these
mansions, and hurried across the wide area to the canal stairs, where his
gondola awaited him. Whoever did this could not but observe a tall female
figure, which, cloaked and masked, walked backwards and forwards across the
piazza, regarding no one, yet with an air that seemed to invite a
companion.

More than one of the young nobles approached the presumably fair
peripatetic, and, with courtesy commonly in inverse ratio to the amount of
wine he was carrying home, proffered his escort to his gondola. Whenever
this happened the figure removed her mask and unclasped her robe, and
revealed a sight which for one moment rooted the young man to the earth and
in the next sent him scampering to his bark. For the countenance was a
death's head, and the breast was that of a mouldering skeleton.

At last, however, a youth presented himself who, more courageous or more
tipsy than his fellows, or more helplessly paralysed with horror than they,
did not decline the proffered caress, and suffered himself to be drawn
within the goblin's accursed embrace. Valiant or pot-valiant, great was his
relief at finding himself clasped, instead of by a loathsome spectre, by a
silver-haired man of noble presence, yet with a countenance indescribably
haggard and anxious.

"Come, my son," he cried, "hasten whither the rewards of thy intrepidity
await thee. Impouch the purse of Fortunatus! Indue the signet of Solomon!"

The young man hesitated. "Is there nought else?" he cautiously demanded.
"Needs it not that I should renounce my baptism? Must I not subscribe an
infernal compact?"

"In thy own blood, my son," cheerfully responded the old gentleman.

"Peradventure," hesitatingly interrogated the youth, "peradventure you are
_he_?"

"Not so, my son, upon honour," returned the mysterious personage. "I am but
a distressed magician, at this present in fearful straits, from which I
look to be delivered by thee."

The youth gazed some moments at his companion's head, and then still more
earnestly at his feet. He then yielded his own hand to him, and the pair
crossed the piazza, almost at a run, the magician ever ejaculating, "Speed!
speed!"

They paused at the foot of a lofty tower, doorless and windowless, with no
visible access of any kind. But the magician signed with his hand,
pronounced some cabalistical words, and instantly stone and lime fell
asunder and revealed an entrance through which they passed, and which
immediately closed