essed against the door, in doing so, it
yielded to his touch. In the haste with which Friar Bacon had closed the
entrance, the bolt had not been shot. Herbert rose hastily to his feet,
and the next moment he was in the cell, looking eagerly round upon the
crucibles and alembics, which bore witness to his master's labors. But
beyond a general impression of work in hand, there was nothing to be
gleaned from this survey. An open parchment volume, in which the Friar
had recently been writing, next caught his attention. If the secret
should be there in any known language. Hubert knew something of the
Hebrew, but nothing yet of Arabic. He was reassured; the characters were
familiar to him; the language Latin. He seized the volume, and read the
few lines which the Friar had just traced on the last page.

They ran thus:

"Videas tamen utrum loquar in aenigmate vel secundum veritatem." And,
further (which we translate): "He that would see these things shall have
the key that openeth and no man shutteth, and when he shall shut no man
is able to open again."

"But the secret--the secret!" cried Hubert, impatiently, "let me know
what 'these things' are!"

He hastily turned the leaf back and read again. The passage was that one
in the "_Epistola de Secretis_" which spoke of the artificial thunder
and lightning, and beneath it was the full and precise receipt for its
composition. This at once explained the strange noises and the flashes
of light which he had so anxiously noticed. Surprising and gratifying as
this discovery might be, there was, Hubert thought, something beyond.
Roger Bacon, he reasoned, was not one to practice an experiment like
this for mere amusement. It was, he felt certain, a new form of
invocation, more potent, doubtless, over the beings of another world,
than any charm yet recorded. Be it as it might, he would try whether,
from the materials around him, it were not in his power to produce the
same result.

"Here are all the necessary ingredients," he exclaimed; "this yellowish
powder is the well known sulphur, in which I daily bathe the
argent-vive; this bitter, glistening substance is the salt of the rock,
the _salis petrae_; and this black calcination, the third agent. But the
proportions are given, and here stands a glass cucurbit in which they
should be mingled. It is of the form my master mostly uses--round, with
a small neck and a narrow mouth, to be luted closely, without doubt. He
has often told me