ice, telling too late that
poor Michel had been killed in vain. As the Comte and his associates
turned away from the lowly abode of the alchemists, the form of Charles
Le Sorcier appeared through the trees. The excited chatter of the
menials standing about told him what had occurred, yet he seemed at
first unmoved at his father's fate. Then, slowly advancing to meet the
Comte, he pronounced in dull yet terrible accents the curse that ever
afterward haunted the house of C----.

"May ne'er a noble of thy murd'rous line
Survive to reach a greater age than thine!"

spake he, when, suddenly leaping backwards into the black wood, he drew
from his tunic a phial of colourless liquid which he threw in the face
of his father's slayer as he disappeared behind the inky curtain of the
night. The Comte died without utterance, and was buried the next day,
but little more than two and thirty years from the hour of his birth. No
trace of the assassin could be found, though relentless bands of
peasants scoured the neighboring woods and the meadow-land around the
hill.

Thus time and the want of a reminder dulled the memory of the curse in
the minds of the late Comte's family, so that when Godfrey, innocent
cause of the whole tragedy and now bearing the title, was killed by an
arrow whilst hunting, at the age of thirty-two, there were no thoughts
save those of grief at his demise. But when, years afterward, the next
young Comte, Robert by name, was found dead in a nearby field from no
apparent cause, the peasants told in whispers that their seigneur had
but lately passed his thirty-second birthday when surprised by early
death. Louis, son to Robert, was found drowned in the moat at the same
fateful age, and thus down through the centuries ran the ominous
chronicle; Henris, Roberts, Antoines, and Armands snatched from happy
and virtuous lives when a little below the age of their unfortunate
ancestor at his murder.

That I had left at most but eleven years of further existence was made
certain to me by the words which I read. My life, previously held at
small value, now became dearer to me each day, as I delved deeper and
deeper into the mysteries of the hidden world of black magic. Isolated
as I was, modern science had produced no impression upon me, and I
laboured as in the Middle Ages, as wrapt as had been old Michel and
young Charles themselves in the acquisition of demonological and
alchemical learning. Yet read as I might