yet distinct
from the known operations of that mysterious agency--a fluid that
connected thought to thought with the rapidity and precision of the
modern telegraph, and the influence of this fluid, according to Mejnour,
extended to the remotest past,--that is to say, whenever and wheresoever
man had thought. Thus, if the doctrine were true, all human knowledge
became attainable through a medium established between the brain of the
individual inquirer and all the farthest and obscurest regions in the
universe of ideas. Glyndon was surprised to find Mejnour attached to the
abstruse mysteries which the Pythagoreans ascribed to the occult science
of NUMBERS. In this last, new lights glimmered dimly on his eyes; and
he began to perceive that even the power to predict, or rather to
calculate, results, might by-- (Here there is an erasure in the MS.)

....

But he observed that the last brief process by which, in each of these
experiments, the wonder was achieved, Mejnour reserved for himself,
and refused to communicate the secret. The answer he obtained to his
remonstrances on this head was more stern than satisfactory:

"Dost thou think," said Mejnour, "that I would give to the mere pupil,
whose qualities are not yet tried, powers that might change the face of
the social world? The last secrets are intrusted only to him of whose
virtue the Master is convinced. Patience! It is labour itself that is
the great purifier of the mind; and by degrees the secrets will grow
upon thyself as thy mind becomes riper to receive them."

At last Mejnour professed himself satisfied with the progress made by
his pupil. "The hour now arrives," he said, "when thou mayst pass the
great but airy barrier,--when thou mayst gradually confront the terrible
Dweller of the Threshold. Continue thy labours--continue to surpass
thine impatience for results until thou canst fathom the causes. I leave
thee for one month; if at the end of that period, when I return, the
tasks set thee are completed, and thy mind prepared by contemplation
and austere thought for the ordeal, I promise thee the ordeal shall
commence. One caution alone I give thee: regard it as a peremptory
command, enter not this chamber!" (They were then standing in the room
where their experiments had been chiefly made, and in which Glyndon, on
the night he had sought the solitude of the mystic, had nearly fallen a
victim to his intrusion.)

"Enter not this chamber till my return; or, ab