elf,--to that you must guide me."

"Explain."

"Near this very spot is there not gold--in mines yet undiscovered?--and
gold of the purest metal?"

"There is. What then? Do you, with the alchemists, blend in one
discovery gold and life?"

"No. But it is only where the chemistry of earth or of man produces
gold, that the substance from which the great pabulum of life is
extracted by ferment can be found. Possibly, in the attempts at that
transmutation of metals, which I think your own great chemist, Sir
Humphry Davy, allowed might be possible, but held not to be worth the
cost of the process,--possibly, in those attempts, some scanty grains
of this substance were found by the alchemists, in the crucible, with
grains of the metal as niggardly yielded by pitiful mimicry of Nature's
stupendous laboratory; and from such grains enough of the essence might,
perhaps, have been drawn forth, to add a few years of existence to some
feeble graybeard,--granting, what rests on no proofs, that some of the
alchemists reached an age rarely given to man. But it is not in the
miserly crucible, it is in the matrix of Nature herself, that we must
seek in prolific abundance Nature's grand principle,--life. As the
loadstone is rife with the magnetic virtue, as amber contains the
electric, so in this substance, to which we yet want a name, is found
the bright life-giving fluid. In the old goldmines of Asia and Europe
the substance exists, but can rarely be met with. The soil for its
nutriment may there be well-nigh exhausted. It is here, where Nature
herself is all vital with youth, that the nutriment of youth must be
sought. Near this spot is gold; guide me to it."

"You cannot come with me. The place which I know as auriferous is some
miles distant, the way rugged. You can not walk to it. It is true I have
horses, but--"

"Do you think I have come this distance and not foreseen and forestalled
all that I want for my object? Trouble your self not with conjectures
how I can arrive at the place. I have provided the means to arrive at
and leave it. My litter and its bearers are in reach of my call. Give me
your arm to the rising ground, fifty yards from your door."

I obeyed mechanically, stifling all surprise. I had made my resolve, and
admitted no thought that could shake it. When we reached the summit of
the grassy hillock, which sloped from the road that led to the seaport,
Margrave, after pausing to recover breath, lifted up his voic