'Now, please,' he continued, 'look well at your cards, but do not show them to me or to each other. _Basta. Assez._ [Greek: Konx Ompax]. Now, please, still hiding the cards from me and from each other, exchange them. Now,' he continued, his form dilating with conscious power, 'see how true is it that change is perennial, even so far as magic and Nature herself can be perennial. For she who held the King of Hearts now holds the Queen of Spades, and she who held the Queen of Spades now holds the King of Hearts. Thus much among the shifting shadows of life can I, the wizard, see as a sure and accomplished fact. Is it not so, my children?' We bowed in silence, overawed by the wonder of his presence, although Leonora whispered to me, 'He has got the cards wrong, but we had better say nothing about it.' 'And now,' he continued, 'look upon this glass (it was an ordinary wineglass) and on this silver coin,' producing a _stater_ of the Eretrian Republic. 'See! I place the coin in the glass, and now can I tell you by its means what you will of the future. There is no magic in it, only a little knowledge of the secrets, mutable yet immutable, of Nature. And this is an old secret. I did not find it. It was known of yore in Atlantis and in Chichimec, in Ur and in Lycosura. Even now the rude Boshmen keep up the tradition among their medicine-men. Vill any lady ask the coin a qvestion?' he continued, in a hoarse Semitic whisper, for all currencies and all languages were alike to him. 'Sure it's the coin 'll be afther tellun' ye what ye like. Voulez-vous demander, Mademoiselle? Wollen Sie, gnädige Signora?' 'Then,' said Leonora, in trembling accents, 'I demand to know if I shall find that which I seek.' The figure, drawing itself up to its full height, passed its hand with a proud, impatient, and mystic gesture across the glass, and then stood in the attitude of one who awaited a response. 'Should the coin, my daughter, jump three times,' he said, 'the answer is yea. Should it jump but once, nay.' We waited anxiously. The coin did not jump at all! The wizard took up the glass, shook it impatiently, and put it down again. Still the coin showed no sign of animation. Then the wizard uttered some private ejaculations in Hittite, but still the coin did not move. Then he affected an air of jauntiness, and said, 'I remember a circumstance of a similar kind when I was playing odd man out ([Greek: tritos anthrôpos] dear old Sokrates used to call it) with Darius the night before Marathon. Darius was the Mede. _I_ was the Medium.' Then he seemed about to work another wonder, when he was interrupted by the harsh cackling laughter of the Boshman, who advanced with careless defiance and observed in his own tongue, which we all knew perfectly, that he 'could see all the tricks the wizard could do and go several better.' I waited, horror-struck, to see what would follow this insolence.