hese persons hence
always of their own accord wear a bandage before one of their
eyes--for this power will often exist only on one side--so that they
may walk about and deal with their neighbours, without harming them."

"Of these I have never heard," replied the stranger.

"That is matter of surprise to me," continued the old miner with the
most perfect gravity: "for since you come from Hungary, and probably
were born there, where you have such a sight of vampires, or
blood-sucking corpses, such swarms of goblins and manikins of the
mountains, dwarfs and subterraneous creatures, that will often come
across you even by broad daylight, I fancied everything belonging to
witchcraft must be in high vogue there and generally notorious."

"No," answered the traveller, "I never up to this present instant
heard anything of these prodigies, much as I have seen and myself
experienced that by such as have not been so far from home may be
deemed remarkable enough."

"Now then," said Conrad taking up his word again, "when the Zahori, as
they call him, has once got so far that with his naked eye, instead of
quietly seeing the treasures beneath his feet, he can give anyone a
fit of sickness or put him to death, he has only one step further to
become perfect and a master in his art. Look you, my good stranger,
when he has thus reacht the highest degree, he will set himself down
before a dish of baked meat, while it is still standing in the oven
covered up and shut down, and without anybody being able to observe
him will with his mere eyes devour you a goose, or a hare, or whatever
it may be, swallowing it up so clean and neat, that, if he chooses,
not a bone will be left. Place some nuts before him or melons, he will
eat up all the kernel or pulp out of them, without making even a
single scratch on the shell or rind, but leaving them undamaged just
as if everything was still within. He has had a good meal; nobody can
prove, or even suspect what he has done; and others have nothing left
them but a fruitless search."

"The devil again!" cried Andrew; "that's the trick I should like, if I
could learn the art."

"An artist of this sort," continued the old miner, "may however ascend
a great deal higher; for such things after all would be merely a jest.
If he has a spite against any one, he can pluck his heart out of his
body with a look, just as easily as his money out of his pocket. The
enemy he sets eye on will waste away and die m