half-rotted away, old-fashioned articles of a man’s dress, such as might have been worn eighty or a hundred years ago by a gentleman of some rank—­costly steel buckles and buttons, like those yet worn in court-dresses, a handsome court sword—­in a waistcoat which had once been rich with gold-lace, but which was now blackened and foul with damp, we found five guineas, a few silver coins, and an ivory ticket, probably for some place of entertainment long since passed away.  But our main discovery was in a kind of iron safe fixed to the wall, the lock of which it cost us much trouble to get picked.

In this safe were three shelves, and two small drawers.  Ranged on the shelves were several small bottles of crystal, hermetically stopped.  They contained colorless volatile essences, of the nature of which I shall only say that they were not poisons—­phosphor and ammonia entered into some of them.  There were also some very curious glass tubes, and a small pointed rod of iron, with a large lump of rock-crystal, and another of amber—­also a loadstone of great power.

In one of the drawers we found a miniature portrait set in gold, and retaining the freshness of its colors most remarkably, considering the length of time it had probably been there.  The portrait was that of a man who might be somewhat advanced in middle life, perhaps forty-seven or forty-eight.

It was a remarkable face—­a most impressive face.  If you could fancy some mighty serpent transformed into a man, preserving in the human lineaments the old serpent type, you would have a better idea of that countenance than long descriptions can convey:  the width and flatness of frontal—­the tapering elegance of contour disguising the strength of the deadly jaw—­the long, large, terrible eye, glittering and green as the emerald—­and withal a certain ruthless calm, as if from the consciousness of an immense power.

Mechanically I turned round the miniature to examine the back of it, and on the back was engraved a pentacle; in the middle of the pentacle a ladder, and the third step of the ladder was formed by the date 1765.  Examining still more minutely, I detected a spring; this, on being pressed, opened the back of the miniature as a lid.  Withinside the lid were engraved, “Marianna to thee—­be faithful in life and in death to——.”  Here follows a name that I will not mention, but it was not unfamiliar to me.  I had heard it spoken of by old men in my childhood as the name borne by a dazzling charlatan who had made a great sensation in London for a year or so, and had fled the country on the charge of a double murder within his own house—­that of his mistress and his rival.  I said nothing of this to Mr. J——­, to whom reluctantly I resigned the miniature.