Nicholas. I know
the cure too--my master shall not say I studied in his laboratory for
nothing."

"How mean you?" said Tressilian, frowning; "we speak of one of the first
nobles of England. Bethink you, this is no subject for buffoonery."

"God forbid!" said Wayland Smith. "I say that I know this disease, and
can cure him. Remember what I did for Sir Hugh Robsart."

"We will set forth instantly," said Tressilian. "God calls us."

Accordingly, hastily mentioning this new motive for his instant
departure, though without alluding to either the suspicions of Stevens,
or the assurances of Wayland Smith, he took the kindest leave of Sir
Hugh and the family at Lidcote Hall, who accompanied him with prayers
and blessings, and, attended by Wayland and the Earl of Sussex's
domestic, travelled with the utmost speed towards London.

CHAPTER XIII.

Ay, I know you have arsenic,
Vitriol, sal-tartre, argaile, alkaly,
Cinoper: I know all.--This fellow, Captain,
Will come in time to be a great distiller,
And give a say (I will not say directly,
But very near) at the philosopher's stone. THE ALCHEMIST.

Tressilian and his attendants pressed their route with all dispatch.
He had asked the smith, indeed, when their departure was resolved on,
whether he would not rather choose to avoid Berkshire, in which he had
played a part so conspicuous? But Wayland returned a confident answer.
He had employed the short interval they passed at Lidcote Hall in
transforming himself in a wonderful manner. His wild and overgrown
thicket of beard was now restrained to two small moustaches on the
upper lip, turned up in a military fashion. A tailor from the village
of Lidcote (well paid) had exerted his skill, under his customer's
directions, so as completely to alter Wayland's outward man, and take
off from his appearance almost twenty years of age. Formerly, besmeared
with soot and charcoal, overgrown with hair, and bent double with the
nature of his labour, disfigured too by his odd and fantastic dress,
he seemed a man of fifty years old. But now, in a handsome suit of
Tressilian's livery, with a sword by his side and a buckler on his
shoulder, he looked like a gay ruffling serving-man, whose age might
be betwixt thirty and thirty-five, the very prime of human life.
His loutish, savage-looking demeanour seemed equally changed, into a
forward, sharp, and impudent alertness of look and action.

When chall