can call hither a dozen to bear, each in its own
different way, consenting witness to the truth
of what the ring has told us."

"I have heard," I said, "O master, of the
Magus Hugo Reinsch, who spreads a filmy web
of copper in which to entangle and catch even
the ghost of such a secret."

"Here," said my guide, "is a fragment of that
web, no broader than an infant's finger-nail, and
I will catch in it the secret that now lurks in
yonder colourless water that I last poured off,
if any trace of the secret have really passed
into it."

A little of the water was poured by the
adept Alipili into a crystal tube. He questioned
a few drops of the biting acid, known as
hydrochloric, and when it had replied that it was itself
entirely free from arsenic, added them to the
water. Then the water was boiled, and as it boiled
Artephius dropped into it the gauzy web.
Instantly the copper caught the arsenic in its
meshes, and was to be seen displaying it with a
sad face of iron-grey. The gauze was taken
out, washed in pure water, dried between
blotting-paper, rolled into a tiny pellet, placed
at the bottom of the crystal tube, called a
reduction tube, for the ordeal by fire, and
made red hot, when, behold! again also the ring
spoke.

"And was there not," I asked, "also the
spell of a Marsh spirit?"

"You shall stand by," said my guide, "and
know also the secret of the Marsh magus.
Behold within this crystal prison-house the battle
fought between the acid last used and the
offended metal zinc; see how they boil with anger
as they fight, and the good fairy hydrogen escapes
from the uproar. If I place in her way as she is
flying anything that contains arsenic, she cannot
keep herself from its defilement—she becomes
arsenuretted. Through the drying earth, heaped
at the gates of yonder crystal gallery, she flies till,
in the narrow passage set midway, she drops as
she flies some of her arsenic, covering the thin
walls with a hair-brown film. On she goes till
she plunges into yonder silver sea, where the
rest of the poison she brings with her darkens
also the silver with the hue of crime. Dissolve
one grain of arsenic in three thousand gallons
of water, and our fairy servant hydrogen will
from a little cupful of that water bring up the
metal, and will lay it here distinctly visible
before me in the narrowed passage of that morsel
of glass pipe."

As the great alchemist of the past and of the
present spoke, I marvelled, and my eyes grew
dim. The fog seemed to close in upon me, and
the ghostly shapes closed in upon me with the
fog. In forms pale, haggard, and dishevelled,
they were thronging about the slender little pipe
of glass, and upon that frail narrowed passage,
slender as whipcord, which displayed the damning
evidence, they writhed as they beat with
shadowy hammers and with yellow bony fists.
They beat, but did not break it. Then
methought that strip of glass slender as whipcord
stretched and twisted itself as into rope, and
wriggled itself like a ghastly snake in and out
and to and fro among those phantoms, coiling
about their feet, their arms, their neck. And
as I beheld the prodigy I heard a voice resounding
that cried in an unknown tongue, yet after
I had heard it, as I thought, a tongue not
wholly unknown, these strange words of
portent: "At verum Tellus, Aer, Aetherque,
Chaosque, Aequoraque et Campi, Rhodopeia
Saxa loquenter." Not wholly unknown, for
methought the voice was as the voice of the
great poet Lucan, and the signification of those
words was that earth and air, ether beyond,
Chaos itself and the great waters, and the plains
and the very stones, shall have speech to make
known the Truth.

But the voice of Artephius recalled me, and
again I beheld the sage, holding a crystal vessel
in his hand. "Herein," he said to me, "is earth
taken from where it lay nearest to the corpse in
an old grave. It contains much arsenic from
decay in the earth of the mineral stone called
iron pyrites. Here in this crystal is
confined a piece of the body that lay in the same
grave."

"But that is not flesh," I said. "That fatty
waxy mass resembles dirty spermaceti, or
congealed white honey."

"On its way back into dust, to such a
substance may the alchemy of the grave reduce
your body," said Artephius, "when its time
shall come. But observe. In all the chemistry
that has gone on within the earth, under the
hot sun and drenching rains, wherein the grave
now sweltered, now was soaking, while skin and
flesh were passing to this change, one change
is not included. The body lay in the earth
that contained arsenic, yet not a trace of the
poison has it taken from the earth in which it
lay."

'I am glad," I said, "that Artephius still lives.
But I beseech you show me yet another of these
secrets."

"Medea's broth can contain few things more
deadly than corrosive sublimate. Here is broth,
that contains a trace of it, with hydrochloric
acid. I acidulate a little of it after pouring it
into this shallow cup of platinum. I dip into
it a slip of gold-leaf, that lies partly on the
surface of the other metal, and lo! now the
great spirit Galvanism is evoked. Suddenly
and silently, falling on it like a cloud-shadow,
there lies the hidden mercury spread largely
over the gold. I dry it, roll into a small
pellet the darkened gold-leaf, submit it to
the ordeal by fire, and what marvel is here,
lo! Mercury himself ascends. See, again.
Upon this little plate of porcelain a few colourless
patches of water that has touched the
poison strychnia. One patch remains colourless
after I have added this drop of the oil of vitriol.
I place beside it now a pure and limpid drop in
which that cunning Potash imp, Bichromate,
lies concealed. I cause him now to run at the
suspected stain; instantly he has searched it to
the innermost, and having found the evil trace
if strychnia, see how cleverly he telegraphs to