
into furrows by the scourge.

"You, that have committed so many murders," he continued, "and who
have reproached me so bitterly for one, all the curses of your dying
victims, all the curses I showered upon you before I became reformed
have not availed to send you yet to the gibbet or to the wheel.  You
are one that, like the basil plant, grows ever the rifer for cursing.
I remember I tried to lame you, after you left home, by driving a
rusty nail into one of your footsteps, but the charm refused to work.
You were never the worse for it that I could hear.  They say the
devil's children have the devil's luck.  Yet some day shall death
trip up your heels."

"Peace, peace," cried the wild horseman, "let ill-will be dead
between us, and the bitterness of death be passed, as befits your
sacred calling.  Even if I see her for one moment to-night, by the
aid of the science you once taught me, will you not see her for
eternity in heaven some near day?"

"In heaven," cried the hermit, "do I want to see her in heaven?  On
earth would I gladly see her again and account that moment cheap if
weighed against my newly discovered soul!  But that can never be.
Not the art you speak of, not all the dark powers which move men to
sin, can restore her to either of us as she was that day.  And she
loved you.  She died to save you.  You have nothing to complain of.
But to me she was like some chaste impossible star."

"I loved her most," muttered the outlaw.

"You loved her most," screamed the hermit.  "Hell sit upon your eyes!
Put it to the test.  Look around.  Do you see anything of her here?"

The other Hageck gazed eagerly round the cave, but without fixing
upon anything.

"I see nothing," he was forced to confess.

The hermit seized the skull and held it in front of his eyes.

"This is her dear head," he cried, "fairer far than living red and
white to me!"

The wild knight recoiled with a gasp of horror, snatched the ghastly
relic from the hand of his brother, and hurled it over the precipice.
He put his fingers over his eyes and fell to shaking like an aspen.
For a moment the hermit scarcely seemed to grasp his loss.  Then with
a howl of rage he seized his brother by the throat.

"You have murdered her," he shrieked in tones scarcely recognisable,
"she will be dashed to a hundred pieces by such a fall!"

He threw the outlaw to the ground and, retreating to his cave,
slammed the door behind him, but his heart-broken sobs could still be
heard distinctly.  It was very evident that he was no longer in his
right mind.  The wild knight rose somewhat painfully and limped to a
little distance where he perceived a favourable spot for erecting his
circle.  The sobbing of the crazed hermit presently ceased.  He was
aware that his rival had entered upon his operations!  The hermit
re-opened his door that he might more clearly catch the sound of what
his foe was engaged upon.  Every step was of an absorbing interest to
the solitary as to the man who made it.  Anon the hermit started to
his feet.  He fancied he heard another voice replying to his brother.
Yes, it was a voice he seemed to know.  He rushed out of the cave.  A
girlish figure clad in a stained dress was clasped in his brother's
arms.  Kiss after kiss the wild knight was showering upon brow, and
eye, and cheek, and lip.  The girl responded as the hermit had surely
seen her do once before.  He flew to his cave.  He grasped the knife
he used for his food.  He darted like an arrow upon the startled
pair.  The woman tried to throw herself in front of her lover, but
the hermit with a coarse laugh, "Not twice the dagger seeks the same
breast," plunged it into the heart of her companion.  The wild knight
threw up his arms and without a cry fell to the ground.  The girl
uttered a shriek that seemed to rive the skies and flung herself
across her dead.  The hermit gazed at it stupidly and rubbed his
eyes.  He seemed like one dazed, but slowly recovering his senses.
Suddenly he started, came as it were to himself, and pulled the girl
by the shoulder.

"We have not a minute to lose," he cried, "the great Sabbath is all
but due.  If his body remains out here one second after the stroke of
twelve, his soul will be lost to all eternity.  It will be snatched
by the fiends who even now are bound to it.  Do you not see yon
shadowy hosts--but I forget, you are not a witch."

"I see nothing," she replied, sullenly, rising up and peering round.
The night was clear, but starless.

"I have been a wizard," he answered, "and once a wizard always a
wizard, though I now fight upon the other side.  Take my hand and you
will see."

She took his hand, and screamed as she did so.  For at the instant
there became visible to her these clouds of loathsome beings that
were speeding thither from every point of the compass.  Warlock, and
witch, and wizard rode post on every conceivable graceless mount.
Their motion was like the lightning of heaven, and their varied
cries--owlet hoot, caterwaul, dragon-shout--the horn of the Wild
Hunter, and the hurly of risen dead--vied with the bay of Cerberus to
the seldseen moon.  A forest of whips was flourished aloft.  The
whirr of wings raised dozing echoes.  The accustomed mountain shook
and shivered like a jelly, with the fear of their onset.

The girl dropped his hand and immediately lost the power of seeing
them.  She had learned at any rate that what he said was true.

"Help me to carry the body to the cave," cried he, and in a moment it
was done.  The corpse was placed in the coffin of his murderer.  Then
the hermit crashed his door to its place.  Up went bolts and bars.
Some loose rocks that were probably the hermit's chairs and tables
were rolled up to afford additional security.

"And now," demanded the man, "now that we have a moment of breathing
space, tell me what woman-kind are you whom I find here with my
brother?  That you are not her I know (woe is me that I have good
reason to know) yet you are as like her as any flower that blows.  I
loved her, and I murdered her, and I have the right to ask, who and
what are you that come to disturb my peace?"

"I am her sister."

"Her sister!  Yes, I remember you.  You were a child in those days.
Neither I nor my brother (God rest his soul!), neither of us noticed
you."

"No, he never took much notice of me.  Yet I loved him as well as she
did."

"You, too, loved him," whispered the hermit, as if to himself; "what
did he do to be loved by two such women?"

"Yes, I loved him, though he never knew it, but I may confess it now,
for you are a priest of a sort, are you not, you that shrive with
steel?"

"You are bitter, like your sister.  She was always so with me."

"I owe you my story," she replied more gently; "when she died and he
fell into evil courses and went adrift with bad companions, I found I
could not live without him, nor with anyone else, and I determined to
become one of them.  I dressed in boy's clothes and sought enlistment
into his company of free lances.  He would have driven me from him,
saying it was no work for such as I, yet at last I wheedled it from
him.  I think there was something in my face (all undeveloped as it
was and stained with walnut juice) that reminded him of her he had
lost.  I followed him faithfully through good and evil, cringing for
a look or word from him.  We were at last broken up (as you know) and
I alone of all his sworn riders remained to staunch his wounds.  He
brought me hither that he might wager all the soul that was left to
him on the chance of evoking her spirit.  I had with me the dress my
sister died in, that I had cherished through all my wanderings, as my
sole reminder of her life and death.  I put it on after he had left
me, and followed him as fast as my strength would allow me.  My
object was to beguile him with what sorry pleasure I could, while at
the same time saving him from committing the sin of disturbing the
dead.  God forgive me if there was mixed with it the wholly selfish
yearning to be kissed by him once, only once, in my true character as
loving woman, rid of my hated disguise!  I have had my desire, and it
has turned to apples of Sodom on my lips.  You are right.  All we can
do now is to preserve his soul alive."

She fell on her knees beside the coffin.  The hermit pressed his
crucifix into her hands.

"Pray!" he cried, and at the same moment the distant clock struck
twelve.  There came a rush of feet, a thunder at the iron door, the
cave rocked like a ship's cabin abruptly launched into the trough of
a storm.  An infernal whooping and hallooing filled the air outside,
mixed with it imprecations that made the strong man blanch.  The
banner of Destruction was unfurled.  All the horned heads were upon
them.  Thrones and Dominions, Virtues, Princes, Powers.  All hell was
loose that night, and the outskirts of Hell.

The siege had begun.  The hermit told his beads with feverish
rapidity.  One Latin prayer after another rolled off his tongue in
drops of sweat.  The girl, to whom these were unintelligible, tried
in vain to think of prayers.  All she could say, as she pressed the
Christ to her lips, was "Lord of my life!  My Love."  She scarcely
heard the hurly-burly that raged outside.  Crash after crash
resounded against the door, but good steel tempered with holy water
is bad to beat.  Showers of small pieces of rock fell from the
ceiling and the cave was soon filled with dust.  Peals of hellish
cachinnation resounded after each unsuccessful attempt to break down
that defence.  Living battering rams pressed it hard, dragon's spur,
serpent's coil, cloven hoof, foot of clay.  Tall Iniquities set their
backs to it, names of terror, girt with earthquake.  All the swart
crew dashed their huge bulk against it, rakehelly riders, humans and
superhumans, sin and its paymasters.  The winds well nigh split their
sides with hounding of them on.  Evil stars in their courses fought
against it.  The seas threw up their dead.  Haunted houses were no
more haunted that night.  Graveyards steamed.  Gibbets were empty.
The ghoul left his half-gnawn corpse, the vampire his victim's
throat.  Buried treasures rose to earth's surface that their ghostly
guardians might swell the fray.  Yet the hermit prayed on, and the
woman wept, and the door kept its face to the foe.  Will the hour of
release never strike?  Crested Satans now lead the van.  Even steel
cannot hold out for ever against those in whose veins instead of
blood, runs fire.  At last it bends ever so little, and the devilish
hubbub is increased tenfold.

"Should they break open the door--" yelled the hermit, making a
trumpet of his hands, yet she could not hear what he shouted above
the abominable din, nor had he time to complete his instructions.
For the door did give, and that suddenly, with a clang that was heard
from far off in the town, and made many a burgher think the last
trump had come.  The rocks that had been rolled against the door flew
off in every direction, and a surging host--and the horror of it was
that they were invisible to the girl--swept in.

The hermit tore his rosary asunder, and scattered the loose beads in
the faces of the fiends.

"Hold fast the corpse!" he yelled, as he was trampled under foot, and
this time he made himself heard.  The girl seized the long hair of
her lover pressed it convulsively, and swooned.

Years afterwards (as it seemed to her) she awakened and found the
chamber still as death, and--yes--this was the hair of death which
she still clutched in her dead hand.  She kissed it a hundred times
before it brought back to her where she was and what had passed.  She
looked round then for the hermit.  He, poor man, was lying as if also
dead.  But when she could bring herself to release her hoarded
treasure, she speedily brought him to some sort of consciousness.  He
sat up, not without difficulty, and looked around.  But his mind,
already halfway to madness, had been totally overturned by what had
occurred that woeful night.

"We have saved his soul between us," she cried.  "What do I not owe
you for standing by me in that fell hour?"

He regarded her in evident perplexity.  "I cannot think how you come
to be wearing that blood-stained dress of hers," was all he replied.

"I have told you," she said, gently, "but you have forgotten that I
cherished it through all my wanderings as my sole memento of her
glorious death.  She laid down the last drop of her blood for him.
She chose the better part.  But I! my God! what in the world is to
become of me?"

"I had a memento of her once," he muttered.  "I had her beautiful
head, but I have lost it."

"That settles it," she said, "you shall cut off mine."




"THE DEVIL'S DEBT."

Somewhere about the Middle Ages--somewhere in a mediaeval
town---there lived a man who walked always on the shady side of the
way.  None of his neighbours could have assigned a reason why he
should only tread where the lapse of time leaves no trace on the
dial, yet so it was.  None had ever seen him in sunshine.

This man was known by the name of Porphyro, though we may reasonably
doubt if it was given to him in baptism.  For he belonged to a class
that baptised toads by night at their Sabbaths in mockery of the
baptism of babes by day.  In a word, Porphyro was a wizard, and for
one circumstance (which will presently be mentioned) was perhaps
better known among his like than any practiser of the Black Art
before or since.

There was, and likely enough still is, in Europe a University of the
occult sciences, buried underground, carved out of the roots of
mountains, far from the hum of men.  Here taught weird
professors--eerie, eldritch, elflocked.  Here came weird students to
tread the intoxicating wine-press of magical study.  Your true wizard
is set apart from birth by some particularity which bespeaks his
vocation.  To the University came representatives of every class
which felt this call.  Here was the demoniac and the stigmatic, the
abortion and the albino, the hermaphrodite and the changeling, the
hag-ridden and the pixy-led, sleep-walker, Cesarean, Sunday-child,
seventh son, and he that is born with the caul.  This motley crew was
of as many hues as there are ends of the earth.  Many tongued as
Mithridates, all wrote their notes by common consent in the lingua
angelorum.

The University boasted a laboratory of at least a hundred paces in
length and proportionately broad and high.  A mock sun gave it cold
light by day, and a mock moon by night.  Here experiments in exorcism
were conducted, of course under the strictest supervision of the
principals.  Here the students learned that the ghosts of dead men
(having, always some of the old Adam that was unpurged from them),
are easier to call back to us than elemental spirits can be wrenched
from their eternal spheres.  The most trivial task (and therefore
that of the junior classes), was to re-incarnate some suicide, set in
four cross roads, whose soul still hovered like a noxious gas about
the only body where it could hope to find toleration.  The pupils
were very properly forbidden to incur the danger of repeating these
experiments in private.  Nevertheless something of the kind went on
under the rose.  As a rule the novices (and these were after all the
lucky ones), ignominiously failed in their attempts to storm the
outworks of hell.  They knew how to call spirits from the vasty deep,
but the spirits refused to come when they did call them.  One youth,
however, boasted that he had raised the devil, or at any rate, a
devil He described him to his bosom friends nearly as follows:--

"A great and full stature, soft and phlegmatic, of colour like a
black obscure cloud, having a swollen countenance, with eyes red and
full of water, a bald head, and teeth like a wild boar."

One of the listeners, doubtless jealous, attempted to cheapen this
success of his companion, by remarking that an exorcist, if worth his
salt, should be able to make the spirit appear in what guise he chose.

"Then, by the belt of Venus," swore a third, "I would command it to
appear as a lovely girl, with longer hair and smaller feet than any
on this top which the Almighty set spinning and dubbed earth."

Another poor fellow appears to have been so inflamed with the
suggestion of this rustler, that he tried to bring it into the sphere
of practical politics.  He was never seen alive again.  Not answering
to his name at the roll-call next morning, his bedroom was visited,
and a thin trickle of blood found oozing under the door.  One of the
search party put a pistol to the lock and fired.  The door flew open.
A cry burst from all present, and some of the youngest, covering
their faces with their hands, fled.  The body of the devoted wretch
who had played with unholy fire, was scattered parcel meal about the
room.  The lopped limbs were twisted round into spirals as if
boneless.  One of stronger stomach than the rest of the onlookers,
and who examined them more closely, declared that the bone had melted
and run out under some incredible heat.  One of the teachers opined
that if the demon had only breathed upon the bone, it would have been
enough to fuse it.  There were no more experiments in students' rooms.

Apart from such accidental deaths, the Academy paid a regular yearly
rent of one living soul to hell, and woe unto teachers and taught had
they lapsed into arrear one day.  The victim who was to suffer, that
the rest might live and learn, was selected in the following
traditional manner.  The whole of the pupils toed a line at one
extreme end of the hall, and, at a given signal, raced to the
opposite door.  There was, as may be imagined, a terrible struggle to
pass through the hangings.  The last to cross the threshold was
hugged to hell by the awaiting fiend.  It was on such an occasion
that Porphyro earned the unique distinction, alluded to above, of
having successfully cozened the Prince of Darkness himself.  Strain
as he might, he was the last to touch the winning post.  His
competitors, who now breathed themselves in safety in the lobby, had
given him up for lost.  But no piercing shriek of dissolution stabbed
the air, no fiendish laughter made horrible the echoes.  Instead,
voices were heard, until presently their comrade rejoined those who
had already mourned him.  Amid a scene of the wildest excitement, he
was dragged into the light.  Something unprecedented must obviously
have occurred.  His hair had turned snowy white.  Those fell back who
looked first into his eyes, for they saw in them reflected the face
of Hell himself.  The tale which Porphyro told them was in substance
this, that when he arrived last at the curtains, and already felt the
breath of punishment upon his cheek, there occurred to him one
loophole of escape.  He turned desperately at bay, like hunted
quarry, and roundly told the scrutineer that all he could claim by
the letter of his bond was Porphyro's shadow.  That was the last
living thing which passed out of the lists; and not Porphyro, who
preceded it.  Strange as it may seem, after a few heated words, the
justice of this quibble was acknowledged by the father of all such
juggleries.  He bore off the shadow with a sort of smile, that was
more terrible than men's frown, and lo and behold! when the
schoolfellows, with one accord, looked down at the feet of him who
had so miraculously escaped the infernal maw, they saw that Porphyro
was, as he ever afterwards remained, shadowless.  And now our readers
can guess why our hero walked always on the shady side of the way.

Nothing had ever been known (even in circles like this) so
successfully daring as this piece of evasion.  Round and round the
whole round globe, by means only known to wizards, the news sped fast
to all the wizard world.  It was proclaimed at every Sabbath, from
Blockula to the Brocken.  The Lapland witch whispered it to the
Finland witch, as they sat tying up wind after wind in knots for
their seafaring customers.  The Druids of Carnac knew it, and the
Persian devil worshippers.  The Shamans of Siberia made a song of it
and beat their magic drums thereto.  The magicians of Egypt pictured
it in their mirrors of ink.  The African Obi men washed their great
fetish in the blood of a thousand virgins, and sent it as a present,
over the desert sands, to Porphyro.  Even the medicine men heard of
it in the heart of an undiscovered continent, and emblazoned it upon
the walls of their medicine lodge.  Everyone foresaw a brilliant
career for Porphyro.  They fully expected him to disembowel Hell.
The reverse was what really happened.  Instead of swinging himself at
once to the top round of the ladder, he showed no disposition to
trouble himself at all.  He opened a private office in the town
referred to at the beginning of our story, and carried on a private
business in magic of the whitest kind.  For him no monster
evocations, with a million demons at his beck and call, like the
Sicilian whom Benvenuto Cellini employed to conjure for him in the
Coliseum.  Porphyro refused in the most stiff-necked manner to
exorcise on any terms for anyone.  He confined himself solely to
pettyfogging business, such as writing talismans, and reckoning magic
squares, drawing horoscopes, and casting schemes of geomancy,
poisoning rivals for lovers, or close-fisted relatives for
spendthrift heirs.  Need we state in black and white the reason
(concealed from everyone else), why he held his hand from higher
things?  Oh, the humiliation of it!  He was afraid!  Yes, Porphyro
was afraid, even he, who had plucked a hair from the devil's beard,
for that very reason he was afraid.  He had saved his soul alive,
losing only a shadow of little moment to him, but in return, he had
incurred the eternal enmity of one whose grudge had once shaken the
high heavens.  The general adversary of all mankind was first and
beyond all things most ferociously Porphyro's adversary.  Unhappy
Porphyro, who had already given seisin to hell, Porphyro with one
half of him already in the living devil's clutch, who never slept but
he dreamed of the tortures his poor shadow suffered at the hands of
those that lovingly work evil!  Tortures, which were but
foreshadowings of his own!  No wonder Porphyro dared not invoke even
the least of spirits.  He knew too well that the mightiest of them
would appear with no greater calling than a word.

But there was one antidote which wrestled with the nightshade in his
cup, one star of the right colour appeared above his horizon.  There
was a woman in his town (one only for him) a princess and the ward of
a king, an exquisite beauty.  From the first time he saw her, he
loved her with a passion which reproached his meaner self.  She fed
upon his sighs, without knowing that the air she breathed was full of
them.  In any case, he would never have dared to speak to her.  It
was sufficient daily bread to him to see her move.  He hung upon her
footsteps.  He kept pace with her in her rides, running ever in the
shadow because he himself had no shadow to call his own.  Yet he
forgot while looking at her this one great fact of his life.  Even in
his dreams she presently held his hand while he suffered.  And he
dreamed of her thus till he set his teeth in his pillow.  Gradually
her little mouth sucked up all the breath of his body.  He wrote
poems about his princess and swallowed them.  Often he took no other
food for days.  He made philtres which would infallibly have caused
her to love him, had he not ruthlessly thrown them all away as soon
as made.  He constructed an image of her in wax, and worshipped it
five times daily.  It was this which wrought his downfall.  Certain
of his clients (they had not paid him) denounced him as a sorcerer.
Without notice he received a domiciliary visit from the authorities.
Apart from other evidence which the house contained, the wax image of
the princess was discovered, and he was at once charged with
intending to make away with her life.  Oh, the irony of fate, he who
would have cheerfully laid down his own for her!  Being forcibly
removed from his house, the secret he had so long kept was
discovered, and this shadowlessness, though accounted for in a
hundred ways, all wide of the truth, was added at once to the long
list of crimes in his indictment.  At the preliminary examination, he
would confess nothing.  He was accordingly imprisoned pending the
preparation of tortures to shake his resolution.  With the aid of
these refinements, he might be made to confess anything, even that he
had attempted the life of his best beloved.  The scaffold loomed
before him.  And oh, that her name should be bandied about in such
context.

Meanwhile Porphyro sat, body and soul in darkness.  He saw none but
the jailer, who brought him food once daily, with a finger ever, on
his lips.  Rats there were, and such small deer, but with these he
could hold no converse, although in his youth he had met with men who
professed to teach their languages, Porphyro was fain to chatter
constantly to himself that he might have no time to think.  He played
his school games over again, rehearsed his school tasks to imaginary
masters, held imaginary conversations with clients and with his
parents long dead, and with his princess who was more than parent,
and more than dead to him.  He wooed her in a thousand ways, now as
an emperor, raising her to his level, now as the meanest of her
grooms, to whom she sweetly condescended, now he was a soldier,
better used to red lips of wounds than red lips which wound, now he
was a scholar, who forgot all wisdom save hers, now he was a miser,
who came like Jupiter in a shower of gold.  Thus riotous reigned
carnival before his coming Lent.

And now comes the strangest part of all this strange eventful
history.  He fancied once or twice that he was replied to as he
spoke.  Again and again he groped all over the blind prison, and felt
no one.  Yet there was of a surety a tongue which answered him.  And
the weirdness of it was that, turn though he might, it always spoke
from behind him.  Again he searched the litter of the dungeon, and
again without result.  The voice was at first unintelligible, like
the murmur of the sea, yet with a cadence which soon struck his ear
as strangely familiar.  He had heard it only once before, but it had
been in that cock-pit underground where he had fought a main which
had coloured his whole life.  He was bound up with the memory of it
like a poor prisoner whom men fetter to a corpse.  It was the still
small voice which dominates the brawl of Hell.

His hair could grow no whiter, else it had done so.  He listened with
all his ears and began to catch syllables and afterwards words, till
at last he made out that the Tempter was proposing terms of peace
with him.

Right well knew Porphyro (none better), the price that must be paid
for such a truce.  His soul must feed the quick of Hell.  It seemed
hard to yield up at last that immortal henchman which he had once so
gloriously saved from these same talons.  Yet what chance had he?  On
the one hand, if he maintained his feud with the Evil One, the halter
was weaving which must strangle love and life.  On the other part, if
he surrendered his soul to the Exile, he could at any rate make what
terms he pleased.  And there were terms he pictured himself exacting
which made ultimate payment of the highest price seem easy to the
blood which had once stood face to face with Satan, and given him
better than he gave.  Porphyro still continued to argue _pro_ and
_con_, though his decision was a foregone conclusion.  At last he
formulated his demands to the spirit.  He must marry the Princess.
He must be her husband, were it but for a single night.

The walls of the dungeon suddenly became bright with a kind of
phosphorescent glow.  Porphyro (still alone, or, at any rate, he
seemed so) saw a table standing in front of him, bearing a bond
already drawn and the materials for signing it.  The terms set forth
were those he had himself proposed.  He signed, sealed, and delivered
it, and was plunged into darkness again as his finger left the
parchment.  A sense of infernal laughter pervaded the air, though
nothing was to be heard.  Porphyro fell full length to the ground in
a fainting fit.

When he recovered his jailer was standing over him, come (as he
thought) to bring him food, but he was soon disabused of any such
notion by the man himself.  He, who had refused on all prior
occasions to hold converse with his prisoner, now spoke voluntarily
to tell him the sands of his captivity had run out.  At first the
dazed cage bird (who had forgotten for the moment his compact)
believed that he was on the point of expiating his crimes, real and
imaginary, upon the scaffold.  But the jailer, not without
difficulty, made it clear to him that all captives received pardon on
the joyous occasion of the marriage of their Princess, which was
fixed for that day.  Then Porphyro remembered all, and swooned again.

When he revived, our hero was sitting in the open air upon the steps
which led from the jail.  He caught the smell of oxen roasting whole
in the market-place.  The sky was red with the fires.  The streets as
far as he could see them, were paved with flowers and, decorated with
triumphal arches.  The citizens were bustling about in holiday
attire.  Music seemed to be playing everywhere.  Occasionally some
exuberant person fired off a gun.  Porphyro rubbed his eyes and
wondered whether this could really be his wedding day.  He had faith
in the boundless powers of the banner under which he had enrolled
himself.  And yet was it possible?  But his faith was amply
justified.  An equerry suddenly rode up, parting the spectators to
right and left, leading a spare horse magnificently caparisoned, and
followed in the distance by a brilliant retinue.  He doffed his cap
to Porphyro and sprang to the ground, and with a profound obeisance,
said in tones of deep respect:--

"I trust your Highness has recovered from your indisposition.  I have
brought the horse as your Highness commanded."

Porphyro dimly understood that some potent influence was at work on
his behalf.  With the assistance of his squire he took to the saddle.
The latter then, with another bow, remounted his own horse, scattered
a handful of gold to each side to break up the crowd, and with the
rest of the train (which had caught up with them) they galloped to
the Cathedral.  Porphyro noted with stupid surprise that all the
fountains spouted wine, whereto certain of the citizens, judging by
the hiccups which mingled with their cheers, had already applied
themselves, not wisely but too well.  But our hero was in a state of
so great fog himself as to feel his heart warm more towards these
than to the soberer ones, whose salutations he clumsily returned.  By
the time the Cathedral was reached, he was rolling in his saddle.  He
could not have dismounted without help.  The incense made him dizzy.
He could not get the ringing of the bells out of his ears.  The
candles danced before his eyes.  Of all the service he heard one
word, and that was uttered by one who stood beside him, and whom
alone he saw (and that through a mist) of all that gay assembly.  It
was the Princess.  He pressed her hand as if he would never part with
it.

The service over, he had no idea how, or in what order they reached
the castle, and the banquet which followed was more or less of a
blank to him.  The wines of which he partook liberally, could make
him no more drunk, nor all the compliments of all the fulsome
speeches (had he heard them) raise by one degree his pride.  He
soared empyrean high in the thought that he had won the right to
crush into one cup, one moment, all the eternal delirium of all the
heavens.

That moment of fruition had come at last.  Porphyro stood in that
holy of holies, his princess's chamber.  A guard of soldiers was
ranged along the four walls of this dainty nest.  Each leaned with
one arm upon a pike, while with the other hand he held aloft a
blazing torch.  Great personages were also present, both courtiers
and noble dames, and at last the bride herself was brought in by her
women.  While complimentary discourse passed from mouth to mouth,
Porphyro longed with his whole bartered soul to be alone with her.
He was burning with internal fire which he could hold in little
longer.  At last he approached one that appeared to act as master of
the ceremonies.

"When is this rigmarole going to end?" he muttered between his teeth.

"Whenever your Highness pleases to draw your sword and lay it in the
middle of the bed, the princess will take up her place upon one side
of it, while you occupy the other," was the reply.

Porphyro started.  He sorely recognised that voice.  The official
kept his face averted, but it was undoubtedly the demon.

"What mean you by this gabble of naked swords between me and her?"
thundered Porphyro, unheeding who might hear.  "Damned posture
master, is she not my wife?"

"Your wife, yes, but only by letters of procuration," and there was a
note of triumph in that voice.

"God of the Judgment!  What is that you say?"

"I say you must be dreaming not to remember that you are only
temporarily united to the princess in your character of proxy for his
Imperial Majesty, the Holy Roman Emperor."

"Alas the while!  Then I am dreaming, indeed!"

"These soldiers," continued the demon, "will remain here all night.
These ladies and gentlemen will also attend here till morning, to
entertain you and your bride of an hour through your somewhat tedious
spell of lying fully dressed together."

"Death and the Pit!  Is this true?"

"True as death, assured as the pit.  To-morrow you will sheathe your
sword, and depart from her for ever."

Porphyro pressed his hands to his temples.  He thought his brain
would burst.  He saw it all now.  He was the dupe of the fiend who
had once been his dupe.  His place in this pageant had been contrived
with infernal subtlety, only to wring the uttermost pang from his
heart strings.  He who sups with the devil (they say) must needs have
a very long spoon.  No help was possible.  The Evil One was reaping
his revenge.  And now he was assured his victim had at last grasped
the situation, he threw off the mask, and showed himself in his true
colours.  He raised his eyes for the first time from the ground,
those brimming lakes of bottomless hate which Porphyro had fronted
once before in the underground hall.  It was his turn now to quail.

"Ha! ha!" laughed the fallen angel.  "By mine ancient seat in heaven
(and that is an oath I never lightly take as you may guess), confess,
have I not bested you, friend Porphyro?  He laughs best who laughs
the last; is it not so?"

"But what about that bond registered between us in Hell's chancery?"
cried Porphyro, in a voice which would have melted triple brass.

"Your bond," shrieked Beelzebub.  "Do you remind me of your bond; you
who once outfaced me that a bond should be read by the letter, and
not by the spirit?  I have come round to your views, and I now fling
that word back in your teeth.  You have had your bond to the letter,
and now go and kill yourself, for there is nothing more for you to
do."

Porphyro bent like a broken reed.  He had found his over-mastering
fate.  His hopes were ash.  He breathed in gasps.  He staggered to
the window, and threw open the casement.  A great pitiful star looked
in, but to his eyes it appeared red and bloodshot.  He turned round
again to the room.  He wished to see once more before he died that
mistress of his soul for whose sake he had flung it away.  But the
figure of his master had swelled, and was swelling so rapidly in size
that it seemed to fill every available corner of the room.  Porphyro
raised his hands to heaven, and called upon his lady's name.  Three
times he called it, and then sprang out of the window.  The princess,
who had grasped nothing of what had passed, ran to the shutter, and
looked out just in time to hear the splash of his body as it fell
into the moat.  It was the first sign of interest in him which she
had shown.







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