was credited opposite their names
upon the parchment.

[Illustration: "THE FIGURE OF A TALL MAN."]

Sir David, leading the way, drew aside one heavy curtain and then a
second one, which allowed them to enter a long low-roofed room almost
in total darkness, as far as the end to which they were introduced was
concerned; but the upper portion of the hall was lit in lurid fashion.
At the further end of the Refectory was a raised platform on which
the heads of the Order had dined, during the prosperous days of the
edifice, while the humbler brethren occupied, as was customary, the
main body of the lower floor. Upon this platform stood a metal tripod,
which held a basket of dazzling fire, and in this basket was set a
crucible, now changing from red to white, under the constant exertions
of two creatures who looked like imps from the lower regions rather
than inhabitants of the upper world. These two strove industriously
with a huge bellows which caused the fire to roar fiercely, and this
unholy light cast its effulgence upon the faces of many notable men
packed closely together in the body of the hall; it also shone on the
figure of a tall man, the ghastly pallor of whose countenance was
enhanced by a fringe of hair black as midnight. He had a nose like a
vulture's beak, and eyes piercing in their intensity, as black as his
midnight hair. His costume also resembled that of a monk in cut, but
it was scarlet in hue; and the radiance of the furnace caused it to
glow as if illumined by some fire from within.

At the moment the last two entered, Farini was explaining to his
audience, in an accent palpably foreign, that he was a man of science,
and that the devil gave him no aid in his researches, an assertion
doubtless perfectly accurate. His audience listened to him with
visible impatience, evidently anxious for talk to cease and practical
work to begin.

The wizard held in his right hand the bag of gold that the king had
seen taken from the outer room. Presently there entered through
another curtained doorway, on what might be called the stage, the
money-taker in the monk's dress, who handed to the necromancer the
coins given him by Lyndsay and Ballengeich, which the wizard tossed
carelessly into the bag. The attendant placed the scroll upon a table
and then came forward with a weighing-machine held in his hand. The
alchemist placed the gold from the bag upon one side of the scale, and
threw into the other, bar after bar o