thy glory, to the end that it be in and work in me. For it is that divine wisdom which is mistress of all celestial and occult arts, and of the science and understanding of all things. By its spirit may I possess the true intelligence. May I proceed infallibly in the noble art to which I have consecrated myself, even in the search of the miraculous secret which thou hast hidden from the world, in order to reveal it to thine elect! May I commence, pursue, and achieve the great work which I have to do here below, and enjoy it for ever! In fine, O God, grant me, I beseech thee, the celestial Stone, angular, miraculous, and eternal."

When the adept had finished his supplications, he took up a book, the binding of which, in the gorgeous fashion of the day, was studded with gold and gems; and, laying it upon a small table near the screen, drew in a stool, and began to read some portion inwardly, apparently as a sequel to the religious service of the night. David would fain have raised his head over the screen to look what the manuscript was; for a strange misgiving, he hardly knew of what nature, had been gradually stealing upon his mind. The book, he could say with certainty, was not a church missal, neither had it any resemblance to a religious homily. The very characters in which it was written, from the single and distant glance he had obtained, were strange-nay, suspicious to his eye! But in the midst of this new dilemma, the door opened as if by a spring; his eyes dazzled; and he knew by the beating of his heart, and by his thickening breath, that the damsel was in the room.

She stood motionless upon the floor, her head reverently bowed, and her hands drooping at her sides. David forgot the vague suspicions that had begun to gather like a kind of horror upon his soul, and he enjoyed, for the first time in his life, a full and uninterrupted gaze at this phantom shape which had haunted him so long. The serene gravity, just touching upon melancholy, which was the habitual character of her face, tinged at this moment by religious feeling, acquired an air almost of sublimity without losing any of its sweetness; and her pale and placid features looked as if they were shone upon by a stream of sunlight. The youth felt his pity and admiration mingled with awe while he gazed; and when the old man at length raised his head, and his daughter bowed herself almost to the earth before him, in the form of salutation peculiar to the oriental nations, David could have fancied that the whole scene, so strange in locality and expression, and so touching in sentiment, was but the fragment of a dream.

"And now, my child," said the alchemist, "get thee to bed at once, and may the God of our fathers be thy guard! But yet another word. The young man-verily I am worn out with strife and watching-even the young man Strongarm, he no doubt escaped by thy means when the heathen dog was exploring the vaults. Thou leddest him up the stair without permitting him to enter here, where the sight even of this holy book might give our bodies to the fire, and our ashes to the winds of heaven?" At these questions the damsel appeared for a moment to be ready to sink to the ground, overwhelmed with surprise and dismay.

"All is safe," said she at last, and in a voice steady enough to deceive her father in the present exhausted state of his faculties.

"It is well," he rejoined, "thou art brave and quickwitted, but thou hast a woman's pity, and a woman's trust, and even if he had made the discovery, I fear thou wouldst have permitted him to live." During this speech, David could see, through the minute chink which had hitherto served him, that the damsel's eyes were rivetted upon the screen with a glance of mingled threatening and terror. Enough, however, had occurred to stimulate his curiosity and suspicion to a pitch of madness; and when the old man in the act of extinguishing the lamp, giving way to the natural recklessness of his character, he suddenly raised his head over the screen, and fixed his eyes upon the volume. The next moment all was dark; and as the scene fled from the scholar's vision, he leaned back against the wall, and was only preserved from fainting by the iron strength of his constitution.

The reader has perceived long ago, that the alchemist and his daughter were of the Hebrew nation; thus exhibiting a knowledge of national character which it was impossible for the scholar to possess. Among a people at once simple and poor a Jew could not exist, to say nothing of the shrewd sagacity attributed to our countrymen; and accordingly, the weary foot of Israel had found little or no resting place on the barren mountains and desolate heaths of Scotland. In France, a law had passed during the last reign which banished the entire tribe from the kingdom, on pain of instant death; and thus, David had, in all probability, never seen to his knowledge a descendant of the patriarchs in his life. The seclusion and mystery observed by Messire Jean, as he thought proper to call himself, were easily accounted for, by the persecutions to which philosophers of his mystic school were liable; and the oriental

form of his phraseology was perhaps calculated rather to lull than excite suspicion, familiar as it had become to the student's ear, in its association with his theological studies.

David, brave and ardent as he was himself, could form no conception of the species of enthusiasm which impelled the alchemist thus to bury himself alive, rather than break off in the midst of the mysterious search to which he was devoted, and which, every day, appeared on the eve of being crowned with success. The feelings, therefore, which had beset him this night were so indefinite, that he was probably not aware himself, of the nature of his suspicions, till they were confirmed by the instantaneous glance he had caught of the Jewish Talmud.

His sickness of heart, accompanied by "an horror of great darkness," continued for some time, and he had not yet been able to collect his bewildered senses, when he felt himself drawn out from his lurking-place by a small, cold, but steady hand. David trembled at the touch. He felt as if his soul was in the grasp of a demon, but he had no power to struggle. When they had gained the vestibule, the damsel took down the lamp from the wall, and pointing to the steep stair, rudely cut out of the living rock, she motioned him to ascend while she lighted his steps.

They went on for some considerable space in silence, till they reached a kind of landing-place. Here the stair ended, and from this the communication with the world above was by a suspended ladder; upon which David was about to step mechanically, when he was withheld by his conduc

tress.

"First swear," said she, "that thou wilt not reveal even to thy bosom friend, what hath this night come to thy knowledge."

Tempt me not," answered the student, hardly knowing what he said, "I will not swear."

'Swear," repeated the damsel, sinking her voice to a whisper, "swear, if thou wouldst live! My father's life is in the palm of thine hand; were it mine own I would trust thee without an oath."

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I swear," said the student.

"By Him whom thou namest thy Redeemer?"

By Him crucified!" said David bitterly; and, bowing his head, he made the sign of the cross upon his bosom.

66 Then go in peace, and may the God of the Jew and the Christian go with thee!" David grasped the ladder with an unsteady hand, and mounted the first step; when the damsel touching a spring concealed in the wall, the

portion of the landing-place on which he had just stood gave way, and swung, by means of hinges, in what appeared to be an unfathomable abyss. David looked for a moment at the danger from which his oath had saved him; and then, bestowing upon the Jewess a parting glance, in which admiration and despair struggled with religious horror, he ascended the ladder into the dwelling-house above, and, groping his way to the door, staggered out into the night.

CHAPTER V.

WE are told by certain philosophers that the human body undergoes a perpetual process of change, and that a man, at different epochs of his life, so far as the materiel is concerned, is thus absolutely a different individual. The revolutions of the mind, on the other hand, although they are much more apparent, do not affect its individuality. We may receive a new bone or a new muscle, without perceiving the trick which nature puts upon us; but when one set of sentiments takes the place of another, we are conscious that it is merely a change and not a renewal.

We may illustrate this by the example at the present moment nearest at hand. When David Armstrong went to bed after parting with the Jewess, he felt as if the world had passed away from him like a scroll, and as if he himself was a single solitary atom, dancing unseen and unknown in immeasurable space. When we meet with him again in the morning, he is calculating whether it will be worth his while to pursue his search after the philosopher's stone with his present master, seeing that this individual was an unbelieving Jew, such as God would, in all probability, consider unworthy of success. Yet David is all the time the same intellectual being.

His air and manner on this morning were so slightly different as to evoke no observation on the part of his college companions; and the deliberate, yet energetic pace with which he usually traversed the hill of St. Genevieve was as deliberate and energetic as ever. There was, notwithstanding, some change, though slight, as well in the outward as in the inner man of the scholar. His face was a shade paler, and his ragged hood hung over his shoulders with even more of blackguardism than yesterday. In his whole person, in fact, he might be said to have somewhat

more the look of a desperado than heretofore; while throughout the day there was exhibited a kind of exaggeration even in his most ordinary feelings, which sometimes both surprised and annoyed Sir Archibald Douglas.

The knight had given due reflection to the case of his friend, and had arranged a plan for bringing him forward in the career of arms, besides turning his present services to account in a very important matter which related to himself. Their new meeting, besides, was in the morning and in a palace, not in a ruin and in the dark; and it is not wonderful, therefore, that the gaze which he bestowed upon the student's figure was as full of mirth as of renewed astonishment. David, whose satisfaction, in ordinary cases, was expressed by what may be called a brightening of the face rather than a smile, and who was never, on any occasion, provoked to laugh outright, suffered himself with great gravity to be turned round by his friend, and surveyed from head to heel.

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And now, Archibald," said he, "if your curiosity is satisfied, let us hear at once the newest gibes on the dress of a poor scholar, and then we may proceed at once to the purpose of our conference without more grimaces."

"Let me laugh, then, once for all," replied his friend, "and then I shall be as solemn as yourself. O what a sight were this for the old wives of the Border, whose fireside stories are still warm with the deeds of Philip Armstrong! Off, ye rags!"—and he tore down suddenly a large fragment of the hood. "Away with your spider's webs, for here are steel and leather in exchange!"

"Permutatio Diomedis et Glaucis," said the scholar; "it would be the exchange of golden armour for brass. Yet, nevertheless, I am in nowise bigotted to a particular garb. As for the hood-let it go; although I will not say that it might not have been becomingly worn for somewhile yet. Neither, Archibald, was it anything like the weavings of that Lydian lass, Arachne, to which you liken it, as many a tug and haul which it bore in its day will testify. You must know it was the true epitogium, and was absolutely indispensable ad loquendum in universitate; without it I could not have opened my mouth. In the daytime it was a garment; in the night-time a blanket; and whatever rents it had, were received in defending my skin. Well, well, old friend, fare thee well in God's name!"

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A most moving epitaph; and now for the interment in yonder heap of ashes in the fireplace!"

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"Hold!" cried the scholar, It may still serve to mend