cating, but that by some concealed vent the smithy communicated with the upper air. The light afforded by the red fuel, and by a lamp suspended in an iron chain, served to show that, besides an anvil, bellows, tongs, hammers, a quantity of ready-made horse-shoes, and other articles proper to the profession of a farrier, there were also stoves, alembics, crucibles, retorts, and other instruments of alchymy. The grotesque figure of the smith, and the ugly but whimsical features of the boy, seen by the gloomy and imperfect light of the charcoal fire and the dying damp, accorded very well with all this mystical apparatus, and in that age of superstition would have made some impression on the courage of most men.
But nature had endowed Tressilian with firm nerves, and his education, originally good, had been too sedulously improved by subsequent study to give way to any imaginary terrors; and after giving a glance around him, he again demanded of the artist who he was, and by what accident he came to know and address him by his name.
“Your worship cannot but remember,” said the smith, “that about three years since, upon Saint Lucy’s Eve, there came a travelling juggler to a certain hall in Devonshire, and exhibited his skill before a worshipful knight and a fair company—I see from your worship’s countenance, dark as this place is, that my memory has not done me wrong.”
“Thou hast said enough,” said Tressilian, turning away, as wishing to hide from the speaker the
