The next morning, then, she was up before the sun, and, sitting at her window, awaited his arrival.  The moment he shone upon the gilded cock of the bell tower, she rose and hastened out, eager to taste of the sweets promised her; stood a moment to gaze on the limpid stream ever flowing from the mouth of the white horse, and wonder whence that and the whale-spouts he so frequently sent aloft from his nostrils came; then passing through the archway and over the bridge, found herself at the magician’s door.  For a moment she hesitated:  from within came such a tumult of hammering, that plainly it was of no use to knock, and she could not at once bring herself to enter unannounced and uninvited.  But confidence in lord Herbert soon aroused her courage, and gently she opened the door and peeped in.  There he stood, in a linen frock that reached from his neck to his knees, already hard at work at a small anvil on a bench, while Caspar was still harder at work at a huge anvil on the ground in front of a forge.  This, with the mighty bellows attached to it, occupied one of the six sides of the room, and the great roaring, hissing thing that had so frightened lady Margaret, now silent and cold, occupied another.  Neither of the men saw her.  So she entered, closed the door, and approached lord Herbert, but he continued unaware of her presence until she spoke.  Then he ceased his hammering, turned, and greeted her with his usual smile of sincerity absolute.

‘Are you always as true to your appointments, cousin?’ he said, and resumed his hammering.

‘It was hardly an appointment, my lord, and yet here I am,’ said Dorothy.

‘And you mean to infer that——?’

’An appointment is no slight matter, my lord, or one that admits of breaking.’

‘Right,’ returned his lordship, still hammering at the thin plate of whitish metal growing thinner and thinner under his blows.  Dorothy glanced around her for a moment.

‘I would not be troublesome, my lord,’ she said; ’but would you tell me in a few words what it is you make here?’

‘Had I three tongues, and thou three ears,’ answered lord Herbert, ’I could not.  But look round thee, cousin, and when thou spiest the thing that draws thine eye more than another, ask me concerning that, and I will tell thee.’

Hardly had Dorothy, in obedience, cast her eyes about the place, ere they lighted on the same huge wheel which had before chiefly attracted her notice.

’What is that great wheel for, with such a number of weights hung to it?’ she asked.

‘For a memorial,’ replied lord Herbert, ’of the folly of the man who placeth his hopes in man.  That wonderful engine; it is now nearly three years since I showed it to his blessed majesty in the Tower of London, also with him to the dukes of Richmond and Hamilton, and two extraordinary ambassadors besides, but of them all no man hath ever sought to look upon it again.  It is a form of the Proteus-like perpetuum mobile-a most incredible thing if not seen.’