“His name was Abraham of Toledo, a city far off over the salt sea, whence he had come to our English shores in the hope of gain; and he was mighty in magic arts and in compounding of deadly drugs to slay, or medicines to make alive.  I became his servant, for I had nought else to do, and I blew his forge when he mixed strange metals, swept his chamber, mixed his medicines as ordered, and did all an ignorant man might do at his master’s bidding.”

“The wretch! he should be burnt,” said the prior, who, like most Englishmen of his day, confounded all such researches with the black art; “didst thou ever see the devil there?”

“I did, indeed!”—­the prior started—­“but it was a Norman fiend, and his name Hugo of Aescendune.”

“How!” Wilfred exclaimed, as he started violently.

“Silence, dear son, thou shalt soon hear,” said Father Elphege.  “Summon thy courage.”

“One evening I was mixing some drugs in my master’s laboratory, in a recess hidden from the rest of the room by a curtain, which happened to be drawn, when my master entered the room in company with a stranger.

“’Here, then, is the drug you seek; but it will be very costly—­men must pay dear for vengeance,’ said Abraham of Toledo.

“’It may not be vengeance, but an obstacle which I wish to remove from my path.’

“’That liquid was distilled by myself from many strange plants in far-off Araby; I may never replace it, and it is worth many pieces of gold.’

“’Thou shalt have them if thou wilt swear, thou dog of a Jew, that it possesses all the qualities thou hast said.  If it fails, look to thyself; I am not one to be played with.’

“’The victim who takes but one drop daily shall decline and die within the half of a year; in half that time if the dose be doubled; a quarter if quadrupled.’

“‘And no one shall detect the cause?’

“’Call the most learned physicians ye Christians have (dolts are they all), and they shall call it a natural death—­consumption—­so gradually shall the patient wear away.’

“‘I will trust thee; here is the gold.’

“I had seen the man’s face through the curtain; but no sooner was he gone than my master descended the stairs, calling for me.  I managed to reach him without raising his suspicion, and he pointed out the figure of his visitor receding in the distant gloom of the street.

“‘Follow and learn who he is.’

“I followed and dogged him to his lodging—­it was the present lord of Aescendune.

“I knew of his marriage—­I felt sure whom he wanted to destroy; yet I did not dare show myself at Aescendune, even to save so innocent a life—­the life of so sweet and good a lady as she had ever been.  But at length disease—­an incurable disease—­seized me, and the dread of approaching death and judgment has brought me to tell what it freezes my heart to say—­all too late to save, but not perhaps to avenge—­I tell thee thy mother was poisoned, O Wilfred of Aescendune!”