"How goes the work, lads?" she asked, and then caught Alan by the shoulder, crying, "No need to answer. I know by the face on thee. What hast been doing to make it shine so?" "Only finished a piece o' work, mother," said Padraig with a grin. "It takes some men a long time to do that. If they would bide just this side of a masterpiece they'd save 'emselves trouble. But they will spend all their force on the last step." "Aye," said Alan, "better leap clean over the Strid while you're about it." And for once Padraig had no more to say. Oddly enough Brother Basil also thought of the Strid that night--the deep and dangerous whirlpool in the grim North Country had haunted him ever since he saw it. He and Tomaso came back, after dark, to the crypt, and spread out the torn manuscripts by the light of two flambeaux in the wall. None of the pages were whole, and the script was in Latin, Arabic, Greek and Italian, and not all in the same handwriting. Both believed that in searching the heap for secrets of their arts they had stumbled on something dangerous. "I believe I know where these came from," Tomaso said, when they had patched together three or four pages. "They are part of the scripts of Archiater of Byzantium, who was taken for a wizard in Goslar ten years ago. I thought that all his books were burned. There was talk enough about it." "But what are these prescriptions?" asked the monk, puzzled. "You would know by this time," said the Paduan grimly, "if that flame-crested imp of yours, Padraig, had been the one to experiment. By following the directions on this bit of vellum he might have blown us all into the other world. Luckily only three of these formulæ are of that nature. The others are quite safe for your young disciples to play with. But these we will keep to ourselves." He laid a stained brownish piece of sheepskin apart from the others and two smaller ones beside it. "These are directions for the manufacture of aqua regia, Spanish gold, and something which Archiater called Apples of Sodom. Of a certainty they are fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, those apples." Brother Basil had lost color. This really was a trifle too near necromancy to be pleasant. Spanish gold was a Saracen invention, said to be made of most unholy materials, and he had heard of a wizard being carried bodily off on the wind after dealing in the others. "We will carry on our experiments," Tomaso continued, "in the cellars of my tower, if you please. The young ones will be only too glad to be rid of us. If any one meddled here we should risk all we have done and the lives of our pupils. If we make any blunders working by ourselves--well--I sometimes think that I have lived a long time already."