pon their gaming and their harlots sums which
would have restored us to our patrimonies. I have seen Charles put upon
one turn of a card as much as would have satisfied the most exacting of
us. In the parks of St. James, or in the Gallery at Whitehall, I still
endeavoured to keep myself before his eyes, in the hope that some
provision would be made for me. At last I received a second message from
him. It was that unless I could dress more in the mode he could dispense
with my attendance. That was his message to the old broken soldier who
had sacrificed health, wealth, position, everything in the service of
his father and himself.'

'Shameful!' we cried, all three.

'Can you wonder, then, that I cursed the whole Stuart race,
false-hearted, lecherous, and cruel? For the Hall, I could buy it back
to-morrow if I chose, but why should I do so when I have no heir?'

'Ho, you have prospered then!' said Decimus Saxon, with one of his
shrewd sidelong looks. 'Perhaps you have yourself found out how to
convert pots and pans into gold in the way you have spoken of. But that
cannot be, for I see iron and brass in this room which would hardly
remain there could you convert it to gold.'

'Gold has its uses, and iron has its uses,' said Sir Jacob oracularly.
'The one can never supplant the other.'

'Yet these officers,' I remarked, 'did declare to us that it was but a
superstition of the vulgar.'

'Then these officers did show that their knowledge was less than their
prejudice. Alexander Setonius, a Scot, was first of the moderns to
achieve it. In the month of March 1602 he did change a bar of lead into
gold in the house of a certain Hansen, at Rotterdam, who hath testified
to it. He then not only repeated the same process before three learned
men sent by the Kaiser Rudolph, but he taught Johann Wolfgang Dienheim
of Freibourg, and Gustenhofer of Strasburg, which latter taught it to my
own illustrious master--'

'Who in turn taught it to you,' cried Saxon triumphantly. 'I have no
great store of metal with me, good sir, but there are my head-piece,
back and breast-plate, taslets and thigh-pieces, together with my
sword, spurs, and the buckles of my harness. I pray you to use your most
excellent and praiseworthy art upon these, and I will promise within a
few days to bring round a mass of metal which shall be more worthy of
your skill.'

'Nay, nay,' said the alchemist, smiling and shaking his head. 'It can
indeed be done, but on