"Nor wish to know," replied the knight; "but I will have neither of these experiments; the one would be too long, the other too tedious. You said that you had secrets that would well nigh raise the dead. I have heard of such things, and I should like to see them tried." "Would you not be afraid?" asked Ned Dyram. "No!--Why?" answered Sir Simeon of Roydon. "The dead cannot hurt me." "Assuredly," said Ned Dyram; "but yet, when we call for those who are in their graves, we can never surely tell who may come. It is not always the spirit we wish that answers to our voice; and that man's heart must be singularly free, who, in the days of fiery youth, has done no deed towards the silent and the cold, that might make him shrink to see them rise from their dull bed of earth, and look him in the face again." "I am not afraid," said Roydon, after a moment's thought. "Do it if you can." "Nay, I said I had secrets that would _well nigh_ raise the dead," answered Ned Dyram. "I neither told you that they would, nor that I was willing." "Ha! it seems to me you are a boaster, my good friend," exclaimed the knight, with a sneer. "Can you do anything in this sort, or can you not?" "I am no boaster, proud knight," replied Ned Dyram, in an angry tone, "and I only say what I am able to perform. 'Tis you that make it more than I ever did say; but if you would know what I can do, I tell you I can raise the dead for my own eye, though not for yours. That last great secret I have not yet obtained; but I trust ere long to do so; and as you are incredulous, like all other ignorant men, I will give you proof this very night." "But how shall I know, if I do not see the shapes myself?" demanded Sir Simeon of Roydon. "I will tell you what I behold," rejoined the man, "and you must judge for yourself. Those whom I call up shall all have some reference to you. Have you a mirror there?" "Yes," replied the knight; and while he rose to search for one, Dyram strewed some small round balls upon the table, jet black in colour, and apparently soft. The knight brought forward one of the small, round, polished mirrors of the day, which generally formed part of the travelling apparatus of both sexes in the higher class; and, setting it upright, Dyram brought each of the little balls for a single instant to the flame of the lamp, and laid them down before the mirror. A thin white smoke, of a faint, but delicate odour, instantly rose up and spread through the room, producing a feeling of languor in those who breathed the perfume, and giving a ghastly likeness to all things round; and, kneeling down before the table, Ned Dyram gazed into the glass, pronouncing several words in a strange tongue, unintelligible to the knight. The moment after his eyes opened wide, and seemed almost starting from his head; and the knight exclaimed eagerly, "What is it you see?"