t him to
the heart.

"Only lay your request before our master," he said indignantly, "and
no doubt he will allow you to enjoy your freedom some time longer. If
you were to be very pressing, perchance he might even give up the plan
of the marriage altogether; for it seems to me, you have no very
mighty anxiety about Rose's hand."

"Softly!" said Eleazar, throwing off his bed-gown and putting on his
coat very much at his ease; "softly!" He seated himself again before
the furnace, and tasted the liquour while he clarified it: "Be it so;
for then his fortune will all keep together, and thus I shall be able
at length to carry on my operations on a grand scale. But the old man
will never listen to what anybody says; what he has once determined
and pronounced must be fulfilled, though reason itself were to go to
the bottom. Still this should not annoy me a jot, unless that
outlandish raggamuffin had put me out of all patience, and made my
choler boil over. One ought to have the right of knocking such
mischievous scoundrels on the head."

"What is the matter with you?" askt Edward somewhat surprised.

"Have you already forgotten that miserable vagabond," continued
Eleazar with a ferocious look, "who played off his stupid trick upon
us the other day at the forge? I am to die soon. This was the only
thing wanting to set all our affairs in the most dismal confusion. But
here, here at this furnace, I have it already preparing, the only sure
safeguard against all such idle fears; and as I have succeeded with
the help of wisdom in turning unsightly things into gold, so I shall
not fail in producing that elixir for which so many mighty minds have
heretofore sought and laboured, and often in vain."

Edward went nearer to him. "In truth," he exclaimed, "you amaze me.
You talk about these mysterious matters with such a careless security,
as I have never yet met with; and it perplexes me the more since my
reason tells me that your pursuit is a mere chimera, and the discovery
of such an art a fable."

"Reason!" cried the little man, drawing up his withered face into
numberless wrinkles. "This reason methinks is the true chimera, and
never spawned anything but fables. Take these gold bars, which I cast
in this form yesterday, after extracting the metal last week from some
lead: there lies a touchstone; scratch it; and then tell me whether it
is not true genuine gold."

Edward took up the bars, put them to the test, and found them g