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ford in Cornwall. In either case, the story seems scarcely credible, unless Völund the smith could weave gold into gossamer. Peradventure he could. There are two or three poets who can.

“A Rosicrucian!" replied Silvester. “What is a Rosicrucian ? I am quite without news of those gentry. Are they Jacobins or Jacobites, Freemasons or Knights Templars? I am in ignorance, my dear Nugent: inform me.”

"You must have read of them surely," said Nugent, “in "in the writings of Lord Lytton."

." I never read a line of Lord Lytton's in my life," said Silvester.

"You surprise me," said Nugent. “He is one of the greatest writers of the time."

"I agree with you, not having read him," said Silvester, reticently. "But how about these Rosicrucians? Are you a Rosicrucian?"

“Well, rather more than less, I think. You can have no idea what marvellous adventures

I have undergone, and what strange people I have encountered. One day, in Amsterdam, I went into Focking's shop to get some dry curaçao. I dropped a coin. A withered old gentleman, tall and thin, a mixture of Mephistopheles with Asmodeus, picked it up and handed it to me. I made some kind of courteous acknowledgment. We walked to the shop door together. He took out a gold snuff-box, blazing with brilliants, hard to beat even in Amsterdam, and offered a pinch of snuff. Of course I could not refuse, and of course I could not help sneezing. He drew me into conversation. He asked me the very question I have asked you. I replied in your own words: What is a Rosicrucian?"

"I hope you got a satisfactory answer," said Silvester. "I should rather like to

know."

"Not at first . . . not indeed till I had met him three or four times, sometimes at his own house, sometimes at my hotel. I could not for

a long time decide whether to call him an impostor or a lunatic. I at last found he was neither."

"But I suppose he had nothing scientific to teach you?"

He

"Not in the modern sense of science. amused me at first by whimsical experiments. He burnt a rosebud to ashes on a watch-glass, over the flame of a spirit-lamp. He dropped the ashes into a crystalline vase of water, and poured in some ruby fluid, and suddenly the rose reappeared, blooming on its stem."

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Sleight of hand," said Silvester.

"So at once I thought, and thought the same of other pretty tricks he played. However, suspending my opinion of him, and feeling, in my youthful conceit, that if impostor he could not swindle, or if lunatic strangle me, I listened to him with profound gravity. He lectured on the Rosicrucians, whose founder was one Christian Rosenkreuz, some five centuries ago. He made two discoveries-how to

transmute any metal into gold, and how to live until. you are tired of living."

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They complement each other well enough,' said Silvester. "If one wanted to live any length of time on this planet, plenty of gold would be requisite to keep matters straight. The Rosicrucians are a sensible sect."

"They have yet another power," said Nugent. "If they have once grasped a person's hand in a peculiar way, they can bring that person by some magnetic attraction from any distance at any time."

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Uncommonly unpleasant for the person,' says Silvester with a laugh; "I hope I shan't be pulled out of bed in the short hours, after a hard day's hunting, by one of these Rosicrucians. But of course you found the old gentleman was cracked-or half-cracked, with a touch of the humbugeous."

"Your theory has been mine all through, especially as he told me he was born in the year 1365, and had not yet decided when he

should die. But I was rather puzzled when he took a slip of lead, poured on it some colourless fluid, and it became gold, as I found next day by assay."

"Sleight of hand again," said Silvester.

"So I thought. So I still think, I think. Yet another thing was even more curious. I am an early riser-always have been. In those days I was searching for adventure; and one morning I saw a very pretty girl, evidently not a Dutch damsel, enter a house just as I left my hotel. There was something in her contour and movement which made me think her Parisian. I walked slowly down the street, and saw her draw down a blind in an upper window. There was no mistaking the movement of her hand. It was one of those delicate and fluent gestures which belong only to loveable women. I met her a morning or two afterwards, by deliberate accident. She was nursing a sick relation through the night, and slept most of the day. We became friendly

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