illed the
apartment with an oppressive smell, which would have been altogether
suffocating, 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 alchemy. 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 lamp, 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 painful train of recollections which his
discourse had unconsciously awakened.

"The juggler," said the smith, "played his part so bravely that the
clowns and clown-like squires in the company held his art to be little
less than magical; but there was one maiden of fifteen, or thereby, with
the fairest face I ever looked upon, whose rosy cheek grew pale, and her
bright eyes dim, at the sight of the wonders exhibited."

"Peace, I command thee, peace!" said Tressilian.

"I mean your worship no offence," said the fellow; "but I have cause to
remember how, to relieve the young maiden's fears, you condescended
to point out the mode in which these deceptions were practised, and to
baffle the poor juggler by laying bare the mysteries of his art, as ably
as if you had been a brother of his order.--She was indeed so fair a
maiden that, to win a smile of her, a man might well--"