The Brazen Android: In Two Parts. Part Two

THE figure on the threshold was the Paduan. A vague dread rising to a terror, inspired by his peculiar appearance, succeeded the moment’s affright which his unannounced entrance gave the two friars. He was a man whose age it would have been impossible to determine, so strange a mixture of haughty youth and gray maturity was there in his general presence. In person he was tall and shapely, with so much majesty of port that even the majestic Bacon looked inferior in contrast; and yet, mysteriously confused with his august demeanor was a certain flickering air as of ghastly decrepitude, which made the whole seem incongruous and appalling. All that inspires homage even unto worship was in his bearing, but in it was also an indefinable element which would startle and repel homage in the very act of prostration. He wore a long robe of black silk edged with sable, and drooping in ample folds below the knee; and what was noticeable, while his legs, closely sheathed in high travel-worn boots of brown Cordovan, were strong and beautifully formed, they terminated in feet graceful, indeed, in their narrow length and suppleness, but so strangely lean, and their bones and cordy tendons so apparent through the thin leather coverings, that, what with this and with the down-curving pointed toes of the boots themselves, they suggested a morbid fancy of an ill-concealed hybrid of foot and claw. In his hand he held a black traveling-cap of a curious pattern, from which depended a trailing sable plume fastened by a single lurid jewel, a fireopal, evidently of great purity and value. The whole character of his countenance was that of a mournful and supramortal but evil beauty. His forehead, surmounted by a splendid chevelure of curling coal-black hair which fell to his shoulders, was not only large, — it was enormous. Strangely, even fearfully developed in the region of ideality, — so much so that the protuberances of the marble temples seemed swelling into horns, while the whole front of the brow was only less powerfully prominent, — it gave an expression of overpowering intellectuality to the face itself which was terrible and painful to behold. A secret and supreme despair rested upon the colorless face like a shadow. A still, sluggish light flamed in the large dark mesmeric eyes, overarched by their black brows. The nose was aquiline, beautiful and haughty. The lips were wreathed with a superb and desolating scorn. The face was beardless, and the bold outline of the chin was the expression of an inexorable will. The whole presence of the man filled the mind with that sensation felt only after the passage of some unearthly dream. Such was the profound and learned Doctor Malatesti.

Bacon was the first to recover his composure.

“ Welcome, my illustrious Doctor Malatesti,” said he, —“ welcome once more to England.”

“ Great thanks for your courtesy, my marvelous doctor,” replied the Paduan, bowing so low that his obeisance savored of grave mockery. “ Great thanks to ye both, my learned frères. I accost ye both, good celibates.”

He strode forward two steps from the threshold into the gloomy light of the room, as he ceased speaking, and the door closed with a fierce crash behind him. The friars stood startled and terrified. Bacon himself, with his disposition to refer occurrences to natural causes, could not but feel the nervous perturbation which will possess the coolest mind when such occurrences assume the aspect of the supernatural. The supposition, however, that the Paduan had deftly shut the door with his foot, upon entering, instantly succeeded the fantastic impression that it had been closed by its own agency ; though this in turn was dissipated in a vague sense of dread as, following his thought, his eye rested upon the taloned feet of Malatesti, and received the morbid suggestion their strange shape conveyed. At the same moment, a long moan of wind sounded eerily through the grisly gloom, followed by a sullen roll of thunder dying away in sluggish reverberations, and the rushing of rain. The friar looked up with a beating heart, conscious only for an instant of the dark majesty of the motionless figure before him ; conscious the next instant that his eyes, burning with a still, naphthaline flame, were fixed upon Bungy, whose face was yellow with dismay. At once Bacon, with a mingled feeling of shame that he had suffered himself to be thus affected and a secret anger at the Paduan’s behavior, controlled himself into calm.

“ Good Doctor Malatesti,” he said, with an assumption of phlegm, ‘‘this is my co-laborer, Thomas Bungy.”

“ I know him well,” was the shrill reply. “ He is as big as a cask.”

The visitor’s face was void of all expression as he made this strange remark ; but whether in the remark itself, or in the tone in which it was offered, there was involved a contempt so tremendous that it wrought revulsion in the sturdy breast of Bungy, so that his dismay was suddenly overflowed with hearty rage. Nevertheless, he held himself in check, and with an air of indifference lounged down upon the setlle.

“ ft is the effect of study,” he said complacently, lazily eying the Paduan, while he nonchalantly played with his rosary. “ Study bloats a man hugely. At least it maketh me big, while it causeth Frère Roger to wax meagre” —

“ You came upon us without warning, Doctor Malatesti,” said Bacon, interrupting the burly friar in the exposure he was making of himself. “ How happened it that you gained admittance ? — for I heard not your challenge at the portal.”

“ Truly,” replied the Paduan, “ I was spared the pains of knocking by your shapely servitor, who opened the door as I set foot upon the steps, and ran away on beholding me.”

“ Ah, the brute ! ” broke in Friar Bungy, his suppressed rage at the Paduan readily transferred into open manifestations against Cuthbert; “ the misshapen varlet! Thus, Roger, doth he maltreat our visitors. By Mary, but I wi11 clapperclaw him ! ”

“ Tush, tush! ” said Bacon impatiently. “ Cuthbert is commonly faithful and decorous, and needs patience and kind treatment in his oddities rather than the discipline of your rude fist. Good Doctor Malatesti, 1 pray you be seated. Are you newly from Italy? ”

The Paduan, with the mien of some dark emperor, seated himself in Bacon’s chair, and, drawing his long rapier from its sheath under his robe, laid it, as if for convenience, on the oaken table.

“ I am but just landed at St. Botolph’s wharf,” he said, " and am newly from Italy.”

“ Where lodge you during your sojourn with us? ” asked Bacon.

“ In the air,” was the strange answer.

A feeling that the Paduan was indeed mad flitted through the mind of the friar ; but, controlling his uneasiness, he affected to perceive nothing singular in his reply.

“ You will be pleased to know, good frères,” continued the Italian.&emdash,; “you who are so given to dabbling in public matters, — that your antichrist, my beloved Pope Innocent, lies at the point of death. You start! Nay, even popes must die, — though fortunately the apostolic succession is secure. Fortunately, I say, for, whatever you may think, such pontiffs are necessary as blocks to the fast and far-going wheels of your De Montforts and Grostetes, who would fain roll the world on a track which would ill suit my political philosophy.”

“ Nay, good doctor,” said Bacon, hastily interposing to prevent the explosion of English wrath which suddenly fermented in the sturdy heart of Bungy and flushed his large face, at the taunting speech of the visitor, “ let us not bandy politics. Let us rather hold discourse on matters of science, in which you are a rare adept.”

“My good Frère Bungy is, after the manner of the thirteenth century, a patriot,” pursued the Paduan, with a strange laugh, evidently paying no attention to Bacon. “ Ay, but ‘t is my doctrine that churchmen should not meddle in matters of state. There must be neither religion nor morals in politics.”

“ Then were politics irreligious and immoral,” said Bacon.

“ ’T is a doctrine worthy of the archfiend ! ” roared Bungy.

“Then ’t is a worthy doctrine,” replied the Paduan, with a placid gravity of face strangely at variance with the devilish sneer of his voice.

Bacon warned Bungy with a look to remain silent. There was an uneasy dread in his heart at the aspect and manner of the Doctor Malatesti, which was heightened by the wild quality of his voice. The tones were grave, yet intensely shrill. Their shrillness was in itself startling and unearthly, and bore, moreover, a fearful incongruity with the still, mesmeric light of his eyes, the calmness of his enormous brow, the solemn, scornful power and mournful beauty of his whole countenance. The laugh, too, with which he had commenced a former remark was singularly unhuman. While it resembled in sound a piercing peal of mirth, there was yet no accompanying movement of the muscles of his face to denote any degree of humor. The voice alone had laughed; the face was cold and immobile as marble.

“To think,” resumed the Italian,— " to think of such a fat frockling as you, Bungy, reforming what you call the abuses of the realm ! ‘T is marvelous. Reform ! Can you reform yourself ? Remake, if you can, what sire and mother and the life of man made you. Go to, go to! I bid you despair. Preach roses and live nightshade. ‘T is the fashion and the fate of man.”

“ I know not what preaching roses and living nightshade may be,” said Bungy angrily, " but I do know ” —

“ Preach against gluttony and winebibbing, and practice both continually,” interrupted the Paduan.

“ By my dame,” retorted the fat friar, “ but this passes! Thou saucy doctor, know this, — that happy is that friar who can get a taste at odd seasons of stockfish and ale ! Meantime, bread of the coarsest and water of the well are the Franciscan’s food and drink. Mine is scanty enow, by St. Swithin! ”

“ Oh, oh! ” said the Paduan. “ Hear him swear, and by that pig of a Saxon saint! Resolve me this, frockling, — what did you dine on to-day ?”

“A wooden table ! ” shouted the friar.

“ Ay, truly, frockling; and what was on the table ? ” demanded the other.

“ Barley crusts and pure water,” answered Bungy stoutly, yet with a shade of meekness in his tone.

“Ay, truly,” sneered Malatesti. “ Your cousin the vintner hath a fashion of garnishing’ his board with barley crusts and water. Yet own the dinner you made off the better part of a calvered salmon, the pullet sauced with butter and barberries, the forcemeat balls, and the marrow pudding. Rare eating, Fière Bungy.”

Bungy’s face resumed its former yellow tinge of dismay. His fellow-friar, with a single glance at him, saw that the Paduan’s account of the repast was the true one ; and at this proof of what might be termed in our age clairvoyant power, and which was another evidence of those strange sorts of knowledge he had ascribed to Malatesti, a cold fear crept through Bacon’s soul that the latter might, by the same mysterious faculty, divine the secret of the android. Or was the Paduan no more than some mad charlatan, aiming to confound them with knowledge he might possibly have gathered at the vintner’s door or window ?

“ Rare eating, Fière Bungy,” Malatesti continued. ‘‘ And what of the drinking? What of the nine-hooped pot of mead you guzzled, and the spiced wine ? Oh, see now! ” and with one circular motion of his arm the rapier swept up in his grasp from the table, and down upon the huge breast of the corpulent fière. The flask was pierced, and Bungy’s frock suddenly showed a widening moisture.

“ It is my blood! ” he roared, starting to his feet. Singularly enough, his first thought, no less than the alarmed Bacon’s, was that he had received a wound.

“ Yes,” said the Paduan, whose rapier had already returned to the table, “ your blood ! See it! Smell it! ” In fact, the wine at that moment was plashing on the floor, and its spicy fumes were diffused upon the air of the chamber. " I am he that degrades,” said Malatesti in his awful voice, with his still eyes fixed upon the pallid visage of Bacon.

Bungy, shuddering through all his bulk, his healthy face grown flabby and livid, and his lips white in his gray beard, tremblingly drew the flask from his bosom, and, turning it so that the wine ceased to flow from the puncture, helplessly sat down, gazing at it, with a hoarse groan.

“ It is wine I got for a poor widow,” he snuffled presently, with a forlorn effort to maintain his self-respect.

“ Hear him lie,” said the Paduan, with an intonation of withering scorn.

Bacon remained silent.

“I am the apostle of despair,” pursued Malatesti, his eyes still fixed upon Bacon’s countenance. “ I strip away the mask and show the man. Labor, labor to build the perfect realm ; but the realm is made of men, and men are unchangeably bestial at the core. Wolf and snake, hog and harpy, are inextricably mixed in man, and virtue is nothing but a covering lie, itself the foulest vice of all. Despair, I say, despair! In this stripped friar behold the type of your De Montforts, your Grostetes. your saints and patriots, as they are within. Look to their secret hearts, their hidden lives : there hides the brute half of tlie centaur, man. Fair and white is the skin, but under the breastbone the hellpool rages. Oh, may it rage forever ! Cheer, Bungy, cheer ! The rest are like you.”

“ Doctor Malatesti ” — said Bacon.

“ Hear me,” interrupted the Paduan. “ Men are a base mixture, for flesh and soul agree not. But wise and great is the soul. Provide, then, to build the perfect realm by peopling the earth with souls. For what saitli the schoolman ? ‘ The soul is not man,’ he saith; ‘ would it be man if joined to a body of brass ? ’ No, ’t would be then the pure soul. Ay, and then ’t would tell you how souls may people earth without these ruining bodies of flesh. It cannot tell you till it be shrined in some form which will permit it voice. It cannot tell you in the evil form of flesh, whose quality and motions suspend its spiritual knowledge. But in a form of brass it can tell you. Ay, you, a man, instructed by a soul shrined in an android, can then accomplish the conditions which will render it possible for souls to descend to earth and achieve all things, undarkened in their knowledge by this form of clay. Never from man can you thus be instructed. The soul is metamorphosed in man. Soul and the elements of flesh conjoined make man, the base, the vile, the brutal, the foolish and unchangeable reprobate.”

“ Doctor Malatesti,” said Bacon sternly, “ be done with this, I pray you. For these wild and bitter thoughts I care not, but your conduct ” —

A crash of thunder broke his speech, and in the momentary confusion of his vision the imperial figure of the Paduan seemed to loom up darkly before him in the sheeting flame which lit the room as from a gulf below. The next instant, amidst the receding reverberations and the rushing of the rain, he saw that the man had risen to his feet, and was standing motionless in the gloom, the naphthaline light motionless in his eyes, his mournful features passionless and cold in the shadow which rested upon them, and the impression of ghastly decrepitude in his presence seeming stronger now than before, though, as before, unreferable to any trait of his form. The brave-hearted friar, though conscious that he was wrought upon by the weird illusions of the moment, felt their fullest power, and his soul quailed. Bungy, for his part, sat stupidly staring, utterly bewildered by what had passed.

“ I am growing old,” said the Paduan, in slow, wailing tones. “ Long has been my term of haughty youth, —long, long, oh, long, — and men have been as I have wished them to be. Arts, laws, thoughts, religions, all I have withstood, nor have they shaken my empire. But the new spirit that rejects the dreams of the mind, and tracks effects to their causes in nature, and will make its highest ideals effects by its knowledge of causes, — it is born, it is born, and I am growing old ! ”

At these strange words Bacon shuddered vaguely, and a dark, mysterious, confused impression glimmered within him, as if not the Paduan, but another, had spoken. An utter suspension of all sound save that of the storm succeeded.

“ It is well,” said Malatesti, startling the silence with his piercing voice, and reviving the impression in Bacon’s mind that the former speech had been uttered by another. “ You would say, Frère Bacon, that I have dealt unmannerly. Be it granted ; as ye are both Christian men, good frères, forgive me under the supreme law of charity. Say no more. How fares the android ? See, I have taken such interest in your work that I have myself fashioned you the tongue.”

Bacon recoiled aghast as the Paduan held toward him a model in gold of the human tongue, which he had taken from under his robe.

“The anatomia of this is perfect,” pursued the unmoved Malatesti, “ but it must be filled with a molten composition of mercury, brass dust, and sulphur, the proportions of which I will show you. It will then be ready for fusion with the head. Come, let us visit your laboratory.”

Bungy started up abjectly at this imperative invitation, and moved to the door with the Paduan. Unable to interpose, unable even to think, Bacon followed, with his brain in a whirl. Through a door on the opposite side of the passageway the trio entered the sleeping-room of the friars, an apartment similar in all respects to that they had left, save that its only furniture was a couple of chairs and two pallets spread upon the floor. A small iron effigy of St. Francis stood in a niche in the wall. Grasping this figure with both hands, Bungy drew it toward him. As if by magic, a portion of the oaken wainscot suddenly receded inward, revealing a dark vault, from which floated a strong aromatic perfume. A moment, and Bungy had lighted a torch within. Then, descending three stone steps, the others stood in the laboratory, and the gigantic friar, seizing an effigy similar to the other on the hither side of the wall, drew it toward him, and the wainscot closed behind them.

The flaring torch, projecting from a socket in the wall, dimly lit up the cavernous gloom of the vault, and threw a ruddy, glimmering light on its grotesque mechanical and chemical furniture. Huddled and distorted black shadows, like a herd of monstrous phantoms, continually moved and flickered on the floor and walls, with the flapping and wavering of the flambeau. At one side of the apartment was the forge, a raised reredos, having somewhat the shape of an altar, on which smouldered a dull fire of coals; and near it stood an anvil, with hammers, smelting-pots, crucibles, and other implements of the foundry strewn about. In the remoter part of the large space were rough tables covered with jars and flasks of stone and metal, glass retorts and alembics, in which trembled divers-colored liquids, and the various utensils of chemistry, together with a multitude of objects too numerous for a brief inventory. Around rose the rough walls, built of blocks of stone, and begrimed with the smoke of all the fires that had burned on the reredos for perhaps a century. The form of the vault was an oblong square. Its windows were closely shuttered, and the high, raftered ceiling, shrouded thick with shadow, would have been altogether undiscernible save for a small circular opening in a corner of the roof, called in the language of the time a louver, which served as an outlet for the smoke, as also for ventilation, though it hardly admitted a ray from the clouded sky beyond.

Presently a stranger object than any lent the place a new interest. Pushed forward by Bungy from a shadowed recess into the centre of the vault, and apparently rolling upon hidden casters, emerged a large square black pedestal, on which stood a shrouded form. In a moment Bungy had removed the covering and disclosed a large bust of brass, truncated above the elbows. The friar lit two cuneiform candles of yellow wax, which he placed upon the front corners of the pedestal, on either side of the image. Their quiet radiance rested strangely on the burnished android, whose metal features seemed to survey the group with a steadfast and awful stare. In remembrance of Malatesti, who had first suggested its formation, Bacon had moulded the face into a counterpart of the Italian’s terrible and demoniac beauty, and the flowing locks of metal, which covered the head and fell to the shoulders, were no less an imitation of the curling coal-black tresses of Malatesti. But, though undesigned, there was in the expression of the android a still more startling resemblance ; for the lips had been made partly open, and this, added to the stare of the blind, balless, awful eyes under the enormous brow, gave to the bright and terrible features an expression of living and terrific despair. It was a fearful intensification of the look which was secret and shadowed in the mournful face of the Paduan, hbt it was like a revelation of the true expression of his soul.

He had seated himself at ease in an oaken chair before the image, and his eyes were fixed upon it. No sound murmured upon the sombre silence of the vault, save the aerial and distant rushing of the river of rain. The quiet light of the tapers shed a weird radiance upon his vast and melancholy brow, and served to deepen his expression of solemn and mournful scorn. Silently watching him, at some distance apart, stood the two friars ; but the flaring torch, flashing and falling on their shadowy features, threw no ray of its struggling light upon him. He seemed to sit alone, enveloped in a supernatural, still splendor, rich and dim, stately and strange, from demon brow to taloned foot, in that great orb of wizard bloom; the android, a form of solid brightness, like an enchanted head of brassy flame, before him, and all endowed with the surrounding blackness. Only once, when a hissing jet spired from the resinous substance of the flambeau, and penetrated the magic sphere of light in which he sat, Bacon saw a shadow-play pass over his marble features, appearing to wreathe them into a dark and evil smile, and at the same moment that smile appeared to be mimicked by the image. An instant after, and his features, like those of the brazen bust, wore their usual immobility; but it was hard for the pallid friar to withstand the distempered fancy that a demoniac signal had passed between the twain. A vague sense of horror and alarm rose struggling for a moment in his soul, then sank down and was lost in spiritual gloom.

The silence of the vault was at last broken by the shrill laugh of the Paduan ; and as he rose to his feet the flames of the torch and tapers licked downward, and the huddled lights and shadows of the place swayed and reeled in phantasmal commotion. Bacon glanced hurriedly at the louver, with a thought of the entering gust, and as his eyes rested again upon Malatesti the lights and shadows were still.

“ Ye have wrought well, my masters ! ” cried the Italian. “ Ye have wrought skillfully and well. Now hark to my directions, for, disobeyed, the spirit will not enter”

“ The spirit, sweet Paduan ? ” faltered Bungy, visibly quailing.

“ Spoke I not plainly ? ” said Malatesti, with withering hauteur. “ Hear me. Within three days from the completion of your work the spirit will enter, and the android will speak. I shall be here, and in my presence you shall own, Frère Bacon, as I told you a year ago, that this work is not a delusion, but subject to the proof of experiment, which you so insist upon. But mark, great fières : ye must not sleep, but sit and list en till ye hear its first command, which must be at once obeyed. Failing of this, the spirit will rend the metal and flee from it forever. Long and sore will be your vigil, but great its reward. Now hearken to the nature of the composition ye must add to the android. But first take the image asunder, and let me view the interior.”

Bungy shuddered, but, like one subdued to the will of the Paduan, made a step forward to obey, when Bacon stopped him by laying his hand on his arm.

“ Abide here,” he said, with solemn compassion, “ and pray, Frère Thomas, pray fervently for this disordered soul.”

Bungy stared wildly at him, but Bacon, without pausing, advanced, pale and calm, with slow and steady steps, till he stood in front of the Paduan.

“ Doctor Malatesti” — said he, with sad solemnity.

“ Enough ! ” interrupted the Paduan, his features cold and passionless, but his voice a furious shriek that froze the friar’s veins, — “ enough, I say ! The android is without an organism. I knew it from the first. You have disobeyed me.”

He strode away with haughty majesty toward the concealed entrance, and Bungy hurried obsequiously to the iron effigy. As the wall yawned asunder, the Paduan turned and bowed low, with his extravagant and almost mocking courtesy.

“ Pray the black paternoster,” said he. “ I go.”

“ Farewell,” said Bacon sadly.

“ Farewell, sweet Paduan,” added Bungy timorously, though in a stentorian voice. “ May St. Francis the blessed attend you! ”

“ St. Satan attend ye both,” replied the Italian, with another low obeisance.

“ Blaspheme not Doctor Malatesti! ” cried Bacon sternly.

Malatesti made no answer, but, turning toward the entrance, waved his arms. A distant cry was heard, and in a moment Cuthbert was seen darting through the gray gloom of the outer chamber, shivering and gibbering, with the plumed cap and rapier in his hand. Malatesti advanced upon him as he came forward, and the idiot at once receded. Bacon, following, saw him move along the corridor in front of the Italian, till the portal was gained and opened, when the latter snatched his cap and sword and vanished into the storm, and Cuthbert, closing and bolting the door, stood still, with his back against it.

Bacon shuddered, but a great load seemed to lift from his spirit, and a blissful sense of relief succeeded.

“ Cuthbert,” said he, after a pause, “ come here.”

The idiot came at once, with his darting, zigzag motion, and his face wore its usual stolid and sodden expression.

“ Cuthbert,” said the friar, “ stay in the sleeping-room, and open that portal to no one. Dost understand ? ”

“ Haw,” answered the idiot, in his weak, dissonant voice, ‘‘I understand. Shall Cutlibert. unbar to Zernebock ? ”

Bacon understood at once that by the name of the Saxon fiend the idiot meant to designate the Paduan.

“ Unbar to no one,” he said, gently but sternly.

He entered the chamber of audience, and, taking from the cupboard a large drinking-horn, poured into it the remaining contents of the punctured flask, which Bungy had left upon the settle, and returned to the laboratory. The burly friar was standing in the flare of the flambeau, with his massive features pallid and bathed in a cold sweat.

“ Frère Thomas,” said Bacon kindly, “ I judge not men by their infirmities. Drink this; it will do you good.”

Bungy, much agitated, took the wine, but, without drinking, gazed fixedly at Bacon.

“ Roger,”said he tremulously, “ I misdoubt me that this Paduan be other than he seems. How knew he of my cousin the vintner, and of my dinner, and of the flask under my frock, and he but newly landed at St. Botolph’s wharf ? ”

“ Tush ! ” cried Bacon. “ Vex not your mind with idle fancies. How know you that he spake truly when he said he was but newly landed ? How know you that he pieced not together his knowledge by seeing you at dinner through the vintner’s window, and noting, as a conjurer of quick sight may, what was on the table, and further by inquiry as to the vintner’s relation to you ? ”

“ That is true, by Dubric! ” said Bungy, with an air of great wonder, showing immediate tokens of recovery from his affrighted condition. “It is also true that, the day being warm, the window was open, and my cousin’s dinner was laid in the room on the ground floor. Moreover, the vintner rose once from table, misdoubting that some one was spying us from one side of the window, though he found no one there.”

“Truly the Paduan might have been there, and withdrawn at the vintner’s coming,” Bacon went on, half believing that this was the solution of the mystery. “ Then, too, he might have noted the shape of the flask through your frock, as he sat before you. For the rest, his sorcerer’s face and aspect, his wild voice and evil talk, and the gloom of the day oppressed our spirits, and compelled them, as it were, to superstitious fancies. I trust he will visit us no more. Much learning, I fear, hath made him mad, and perchance he hath a madman’s cunning. Let him pass. I mourn for him. Drink, Thomas, drink. The wine will comfort you.”

The color had already returned to Bungy’s face, and without more ado he tossed off the liquor, and with a sigh of satisfaction smacked his lips.

“ It is well spoken, Roger,” he said sturdily. “ By my dame, I have been fooled rarely by this Paduan, and if he comes hither again I will take the hot tongs of St. Dunstan to him ! Certes, he is a godless one, and speaks more like a follower of Mahound than a Christian. I have oft heard of the impious and unbelieving disposition of these Italian doctors of science, and he is one of them.”

A flash of lightning suddenly lit the sky beyond the louver, followed by a hoarse roar of thunder. The friars stood mute, with their faces turned toward the android, which, with its rigid lips apart and its staring eyes set upon vacancy, seemed to listen to the long reverberations.

“ ’T is a fearful day,” Bungy muttered, as the silence again descended, broken only by the noise of the rain.

“ Ay,” responded Bacon, starting from his attentive attitude. “ Thomas, I am sorry the Paduan saw the android. It should not have been. But at that moment I could not interpose, and — no matter; it is beyond help now. Come, let me show you the passage whereof I spoke.”

Going to the opposite wall, he raised a step-ladder against it, while Bungy, having closed the entrance, on the other side, took the torch from its socket and followed him.

“ Come up the ladder,” said Bacon, who was already within two steps of the top.

The ladder was very broad, and Bungy, ascending as he was bidden, stood by the other friar’s side.

“ See you anything unusual in the wall to your right ? ” asked Bacon.

Bungy moved the flambeau over the surface of the rough, smoke-begrimed stones, irregular in form, but, save that the mortar had fallen out from the narrow and jagged interstices where the blocks joined, as is common in old walls, he saw nothing remarkable, and said so.

“ But note this,” said Bacon, directing his attention to a small rough block directly in front of him.

“ Well,” replied Bungy after a long pause, “ I note a stone. What of it ? ”

Bacon rapped it with his knuckles. To Bungy’s great amazement, the stone gave back the sound of wood. He rapped the block next to it, but that was really a stone, and so were the others immediately around it.

‘‘Now mark,” said Bacon.

He pressed with both hands and with considerable force on the block. It sank inward about four inches.

“ Swithin ! but that is curious,” said Bungy, staring at the little cavity thus formed.

“ Ay, but look to your right,” said Bacon.

Bungy looked, and nearly fell off the ladder with the start he gave upon seeing that a heavy door, with irregularly serrated edges, cut so as to resemble, when shut, the jagged joining of the stones, had opened outward on his right from the wall. Staring into the considerable cavity it had disclosed, he noticed, by the light of the torch, an upright iron rod fixed at a short distance from the side wall on the extreme right, and supporting in sockets three staples at regular intervals, which were attached to the door, and served it as hinges. The door had but partially unclosed, and Bungy, putting out his hand, shut it to again. At once the sunken block by which it had been opened resumed its former position, and the wall its usual appearance. Full of wonder, the burly friar felt the door with his hand. It was made of oak, its surface tooled into semblance of the ashlar - work around it, the imitation further heightened by paint, and increased by the stain and smoke of time. Bungy looked at it speechlessly, and while he looked Bacon pressed the block, and it noiselessly unclosed again.

“ Now g-et inside,” whispered Bacon ; ‘‘ but speak not, or Master Trenchard may hear you.”

Bungy pushed back the door, and stepped into the opening, followed by the other. The secret of the block was then apparent. In a hollow on the left a thick crescent of wrought iron was fixed horizontally on a pivot, with the cusps outward. One cusp was attached to the block, which, when pressed inward, pushed out the other cusp against the door, and thus forced it to open. Closing the door, it pushed back the cusp, and restored the block to its former position. The wall itself was about three feet in thickness, and the space about four feet in width by six in height. The floor, though rough and serrated on its outer edges next the vault, was smooth with a layer of plaster for the rest of the distance up to the oaken wall of Master Trenchard’s apartment.

Laying his finger upon his lip as a sign to Bungy to remain quiet, the friar stepped forward to the panel and listened. There was no sound within. Suddenly he remembered that the old silk merchant had told him that morning that he was to spend the day at a relative’s, and thought he might venture to unclose the panel. Moving it very cautiously in its grooves till he had obtained a slight crevice, he peered in, and then listened again. There was evidently no one within, and at once he boldly slid back the panel, which moved noiselessly in the grooves he had previously oiled, and left in the wainscot a space of about four feet square. There was no one in the room, and the friars quietly stepped in through the opening, directly opposite to which was the bed, with its overhanging tester, where the king would lie.

They approached it, and, gazing for a moment at the open square in the carven frame of the wainscot, looked at each other with exulting faces. A common thought was in their minds, — a vision of that dead silence of the night when the king, starting up in the bed behind them, should see before him the brazen android of his dream, bright-shining, mystic, terrible, and hear from its awful lips the counsel that should grave itself upon his memory, and shape his life to its latest day. Then let the curtaining darkness fall, the pallid king swoon back upon his pillow, the hearts that beat for England beat on with fuller pulses behind yon oaken shell; for the best voice of the suffering land has spoken, the soul of the tyrant is shaken to its centre, and the era of a new triumph bursts like sunrise upon the realm !

Hark to the howling of the storm. Sullenly burns the flambeau in this grisly gloom, where the light comes brown and dim through panes of horn, and the furniture takes uncouth shapes that seem to watch, and shadows lurk in a silence that is too still, and yon square cave of blackness unnaturally yawns. Away, away ! Softly over the floor strewn with rushes, which strangely rustle beneath the tread ; softly and by stealth in at the panel, with chills and creepings of the blood; a moment behind it, with a dread sense of the still chamber it shuts from view ; and out from the wall two pale-faced, gray-robed forms, flickered over with shadows from a tempestuous torch which flares redly on the grotesque gulf below. So down the ladder from the closed cavity, and into the vault again, where the yellow wedges of wax burn with a quiet sense of nightmare; and the awful android, staring between them with balless eyes and rigid lips apart, seems listening, in the hush of the black gloom, — listening, listening for something to come. Hush, indeed ! So deep a silence had fallen upon the place that it was as if sound other than the remote and muffled noises of the storm might never be heard again, — a silence by whose compelling charm the ghostly twain must mutely stand and listen, while the spectral herd of shadows quietly flit and flicker around them in the red tossing flame and smoke of the flambeau, and nothing else moves but the colored reflections of liquids in retorts and limbecs, dimly trembling in the murk beyond; till at last the spell yields, and the voice of the burly friar whispers upon the silence.

“ A fear came over me, Roger, as I stood in that chamber.”

Bacon looked at him for a moment without answering.

“ I felt it, too,” he said abruptly, in low tones. “ But a day like this breeds fear.”

“ Ay, truly,” responded Bungy. “ ’T is a gruesome day. Ha ! Hear it! ”

Through the louver the lightning shook bright and long, and the thunder broke like an ocean overhead.

“Come,” said Bacon, as the reverberations died away, “ let us to work, and make an end.”

Hastily divesting himself of his gray frock, Bungy raked up the cinders of the forge and fanned them into a red glow, while Bacon, setting one of the wax tapers on a table which he had brought forward, placed next upon it a complex apparatus which he had taken from a closet near by. It was the articulating machinery of the android, and hitherto he had wrought upon it in the adjoining chamber, that he might be undisturbed in the severe thought necessary to its construction; while Bungy, with his genius for braziery, toiled at the casting of the shell, the moulds for which, however, the other friar had fashioned. In this age, when the experiments of Kempelen, Willis, and others have shown in detail the contrivances by which articulate sounds may be artificially produced, and when the exhibition of an android capable of uttering several sentences has completed the demonstration, it would be unnecessary and tiresome to describe the machine through whose agency Bacon aimed to subdue to England’s welfare the will of the mean and froward king. It is sufficient to say that to the eye it presented the appearance of a complication of variously formed tubes of reed and metal, wheels, bellows, weights and pulleys, leathern bladders, hammers, plates of brass, and, in the centre of all, a toothed cylinder, on which the speech of the android was scored. It was all but completed, needing only the modification of a single tube; and on this the friar, seated near the table, busied himself, unmoved by the increasing fury of the storm. Bungy, meanwhile, having taken the android from its pedestal and laid it on a cushion on the floor, was constantly moving between it and the forge with little crucibles of molten metal or red-hot tools, engaged in soldering a piece into its back.

The unearthly had become more than ever the soul of the scene. Bacon, sitting apart in his gray habit, with the mechanism before him, the quiet light of the taper on his pale brow and slender features, appeared like some sadfaced wizard ; while the lubber friar, in his close-fitting undergarments of white cloth, seemed some strange, unwieldy demon toiling at his behest, in the dusky glow which radiated from the forge like a red and misty dome imbedded in surrounding gloom. The dark recesses of the vault, the uncouth furniture glimmering unsteadily, the distorted shadows reeling and wavering to and fro, the sombre lights of torch and forge upflashing and sinking on the shaggy blackness of the walls, the seething of metal, the sighs and hisses of the foundry fire, the rushing and bellowing of the tempest without, — all lent the scene a wild and fearful interest. Never yet was plot for a nation’s welfare conducted under more forbidding auspices, nor attended with darker omens. Bungy, indeed, thought little now of what had passed, but in the soul of his fellow-friar the strange visit of Malatesti had left a sense of evil augury. The day had suddenly become like night to him, and into that night had slid a brief but ominous dream ; and as one waking from a dream, with the night around him, longs for the coming of the day, so, and with such an oppression on his heart, longed he for the morrow. But the morrow was still far away, and the hours dragged slowly by, with everrising wind and raging storm.

Steadily, meanwhile, and in silence proceeded the friars’ labors. The time wore toward evening, and Bacon had finished his part, and was absorbed in gloomy reverie, when his fellow-worker stood before him, with his large face flushed and his frock on.

“I am done, Roger,” he said, drawing a long breath.

“ And I,” answered Bacon, his features lighting. “Now for the experiment.”

He rose quickly from his seat, and, going to a distant corner of the vault, returned presently with a large sack of varnished silk, distended to its fullest capacity, with a heavy weight attached to one end of it, and a flexible tube of metal to the other.

“Ha!” said Bungy, jovially patting it, “ here is our skin of inflammable air. Fire was his father and coal was his dame.”

Modern nomenclature would designate the contents of the sack as carbureted hydrogen, or coal gas. Bungy had seen his scientific brother make it that morning. Without replying, Bacon opened the back of the pedestal and deposited the sack in the interior. The end of the metal tube attached to the sack was passed up through an orifice in the top of the pedestal, at its rear, and secured. The stopple was then taken from the tube, and over it was fitted another in the form of a curved rod, with a key at its lower extremity to regulate the passage of the gas, and at its upper a half circle of metal pierced for jets, and supported horizontally on its centre.

Presently the articulating machinery was fixed upon the pedestal, and the android was lifted from the floor and placed over it. A half hour was occupied in its proper adjustment, at the expiration of which all was ready. Bacon wound up the machinery by means of a key in the back of the image, turned on the gas a little way, and passed a taper over the half circle of metal which projected above the head. The lights were then removed, and in the dimness the awful front of the android was seen surmounted by a dotted arc of blue flame.

“We have it now,” said Bacon, “as it will appear when erected behind the panel, just before unclosing. I will couch behind the pedestal to set all in motion. Do you stand by the panel, and when you hear a brazen sound you shall unclose.”

He moved the spring in the back of the image which set the machine in operation, and then stooped from view behind the pedestal. A few seconds of breathless silence succeeded, in which Bungy, standing at some distance in front of the work, stared at it with his heart wildly throbbing. Suddenly a loud and hollow clang, like the sound of a blow on a brass timbrel, blared from the android.

“ The panel uncloses,” said Bacon in a sombre voice from behind the pedestal. “ If the king wakes, he sees in the darkness a dim form under an arc of fire-dots. If he wakes not, he will soon.”

There was a pause, and again the clang blared from the bosom of the android. Then arose a strain of solemn music, dulcet and wild and sad, the firedots slowly spired into dazzling jets of yellow flame, and the android stood out, awful-fronted, under that mystic coronal. Bacon appeared, pale as a spirit, from behind it, and came to Bungy’s side.

“ The king sees and hears it now,”he whispered.

Bungy did not answer. His whole soul was absorbed in that vision of an enchanted head on its black pedestal, from whence the wild and solemn music was proceeding. The melody, winding on in mournful mazes, ravishing in sweetness, gradually swelled into a long æolian wail, sad as the night wind wandering through the gulfs of air, funereal as the midnight voices of the pines; and, drooping from that sustained swell into a sweet and dying cadence, it merged with a heavy-sounding monotone, from which, attuned by that undercurrent of low, mysterious music into a strange harmony, a measured voice arose, hollow, distinct, and shrill.

“ King of England, hear me.”

The words, slowly chanted with a monotonous metallic resonance of tone, failed from the low murmur of music which still sounded on, and the petrifaction of living despair on the features of the resplendent android seemed to have changed to a look of austere and startled anger. A chill of dreadful pleasure curdled the friars’ blood. The effect of the strange voice added to the magical presence of the image, in the gloom of the vault, was indescribably weird, and it was almost as if a supernatural intelligence had entered into the creature of their hands. Again the music swelled into a prolonged wail, and, sinking into a low dirge, again the voice spoke.

“ I mourn for England. Hear me.”

The dirge deepened, and, shuddering downward, ended in a sounding knell, and a sweet and solemn carol succeeded. Gradually diminishing in volume, it. continued in a silver thread of melody, and again the voice.

“ I counsel well. Hear me.”

The continuing thread of melody rose to its full volume in the music of the carol, gradually melted into a golden and jubilant, strain, and shook out proudly in notes of triumph. Increasing in movement, it changed to a stately dance, haughty, delirious, rejoicing, and lessening in tone till it became like the faroff sound of the dancers’ feet dancing in joyous measure, when once more the voice was heard.

“Follow Sir Simon’s leading! Obey me. Follow Sir Simon’s leading ! Obey me.”

A sepulchral blare of brazen sound boomed hollowly at the conclusion of each sentence, and the music died. Bacon sprang to the key of the gas-tube; the coronal of flame went out, and the android stood obscurely shining from the dusky gloom.

“It ends here!” cried the friar, returning to his comrade with a step of victory, his usually colorless, calm face convulsed and crimson with excitement. “As the last clang sounds, the lights go out, the panel closes in darkness, and the king has seen his vision ! ”

“ Ay ! ” roared Bungy, flinging his arms around the speaker with furious joy, and bursting away to bestow a similar hug upon the android. “ Oh. brave andrew! Oh, brave Roger! Oh, day of grace ! And thou, Harry of WinChester, — for I do thou thee, and thee-thou thee, thou varlet king ! — thou shalt see thy andrew. thou spendthrift, and mark it well, thou thief; ay, and hear its counsel, thou bloodsucker, and abide by it, thou Jew! By St. Thomas à Becket, I do hope it may leave gray locks on thy pate, thou charter-breaking, cofferdraining Lombardy robber! ‘ Follow Sir Simon. Follow Sir Simon.’ Well said, my brave singing andrew ! Oh, rejoice, Sir Simon, rejoice, protector of Englishmen,— rejoice, rejoice, for, by Dunstan, you are good as king from this hour! ”

And Bungy, ceasing from the mad gesticulations with which he had accomplished this triumphant ebullition, only delayed to whip up his frock and fall a-prancing like a joyful hippopotamus. Up and down, to and fro, unheeding the raging war of lightning and thunder, wind and rain, which swept and bellowed around the dwelling, the paunchy friar went capering bulkily, his big legs swinging, and his big feet flapping here and there and everywhere, in the exulting fury of his ponderous evolutions, till, stopping as he did in a minute or so, he threw back his head, and, walking hither and thither with tremendous strides, proceeded to roar forth in a stentorian voice a Latin psalm.

Bacon, meanwhile, resuming his usual composure, though he carried a victorious heart at the success of the trial, busied himself in removing the remains of the sack of gas from the pedestal, and taking off the illuminating crescent. He finished in a few minutes, and approached the uproarious friar.

“ Thomas,” said he.

Bungy stopped singing, and, advancing, laid his huge hands on Bacon’s shoulders, and showed all his teeth in a jovial peal of laughter.

“You are merry, Thomas,” said Bacon, with his austere and gentle smile.

“ Merry ? ” shouted Bungy. “ By Swithin, I am merry as a lark! Merry as a man should be who has helped save England ! ”

“ And I,”said Bacon, — “ I feel a strange joy of spirit. All has gone well thus far. But hearken. We have now three days before us. The first thing tomorrow^ we must makecontrivance so that the panel can never be opened again after we have done with it.”

“Well bethought,” returned Bungy; “ for the king might send his carpenters to see if there be a passage there.”

“He might,” said Bacon, “though I have small fear of his doubting the supernature of the android. He is much given to superstition, and his strange dream will confirm that bent of mind. Still, let us omit nothing for safety. We must make ready to close the panel, and also build up the cavity. The stones for that purpose are t hose I have provided in yonder corner.”

“You think of everything, Roger,” said Bungy, with an admiring sigh.

“Then,”pursued Bacon, “immediately after the king has seen it, the android must be removed, and buried in the pit we have dug under the floor. And so our task will end.”

“ And I shall go chuckle to see Sir Simon schooling the king,” snuffled Bungy, shaking like a jelly with suppressed mirth. “ Sooth, but I ought to be made a bishop for this.”

Bacon smiled, and, going to the wall near the forge, took the flambeau from its socket, and returned.

“ Lord ! t is fearsome foul weather,” muttered Bungy. " Hark to that.”

A tremendous explosion of thunder was sounding overhead, and as it echoed away there was flash upon flash of lightning, with the cataract pouring of rain and howling of wind.

“ How the andrew seems to hearken ! ” continued Bungy, staring at the image, which now appeared in the red light of the flambeau, with its whole mute front as if intent on listening. “ I have noted several times this day that hearkeninglook on its brass visage, which is too much like that Paduan’s to be lovely. Sooth, too, I bethink me now that its voice is like his, also, were he to speak with accompaniment of music. That is curious, by Francis ! And how it hearkens ! As if ” —

“Come,”said Bacon, “ cover the android, and wheel it back into the recess.”

Bungy was about to obey, when a sharp cry from Cuthbert was heard in the outer chamber. Both friars started, and Bacon nearly dropped the torch. The next instant the wainscot yawned open, and the idiot sprang in. He was in the very ecstasy of terror, his sodden face writhing, and great tears starting from his wild bloodshot eyes; and as he danced about, in his close-fitting garb of red, mopping and mowing in the light of the flambeau, with his thin misshapen limbs jerking like those of a puppet, and his shock of yellow hair tossing from the huge head set low between his hunched shoulders, he looked like one of those Libyan anthropophagi described so vividly by Herodotus. But his anguish had nothing of the monster ; it was painfully human.

“ Cuthbert, Cuthbert! ” cried Bacon, starting forward with the torch, while Bungy stared, open-mouthed. " Peace, boy, peace ! What is it ? ”

“ Oh. my lord,” shrieked Cuthbert, “ time is, time was, time is passed, and he comes, —haw, haw ! —and he comes, and I feel him, and he comes ” —

“ What ails thee, thou reprobate ? ” shouted Bungy. “ Hath the fiend possession of thee ? ”

“ Ay, the fiend, — ay, the fiend ! ” screamed the idiot; 44 and he comes, the Brass-Man, Zerneboek, the Brass-Man, Zernebock, — he comes, and I feel him, in my head, in my breast, in my skinny right wing — coming, coming, coming, coming! ”

And suddenly, with his yellow hair swirling from his head like a garment, he spun with great velocity on one foot, and springing, with the impetus of his rapid whirl, through the open wall, vanished.

Both friars stood like statues of horror. At that moment the tempest again broke in heavy rebounding roars, and amidst the howling and rushing of wind and rain they heard the unbarring of the portal and the keen cry of Cuthbert. Bacon was like one smitten with palsy, but an icy chill passed through his frame as he heard that cry.

It is the Paduan! ” he gasped. " Quick — away with the android — arrest him — he must not enter here ! ”

“ I will strangle him ! ” roared Bungy, purpling with rage, as he rushed to the entrance.

At the top of the three stone steps appeared the dark figure of Malatesti, and Bungy, plunging against him, reeled back tottering into the vault, as though he had hurled himself against an iron statue; while the Paduan, without a pause, like one who had not felt the shock of the friar’s onset, made but one step of the stairs, and coming with straight, swift strides, planting his taloned feet noiselessly but firmly, directly toward Bacon, paused at a short distance in front of him. His movement, though swift, had a certain measured and majestic cadence, and his features were locked in their usual cold, impassive, marble scorn. The black robe drooped with heavy patrician grace around him ; the strange black cap was on his head; the sable plume trailed across his mournful brow ; the red jewel which held it burned still in the torchlight like an evil eye. But not on plume or garment, nor on his ebon mane of falling hair, nor anywhere about him from head to sole, was there one trace of rain ; not one sign of the wind that was roaring like a whirlpool in its tempestuous sweep around the dwelling; not one token of the flood that was deluging the streets of London amidst bolted thunder and sheeting fire ! Nothing in his presence, at such a time as this, could have been so awful.

As he stood before Bacon, dark and grand, regarding him with still eyes, the pallid friar let the flambeau droop slowly in his nerveless hand, and in that lurid ray upstreaming as from the pit, and upcasting black shades where the lights were before, all things became hideous and unnatural. The friars were as gray ghouls topped with demonic skulls of white and ebony ; the phantom majesty of Malatesti wore a black-dappled livid mask of Death ; the android was a brazen demon, cavernous-eyed, bizarre with shadows, and*with a look of horror and hellish joy commingled on its glaring features ; and all around black mongrel shapes of shade sloped up the floor, or loomed monstrously on the shaggy gloom of the walls. While heaven and earth seemed reeling from their centres in the tornado madness of the storm, the vault was a core of silence.

A moment, and the silence was broken by the Paduan.

“ You have dared to disobey me ! ” he said, his voice piercing that face of marble. “Behold!”

He stretched out his hand toward Bacon, and in the open palm lay the tongue of gold. A cold disgust mingled with the affright of .the friar, as he gazed upon it. Suddenly the Italian dashed the tongue to the floor, and it blew to atoms. Bacon recoiled at the explosion, and Bungy dropped on his knees, frantic with fear, and began to gibber his prayers.

“ I am the lord of disaster,” shrilled the Paduan. “ Thus shall it be with yon android. I bade you fashion it in the interior likeness of the body, that Simara, the wise dæmon, might dwell in it. You have disobeyed me. Simara shall rend it.”

“ Vile charlatan ! ” shrieked Bacon, starting forward, and menacing Malatesti with the flambeau. “ Hence, or I dash this torch into your face! Think you to cow me with your jugglery ? Am I to be deluded by your fool’s talk of dæmons and brass anatomy? Hence, madman or knave, or both, — hence, I say ! Up, Bungy, up, and cast me this wretch from the door ! ”

Bungy did not seem to hear, but in a lunacy of terror continued to gibber his prayers. The Paduan laughed. For a moment Bacon stood irresolute, choking with exasperation; then, rushing past Malatesti to the entrance, he thrust the flambeau into a socket there, and returned.

“ You have terrified my poor co-laborer from his manhood, but you terrify not me,” he said fiercely. " Now go from hence, or I set upon you.”

“ Know you Master Trenchard ? ” asked the Paduan, with a cold and quiet countenance.

Bacon fell away a pace, and gazed at him. Thought and passion in an instant gave place in his mind to a whirling vacancy.

“ The king is to lodge with him,” the Paduan continued.

A terrible agitation flowed in upon the mind of the friar, but he controlled himself to appear calm. His first thought was that Malatesti had divined the pilot. Then came a doubt, born of the habit of a scientific intellect, instinctively skeptical and averse to rash conclusions. He might only have uttered, madman fashion, at random what some one in the neighborhood had told him, and it was not a necessary inference from his speech that he knew more. Yet this theory of it was half shattered in the mind of Bacon as the Paduan again laughed.

“ I go,” he said, stepping back a piace, his form in shadow, and darkly defined against the light of the torch behind him. k* Yet ere I go, listen. You disobeyed me because you doubted the truth I know for truth. Resolve me now the mystery of birth. “Why forms and lives the infant in its mother’s womb ? It is because the soul has entered there. Why enter thus for birth the myriad generations of souls? Know you not the hunger of souls to be born ? Know you not what well-attested histories and living men’s experience affirm, — that in this hunger of souls for birth they will even possess the bodies of men wherein souls are already shrined, making them mad with the discord between the two ; nay, more, that they will even enter chairs and tables, giving them motion and intelligence ? And whence come these souls thus madly hungering to be shrined in earthly forms ? Behold, the vasty deep of space is full of them. They float, they wait continually, — they wait for the conditions that will make their mortal birth possible; they dart to their opportunities for mortal being. Well said the divine Plato that the air is full of men. Ay, full of men hungering to be born.”

He stepped back another pace, and while a heavy peal of thunder resounded overhead, and the lightning flashed fiercely beyond the louver, he mystically waved his hands.

“ Pray the black paternoster. I go ! ” he said in his shrillest tones. “ Yet hear me. The souls that enter bodies suffer thereby suspension of their spiritual knowledges and powers, which are mighty. The quality and motion of the fleshly form thus affect them, though the human shape hinders them not. Mere, then, as I have said, is the virtue of brass androids. Their shape, external and internal, being human, attracts souls to enter them; and these being neither flesh nor motion, the mighty spiritual knowledges and powers of the souls suffer no diminution. Lo ! the mighty and wise dæmon Simara, obedient to me, would have entered yon android, and made you all-strong and all-wise with his power and wisdom. But you have disobeyed me. Ay, and you believe not in Simara. But you shall believe, and tremble.”

Slowly raising his hand, he laid his forefinger on the opal in his cap.

“ Aloft there, Simara! ” he cried. “ By the strong gem, answer me ! ”

There was an interval of breathless silence, and then from the darkness of the roof a thin, silvery voice sounded.

“ I am here.”

The effect was terrible. Bungy started from his knees with a hoarse yell, and staggering to the entrance fell down on the steps, where he remained, shuddering and gasping, with his ghastly face turned toward the ceiling. Bacon stood like one petrified, ice in his veins, fire in his brain.

‘" Descend, Simara!” cried the Paduan. " By the strong gem, obey me ! ”

A roar of thunder volleyed above the dwelling, and echoed away into rainrushing silence.

I am here, said the quiet silver voice, speaking from beside the android.

Bungy uttered a hoarse groan, but over the visage of his fellow-friar a flush crept slowly. The Paduan seemed to notice it, and his face grew dark, as if with passion, and his imperial form dilated to its fullest majesty.

“ Enter the android, Simara ! ” he screamed, with appalling shrillness, stamping his foot, and waving his arm with the gesture of a king.

“ I have obeyed you,” said the voice, after a pause, speaking fiercely from within the android, as if in anger and agony. “ But it pains me, and I cannot abide.”

“ Rend it, Simara ! ” shrieked Malatesti, with a furious and commanding gesture, swiftly receding, as he spoke, to the entrance of the chamber.

Bungy scrambled up as the Italian drew nigh him, and was crouching down against the opposite wall of the sleepingroom before the latter had set foot upon the steps.

“ Hold, Malatesti! ” shouted Bacon, dashing forward on the track of the flying Paduan. “ Dost think me deluded by thy damned ventriloquy? Hold, I say! ”

He caught up an implement of the forge which was lying near the steps, and bounded after the Italian, who had already gained the corridor. Reaching it himself, he saw him spring with an airward leap from the open portal, and vanish ; and, aided by the sudden expansion of the black robe in the wind as he sprang, the horrid fancy flashed across Bacon’s mind that he had changed into some black-winged monstrous thing and melted into the air. Passionately hating himself that such a fancy had entered his brain, even for a second, Bacon, without pausing, rushed after him. The rain was pouring in torrents through the gray twilight, as he leaped forth into the street. But at the first glance he saw that the street was empty. Malatesti had disappeared.

Entering the house again, and barring the door behind him, he returned swiftly to the sleeping-room, with the rain upon his face and garments. Bungy was still crouching against the wall, in the dim light from the reflection of the flambeau in the vault, and feebly turned toward him, as he came in, a face flabby and livid, whose eyes, orbed with terror, showed their pupils in white circles. Too agitated for the moment to heed him, Bacon stood silently, with his nostrils quivering in the pallid rigor of his countenance. Gradually his anger settled into composure ; wiping the moisture from his face and head with his sleeve, he approached the entrance, and, casting in upon the floor the forge implement, was just turning back again into the room, when there was a stunning crash, the vault filled with fire, and the building rocked to its foundations. Bacon staggered back, lost his balance and fell, reeled up again to his feet, all in an instant, and stood rigid, with a face of death, his brain tottering, and a dreadful feeling within him as though his very soul were rent asunder, and were rushing from his frame. An utter silence had succeeded that vast crash, through which was heard the pouring of the rain. The vibrating air was filled with a heavy sulphurous odor. Within the vault the flambeau was still burning, and the shadows were sullenly flickering in the ghostly gloom. Suddenly the friar sprang to the entrance, and gazed. One instant he gazed, and a horrible cry, like the shriek of a damned soul, pealed from his lips, and shivered away into the tingling silence. There lay the android, shattered to fragments, on the floor !

He stood motionless. But with that cry the weight of agony lifted from his mind, and left it utterly dark and vacant. He saw nothing, he heard nothing ; he had neither sensation nor consciousness. Complete annihilation had become his portion. Gradually a dim, remote sense that slow ages had passed, and that another was slowly passing, a vague, uncertain impression that he had died long, long ago, and had become something inessential, floated, a mere filmy spectre of mentality, through the gray void of his brain. Then succeeded a dim apprehension that something had crept stealthily to his side, and paused there, and lie heard a hoarsely whispering voice speaking near him, yet seeming to come from an immeasurable distance.

“The fiend Simara hath rent it! ”

He heard the words without receiving their sense, but, slowly turning his head, he became aware that he stood in the dark room, on the threshold of the lighted vault, and, looking down, saw Bungy resting on his hands and knees beside him, like some huge, gorbellied brute in the likeness of a man, glaring up into his face with a distorted flabby visage, a brow wrinkled beneath its tonsural band of hair, and an ugly disk of shaven crown. A frigid thrill stole through his frame. With a touch like that of ice on air, his chill hand rested on his giddy brow, and he tried to remember what had befallen. Consciousness uncongealed, slowly, slowly, and trickling in like an ice-brook, welled up cold, still, and clear within his mind. He remembered everything. Glacial, torpid, mournful, the mental images arose in a trance of despair. It was all over. The long, patient, fervid labors of a year ; the thought, the hope, the dream, the patriot’s zeal whose soul was woven into the work like solemn music ; the victorious result already on the operant verge of victory ; the whole superb conspiracy for justice rising robed and crowned, and reaching out its hands in blessing on the nation, — it bad all become involved in the wild bizarrerie of tempest and gloom and omen, the shocks, the perturbations, the accursed apparitions, the fierce, unnatural concentrated life of the last few hours, and in one crash of flame it had shivered to nothingness. Rage on, king, whose sceptre is a wand of bane to England, thy lawless power unchecked, thy evil resolution unsubdued! Toil on, De Montfort, and vainly toil to blight and bar the ills that creep like grass and wind like water everywhere! Bleed, bleeding people, and rave and madden under ever-piling accumulations of suffering, till ye rise and rive with the red blast of battle, and the realm topples from its basis, and cold tranquillity sinks down on ruin and the ghosts of things that were ! For it. is all over. The power that would have essayed to roll back fate is a power no longer. All is ended and done.

He turned, icy cold and trembling, and, with a dull lethargic ache in his spirit, feebly wandered into the room. Bungy had crept back to his former place, and was crouching down against the wall, looking at him.

“ The fiend Simara hath rent it, I say ! ” he repeated.

Bacon saw him dimly with misty eyes, and, striving to understand what, lie said, his mind received only an inapposite sense that not more than a minute had elapsed since the catastrophe took place in the vault. He covered his eyes with his hand, and endeavored to collect himself.

“ r say the fiend Simara hath rent it ! gasped Bungy, hoarsely as before, hut in a voice which had risen from the whisper to a low muffled bass.

“ Yes, yes, I understand,” faltered Bacon, with the most confused apprehension of what the other was saying; “ the lightning smote in at the louver, and ” —

A sound of gnashing teeth made him pause and drop his hand from his eyes. With a vague tremor he saw that Bungy had risen to his feet, and was huddled against the wall, grinding his jaws, and glaring at him from the dimness with a look of sullen and truculent rage on his livid visage.

This he saw, but in his bewilderment knew not what it meant, and stood helplessly gazing at the friar.

“ Thou abominable sorcerer ! ” suddenly howled Bungy, plunging forward and clutching him by the throat. The shock of that assault brought Bacon to his senses, and, with an instantaneous revulsion of strength, he seized Bungy’s wrists, wrenched away his hold, and flung him back to the wall.

“ What means this ? ” he demanded in a low, intense voice, with his eyes burning and fixed upon the friar. Bungy did not answer, but stood drawing his breath hard through his set teeth. For a moment Bacon gazed at him; then, going into the vault, he returned with the torch, fixed it. in a socket in the wall, and again confronted him.

“ I had not, looked for this from you, Thomas,” he said sadly. “ Why have you laid violent hands upon me ? ”

“ Ach ! Thomas ! Thomas me no Thomases! ” gnashed Bungy. frantically shaking his fists at him. “ Thou vile sorcerer! Thou hast had commerce with the fiend ! I know thee. I have smelt thee out.”

“ I commerce with the fiend ? I, Thomas ? ”

“ Ay, thou ! Didst thou not tell me that he taught thee how to make the andrew ? Didst thou not ? Deny it if thou canst! ”

“ Frère Thomas, this is moon-madness. T pray you be a man, and hear reason. I never told you that a fiend taught me how to make the android.”

“ Thou didst! I say thou didst, and thou didst! In Italy thou didst learn it of him.”

“ In Italy ? What! He the fiend ? That mad scholar, sunken into the depths of knavery and insanie, that charlatan, that cheat, that ” —

“Ay, brave it out! But well I know where all thy knowledges come from, — thy mathematics, thy burning-glasses, thy exploding powders, thy inflammable air, all thy devil’s arts which thou didst persuade me were of nature, to the peiil of my soul s salvation, and which thou didst learn of the fiend who walks the earth in the guise of a Paduan ! Ay, and be taught thee to make the andrew, which may the blessed saints assoil me for having holped thee in, St. Frands, St. liecket, St. Dunstan, St. Wittikind, St. Dubric, St. Thomas à Kent.”

“ Peace, Thomas, peace ! You rave, you scatter foam on your beard. Peace, I say! What madness is this ? Did I not upbraid this mad Paduan to his face? Did I not refuse to do his bidding? Did I not speed after him with the iron in my hand, to make him return and unmask his wretched cheatery? Did I not ? ”

“ Did I not, did I not, did I not! Thou vile sorcerer, cease thy gibble-gabble ! Ay. didst thou, and it was in thy pride thou didst refuse him, and flout him, and chase him; for thou hadst learned all his secrets, and wouldst set up to be the match of the fiend himself ! Tell me he was not the fiend ! Hearken to the tempest. And doth he not always come in tempest? Well I knew the fiend was abroad in the air this day, —ay, in the air, where he told thee lie lodged; and thou saidst nothing, hoping it. would escape my notice! Thou wretch ! To deal thus with the soul of a Christian man, and a frère of the Lord’s flock to boot! Ay, and did not the very room darken when he came in, and the door shut of itself, and the storm rage with thunder and lightning, and Cuthbert, with no more wit than a dog in him, know of his coming every time ? Ay, and ’tis well known that dogs know when the fiend is nigh, and tell it by their howlings.”

Bungy gasped, overcome with the fury of his utterance, and Bacon felt an appalling sense of the difficulty of reasoning down this mass of evidence in tlie mind of the ignorant and obstinate being before him, whose whole supeistitious nature had been roused into its fullest activity by the succession of weird coincidences, and by tlie aspect and actions of the Pad nan. In that brief pause be called into review all that had been said and done for the last few hours, and saw that everything told against him. Yet lie resolved to contend with everything.

“ Hearken now to me, Thomas,” he said solemnly, “ for what I say to you is the truth, and I swear it by this cross.”

He put his hand to his girdle to uplift the cross which hung at the end of his rosary. The rosary was not there.

“Ach!” yelled Bungy. “Thou hast made a compact with the fiend, and he will not let thee wear the blessed cross, thou sorcerer! Ach, ach! fie upon thee, thou foul wretch ! ”

“ ’T is false ! ” cried Bacon in a pealing voice, recovering from the stunning blow dealt his cause by the absence of tlie rosary. “ Forbear your craven epithets, — thrice craven when thus bestowed upon me in my hour of utter misery, when rum has fallen upon the work I wrought for England! I swear by the blessed Saviour, whose name no sorcerer, if such there were, could take upon his lips, that what I say to you is true !”

Bungy was silent, for the indignant solemnity of this utterance touched him even then.

“ Hear me now,”sternly continued Bacon, following up his advantage. “I have never dealt with any fiend, nor is that evil Paduan a fiend, and this I swear by my soul’s assurance of salvation.”

A rattling bolt of thunder split the air as he spoke the last words, and Bungy started furiously.

“Ach, ach!” he yelled, shaking his fists, “ a sorcerer’s oath, — a sorcerer ’s oath ! Thou swearest by thy soul’s damnation, and truly it is assured, — truly it is ! ”

“ I said ‘ salvation ’! ” cried Bacon.

“Thou liest! Thou saidst ‘damnation,’ and I heard thee plainly. Thou meantest to say the other, but the fiend would not let thee. Ay, and’t was his thunder attested thy perjury then” —

“ Hear me, hear me, hear me! I said it not. I said ” —

“ Thou didst! Thou ” —

“ I did not! ”

“Thou liest! Thou didst! And thou art in pact with the fiend! ”

“ Oh, hear me, hear me ! He is not the fiend ” —

” I say he is, and I do know it! Did I not see him no more than wave his arms, and Cuthbert came running with his cap and sword ? Did I not ” —

“And what of that? It was a marvel, but it has its cause in nature. Is it incredible that a man should have by nature the power to draw another man to him, when an ore of iron, as you know, has by nature the power to draw to it other iron ? Hear me explain” —

“ Explain ! Thou ready-witted wretch ! No, I will not hear thee. Thou wilt explain, too, that the fiend Simara rent not the undrew ! ”

It all rushed into Bacon’s mind in an instant: the mandate of the Paduan to Simara; the almost immediate shivering of the brittle alloy of the image, as if in obedience to that mandate; and, beating down the half-risen superstition that a spirit had indeed wrought the ruin, the conviction that Malatesti had had prevision of the approaching catastrophe, and had turned it to his purposes. In an instant all this came upon him, and the next he firmly answered : —

“Simara did not rend the android. It was the lightning. There was no Simara.”

“ Oh, thou liar ! Did I not hear his voice ? ”

“ No. ‘T was the Paduan’s voice. It was a trick, — a cunning ventriloquy.”

“Ach, thou sorcering liar, — thou Simon Magus! And the gold tongue which burst fire and vanished, — thou wilt say that was ventrilly, or some such word of Mahound, wilt thou not ? ”

“I tell you it was nothing but a tongue of metal, which he had filled with a detonating powder.”

“Powder, powder ! Prate not to me of powders. They are all of the fiend, like thy nitre and coal powder. Face me out that he was not the fiend, and ho coming in from the rain as dry as a basket! ”

“He had been under shelter. He had been standing under the covered portal, beyond a doubt. He had ” —

“He had, he had, he had! Cease thy damned gibble-gabble, thou ready-witted vaiiet! ”

“ Enough,” said Bacon, with despairing sadness. “Say no more. I forgive you. All evil happenings are as nothing to this; even the ruin of the android is as nothing. Well may I mourn the hour when the Paduan came here, since his coming has wrenched from me you, whom I loved not for any parts or learning, but for the good heart, faithful and true to me through many, many years, nor ever joining till now in the reproaches and revilings others, greater than you, have cast upon me. But I blame you not, and I forgive you. I forgive, too, him who has thus wrought upon you. May ” —

“ My good heart! ” roared Bungy, interrupting. “My good soul, I say! Think of that! My good soul’s salvation imperiled by its beguilement into thy devil’s trap of sorcery! Dost think I will stay loyal to thee when I am likely to be packed into hell for it? By Swithin, but I will not, then! Dost think ” —

“ Nay, Thomas, speak not now in your anger. Wait till the morning, when you can think more calmly of this.”

“ Wait till the morning ! By all the saints, but I will not wait at all! I will at once go hence, for it perils my soul to abide even to upbraid thee ! ” and Bungy immediately tucked his skirts under his arms as preparation for instant departure.

“ Hold, hold ! ” cried Bacon, clasping his hands in entreaty. “ Go not now. The storm is terrible. Wait till it lulls; then go in peace. See, I will leave you alone. I will retire to another chamber.”

“ I will not abide another moment under the roof with thee ! ” furiously bellowed the friar. “ I will go hence, and I will proclaim thee everywhere as a sorcerer who sought to lure me to my soul’s ruin ! ”

“ Hear me ! ” entreated Bacon. “ You have sworn on the cross not to betray aught of this ruined enterprise.”

“ Ay, and I will keep my Christian oath for the love of England, whose weal has been brought to wrack by thee ! ” cried Bungy. “ But I will go henee, and proclaim thee as one who has had commerce with the fiend in the guise of a Paduan. And I will” —

“ Hear me, I beseech you, hear me! Good frère, good Thomas, T pray you by the remembrance of all our years of peace, for De Montfort s sake, for England’s sake, for the sake of —

“ Ach, thou viper, thou wretch, thou sorcerer, thou devil’s commereer, thou abhorred, abominable, impious, unclean thing! Aeh, fie upon thee, fie upon thee ! and aroint thee, aroint thee ! I renounce thee forever ! ”

He rushed from the room gnashing his teeth, with a visage like that of a lubber fiend in his rage, and in a moment the outer door slammed heavily behind him. He was gone.

For an instant Bacon stood motionless ; then all gave way, — the chamber whirled around him, he tottered backward, a mighty darkness reeled down upon him like an avalanche, and he fell on his pallet in a dead swoon.

Life rewakened dreaming in the long ago. There was a sense that sleep had been deep and restful; an incorporeal lightness ; a trance of coolness and ipuet; fresh, still glimmerings; the world silently returning, peaceful and sweet and strange; the old heavenly innocence of childhood ; the dewy early years at Jlcliester; the tranquil, dark summer dawn. Bacon was lying in his bed, dimly awake, half conscious, as he lay with closed eyes, that his mother was bending over him, tender of the slumbers of her boy. A vague remembrance that lie had dreamed she was long dead, mingling with the dim deliciousness of his love for her, melted into his luxury of repose, and, with a flitting sense of trouble, he sighed. His eyes were open, and his mind had gathered vacancy.

“ Dost revive, Roger ? ”

It was broad day, and the morning sunlight lay aslant in the room. The words lingered, distinct and alien, in his tranced memory. Then he knew that he was lying on the pallet, and that a hooded friar was bending over him.

“ Adam ? ”

“It is I,” answered De Marisco, his voice sounding grave and kind from beneath his cowl.

As in a dream, Bacon felt himself raised to a half-recumbent position, with his head resting upon the friar’s breast. A strong spicy cordial was held to his lips, and, drinking, he was revived. A few minutes passed in silence, and, lying with closed eyes, the memory of his waking vision faded, leaving him with the sad and world-worn heart of manhood, and the mournful remembrance of the dark events of yesterday in his clouded soul.

“Art better now, Roger ? ”

“ I am better,” he answered feebly.

How dim, remote, confused, was his sense of everything around him! It seemed as if he were tended by some kind phantom, whose voice and touch were the only things that linked it in identity with Iiis friend. He hardly knew how, but he was sensible that time had passed, and that he had drank again, and was sitting in a chair, with a sort of weak strength and the feeling of distance and dimness in his mind. The phantom was sitting near him, and he felt a strong, kind hand clasping his own with friendly distinctness. Then the grave voice sounded clearly.

“ What hath happened, Roger ? The miscarriage of the work I know, for as I came hither I met Frère Bungy, who told me a graceless tale. I bade him go seal his fool’s lips, or look to it. Tell me what hath befallen, brother.”

That which had befallen rested separate and definite in Bacon’s memory, and, with an utter introversion of his faculties, he mechanically related all. Ceasing, he had a strange, dazed consciousness that he had been speaking, and that the form near him had listened silently.

“We have failed, Roger,” he heard him say. “I grieve that you have thus suffered. But the wild night is now passed, and to-day is new and fair. Be comforted, brother. Time repairs all ill happenings.”

There was a brief interval of silence.

“ For the present,” resumed De Marisco, “ all is done. I will aim to silence this Bungy. “iet, should he talk, inquiry and trouble may follow. You must stay only for food, and then at once away to .Paris. Here is a gift of money Robert Grostete bade me deliver to you for the work. That is ended. Use the coin, then, for your departure. I will take charge of the house, and acquaint the bishop of what bath passed. He will make good your absence.”

Bacon mechanically received the small leathern bag the other placed in his hand, and as he did so a keen, forlorn sense of sorrow welled up within him.

“Alas, alas, he said bitterly, “is this the end? To think that we have failed, and failed from such a circumstance ! Had not the Paduan entered then, the work would have been shrouded and removed to the recess, where the lightning would not have rived it. Thus ever comes disaster. This dark fool, this charlatan, this mad ape of hell, he comes, he arrests our purposes for a few moments, and all is ruined. Oh that the weightiest enterprises should be always subject to slight occasions ! But it is ever so. Thus ever dies the good cause.”

“ Brother, the good cause never dies,” said the grave voice.

“ You are right,’ faltered Bacon, after a short interval. “ I meant defeated.”

“ Brother, the good cause never is defeated.”

Bacon bowed his head in silence. A thrill of strong comfort stole through the torpor of his veins; a trembling peace melted across his desolation as the dawn melts across a winter moor. Silently he clasped the hand in his, and the minutes mutely wore away.

“ It is well,” he said tremulously. “ I will depart. Let me only gather up my few manuscripts, summon poor Cuthbert, and go. Poor Cuthbert, indeed! He was much terrified last eve, and needed comforting. How looked lie, Adam, when he unbarred to you?”

He received no answer, but he felt the kind hand close with a tenderer pressure, and, looking up, he saw that the cowled head was bent low.

“Adam, what is it? Is not Cuthbert well ? ”

There was a solemn pause.

“ Brother,” said the grave voice gently, “ he is well.”

Bacon gazed at him for a moment; then his head drooped slowly, and he wept. A poor, uncomely, dog-witted thing, weakest of the weak, lowest of the low, but something that had loved him, something that was faithful to him, and with a dog’s faithfulness and love.

“Is it thus with you, my poor servitor ? ” he sorrowfully murmured. “ Rest, rest. ‘T is better so. Ill can never come nigh you any more, nor fear strike away the life that was so harmless here. Adam, I pray you see that he has decent burial. He loved and served me better, for all his darkened wit, than men the world calls his betters, He had been my brother s thrall, but I took the collar from his neck, for I like not that any man, however weak of mind, should wear the collar of a slave. So give him a freeman’s sepulture, the money for which I will leave with you.”

“ It shall be done,”said De Marisco.

They rose. A little while Bacon stood, sadly musing, and a light of peace dawned upon his wasted features.

“ It comes to me now,” he said humbly and dreamfully. “ I have sinned, and it is well the android lies shattered. To make a king believe in supernature were also to spread his belief throughout the realm, and not even to save the land from tyranny were it well to confirm it in superstition. That were to relieve it from a great evil to curse it with a greater. Better fail of good by truth than win it by falsehood.”

“ It, may be so,”returned De Marisco thoughtfully.

“ It. is so,” said Bacon firmly. “ Welcome all suffering, ail loss, all disaster, for through them has my erring soul heen schooled, and I have learned the lesson that will never leave me. Yes, it is so. Through Truth alone we truly conquer. Only Truth’s victories are true.

A few hours later, and the great friar had left St. Botolph’s wharf in a ship for Paris, where he wrote the Opus Majus, his undying claim to the gratitude of man. A few years later, and Simon De Montfort had drawn the unwilling king into an alliance by which a reluctant royal sanction was obtained for the measures which broadened justice and freedom throughout the land. Not such an alliance as the brazen android would have achieved,—immediate, desired by the monarch, and potential with his active will, — but one in which he was passive and frigid, and one obtained only after long delay, when the hostile faction, under Prince Edward’s leading, had grown to a power that plunged the land in civil war, and sent the great earl’s soul to God from the dark slaughter of Evesham. But De Montfort’s death sealed the strife for the charter. In the mind of the people lie stood crowned with the sainted hero’s gloriole, an image of fiery inspiration for the principles he lived and died for, mightier thus in his death than in his life; and from that hour the liberties of England were secured. For the good cause never dies, and it is never defeated. Its defeats are but the recoils of the battering-ram from the wall that is fated to crash in; its deaths are like those of Italian story, where each man cloven in twain by the sword of the slayer springs up two men, mailed and armed to slay.

William Douglas O’Connor.