thing, shaken now and then by his cough and feverish shivering,
and often he cried out like one inspired: "Infinite labour, measureless
reward! All, all fulfilled!"

Frau Schimmel realised that the end had come. After he had received the
sacrament, the old lady laid his hand upon the curly head of his son.
Melchior gazed fondly into the sweet face of his child, and quietly
closed his eyes.

The priest who administered extreme unction to him was fond of telling
the story of this last sacrament, for he had never seen any dying man
exhibit greater confidence and faith.

Frau Schimmel cried herself nearly blind.

On the third day after the death of Doctor Melchior Ueberhell, his
mortal remains were carried to rest with great ceremony, and buried in
the place that he himself had chosen during his lifetime.

Between his wife and his mother, rose the little mound that marked his
resting-place, and later many who visited the churchyard used to
stop beside the graves of Bianca and Melchior, perhaps because of the
creeping roses which had been planted beneath the cross of his beloved,
and which spread so luxuriantly that they soon covered the husband's
grave as well as the wife's, and in the month of June decked them both
with a wondrous wealth of blossom.

In the letter which the doctor handed to Herr Winckler, the guardian
of his son, shortly before his death, he desired the notary, or his
successor, to give to his son Zeno, on the morning of his twenty-fifth
birthday, the sealed package containing the phial, together with the
accompanying manuscript.

In a second letter on which was written: "To be opened in case my son
Zeno should die before reaching his twenty-fifth birth day," he informed
the notary of the power that dwelt within the phial, and charged him to
employ it for the benefit of mankind.

Both letters--the one to Zeno and the other to the notary--contained
precise directions for the making of the elixir, and also the
recommendation that it should be sent to all universities and faculties,
as well as to the spiritual and temporal authorities of his beloved
fatherlands, Saxony and Germany, that it might become the common
property of the whole world.

To Frau Schimmel the doctor entrusted the worldly welfare of little
Zeno, and to the notary the responsibility of his education, and both of
these people not only fulfilled their duties, but gave the child a large
share of their love, so that the orphan throve