stle a
couple of workmen appeared, each of them stripped to the waist on
account of the great heat; they held in their hands large iron moulds
and stood facing each other opposite the crucible. Then by means of an
iron tap Fatia Negra turned the pipe of the crucible and immediately a
pale glare began to spread through the room--the liquid gold ran in a
thin jet out of the crucible and that was the cause of the light.
Actually genuine pure gold made liquid in the fire like wine in a glass
and emitting on every side of it a glowing white radiance! Each of the
two workmen held his mould beneath it and the girl surveyed the scene
with bated breath.

When the operation was finished Black Face turned to the girl again and
embraced her saying: "So you see, darling, that is how gold is melted."
The girl smiled back at him; what a pity the Black Mask could not smile
in return. And now old Onucz came up with his sack for the purifying
furnace.

"How much have you in your sack?" asked Fatia Negra.

"A hundredweight and eighty pounds."

"Now we'll see into how much pure gold it will work out."

"The dross mixed with it is only a few pounds in weight."

"Of what quality is it?"

"Well, they purify it very incompletely you know. It is only
two-and-twenty carat gold."

"It doesn't matter: we will coin Prussian ducats out of it."

"But where's the mould?"

"I brought it with me, to-day; we'll adjust that also to the machine.
We shall gain a hundred florins in every thousand."

Old Onucz kissed Fatia Negra's hand. "Domnule," said he, "you are a man
indeed. Domnule, since you became our chief our gains have doubled and
the ducats are so good that one cannot distinguish them from the
Imperial ones."

Meanwhile the girl felt her head going round to hear them talk of
nothing but money, gold, gain!

"Come Onucz, let us look at the new machinery," said the Mask.

"When did you bring the new machinery here?"

"A long time ago; we have coined a great deal of money since it first
came. The work is all the quicker and we need fewer men to work it."

They went into the next room through a low door, all three of them
having to bow their heads as they entered, and there they saw a gigantic
machine at work between whose revolving cylinders depended the long gold
ingots which were gradually reduced to the proper thinness for making
gold coins.

"Don't you see, Onucz? Hitherto we wasted too much time and labour in
cutting the gol