ing
out of the hall down which he was leading silently, Rodriguez overtook
that old man and questioned him to his face.

"Who is this professor?" he said.

By the light of a torch that spluttered in an iron clamp on the wall
Rodriguez questioned him with these words, and Morano with his
wondering, wistful eyes. The old man halted and turned half round, and
lifted his head and answered. "In the University of Saragossa," he said
with pride, "he holds the Chair of Magic."

Even the names of Oxford or Cambridge, Harvard or Yale or Princeton,
move some respect, and even yet in these unlearned days. What wonder
then that the name of Saragossa heard on that lonely mountain awoke in
Rodriguez some emotion of reverence and even awed Morano. As for the
Chair of Magic, it was of all the royal endowments of that illustrious
University the most honoured and dreaded.

"At Saragossa!" Rodriguez muttered.

"At Saragossa," the old man affirmed.

Between that ancient citadel of learning and this most savage mountain
appeared a gulf scarce to be bridged by thought.

"The Professor rests in his mountain," the old man said, "because of a
conjunction of the stars unfavourable to study, and his class have gone
to their homes for many weeks." He bowed again and led on along that
corridor of dismal stone. The others followed, and still as Rodriguez
went that famous name Saragossa echoed within his mind.

And then they came to a door set deep in the stone, and their guide
opened it and they went in; and there was the Professor in a mystical
hat and a robe of dim purple, seated with his back to them at a table,
studying the ways of the stars. "Welcome, Don Rodriguez," said the
Professor before he turned round; and then he rose, and with small
steps backwards and sideways and many bows, he displayed all those
formulae of politeness that Saragossa knew in the golden age and which
her professors loved to execute. In later years they became more
elaborate still, and afterwards were lost.

Rodriguez replied rather by instinct than knowledge; he came of a house
whose bows had never missed graceful ease and which had in some
generations been a joy to the Court of Spain. Morano followed behind
him; but his servile presence intruded upon that elaborate ceremony,
and the Professor held up his hand, and Morano was held in mid stride
as though the air had gripped him. There he stood motionless, having
never felt magic before. And when the Professo