ven children if they chose might seize
hold of him."

Conrad gave the peasant a look of inexpressible contempt, and then
turning with ambiguous courtesy to the strange miner, said: "You are a
man of experience and knowledge, as it seems; nevertheless your
well-meant advice will hardly meet with acceptance here. For first the
old man of the mountain will never have anything to do with sorcery
and witchcraft, because he hates every kind of superstition, even that
which is pious and unavoidable, much more then one of this sort, which
he must needs hold to be utterly accurst. Besides you don't even know
in what way the thief goes to work, so as to take proper measures
against him."

"What do you mean?" asked the stranger, somewhat abasht, but whose
curiosity was stirred.

"Have you never heard," continued Conrad, "or read of those wonderful
persons, or, as you have been such a great traveller, have you
yourself never stumbled upon such, whose eyes can pierce through a
board, through wainscot and wall, nay down into the depths of the
earth and into the heart of a mountain?"

"In Spain," replied the stranger, "there are said to be men, who
without the help of a divining-rod can find out treasures and metals
with their bodily eyes, even though they should be lying ever so deep
under rocks or forests."

"Just so," proceeded Conrad; "Zahori, or Zahuri is the name borne, as
I have heard tell, by the people who have carried their power and
knowledge to this pitch. Only nobody knows whether one man can learn
this of another, or whether it is a natural gift, or proceeds from a
league with the evil one."

"From the devil certainly!" cried Andrew interrupting him, having been
gradually poking in his face nearer and nearer.

"I am not talking to you, lowland lubber," said Conrad; "you would do
better to seat yourself behind the stove; that is your right place
when people are canvassing grave questions of science."

Andrew muttered, and angrily drew back his chair a little; whereupon
Conrad went on; "Look you man, this art in many countries is not the
only one, nor even the highest, profitable as it may be for
discovering veins of metal, or even gold and silver. Of much greater
weight however, and far more formidable are those who have a power in
their eyes to do one an injury, and with a single glance can infect
one with a disease, a fever, a jaundice, a fit of madness, or even
look one dead. The better and godlier part of t