ike myself, be exempted from undressing."

"It is well, Domnule,"[19] said the watchman, "but let her at least take
the oath which everyone here must swear."

[Footnote 19: Master.]

"I am ready," cried the girl boldly.

"No, Anicza," replied Black Mask, "you shall swear to me a stronger oath
even than that, you shall swear--by our eternal love."

The proud maiden, trembling with joy, fell at the feet of Fatia Negra at
these words, and pressing one of her hands to her heart, raised the
other aloft, and, raising her lovely eyes--which reflected the infernal
glare of the windows--aloft, towards the smoking canopy above her head,
she swore by her eternal love to her beloved that she would never, not
even on the rack itself, betray a word, a syllable of what she was about
to learn.

But old Onucz scratched his poll.

"Domnule, it is not wise of you to let women swear on such useless
things. It is just as if one of us were to hold a penny in his hand and
swear by that. It binds nobody."

"It is enough for me," replied the Mask, "and my head is no cheaper than
yours. Let him who trusts me not keep away from here."

And holding the girl in his arms, he carried her with him into the
building while old Onucz had to dress himself from head to foot in other
clothes and leave those he had brought with him outside. He would have
on his return to put on his own again and leave these others behind.
Thus smuggling was impossible.

The first room was for the smelting.

Here there was nothing to be seen of the blazing fire which illuminated
the dark hollow through the windows, in one corner of the room was a
simple cylinder shaped iron furnace which radiated a burning heat, on
the top of which stood a round graphite crucible covered in at the top
and provided with a lateral pipe.

"Here the gold is remelted after it has come out of the purifying oven,"
said Fatia Negra to the girl who pressed close up to him. "Heretofore it
required a whole apparatus of boilers and loads and loads of wood to
bring it to smelting heat, but since I got that cylinder-stove, ten
hundredweights of metal can be melted in ten minutes."

"But where does the fire come from?" enquired the girl.

"From the earth, my beloved."

The girl shrank back with horror, and yet Fatia Negra did not mean hell
but that furnace whose powerful bellows drove the melting heat into the
double cylinder.

He looked at his watch, the moment had come. At a single whi