Eagerly he hurried to the deserted room. Everything was draped in dusty cobwebs, and when he opened the door the rats went scuttling in all directions. All among the bottles and boxes and books and bundles he sought and sought for some discovery which should help him. But though he found many other curious things, he found not what he sought. Though he poked in every dark corner and read carefully the labels on every phial, and the recipes in every book, he found no Secret for Growing Big. He could have learned, had he wished, "How to Make a Silk Purse Out of a Sow's Ear"; "How to Make a Horse Drink"; "How to Make an Empty Sack Stand Upright," and other very difficult things. But all these secrets were of no use to Arthur, and he thought that his uncle had wasted much valuable time in making these discoveries. Which, indeed, was true. Arthur grew more and more discontented every day. But one morning, quite by accident, he hit his elbow against a hidden spring in a certain knot-hole of the wall in the dusty laboratory. Immediately a secret panel opened, and there behind it was a secret cupboard. In the cupboard was the secretest-looking package, wrapped in a velvet cloth. Arthur unrolled it eagerly and found a little leather case. When the case was opened, he saw inside a bit of glass set in gold, with a handle. It looked quite like a modern reading-glass--only reading-glasses were not invented until many, many years later. "What can this be?" said Arthur to himself. And taking up the glass he looked through it. Wonderful! Everything suddenly seemed to become small--just as it does nowadays when we look through the wrong end of an opera-glass. But Arthur had never seen an opera-glass, you know; this was so many hundreds of years ago. Arthur looked around the room, and everything had suddenly become so tiny that it made him laugh. In the window a huge spider--as big as his hand--had been spinning her web. Now she was no larger than a dot. A rat scampered across the floor, and as Arthur looked it shrank to the size of a fly! A bird flew past the window, singing, and it grew smaller as it flew, while its voice became tinier and tinier till it sounded like the buzzing of an insect. Amazed, Arthur took down the glass from his eye. Instantly everything appeared again of its natural size--all except the spider and the rat and the bird. They remained tiny as they had seemed through the glass. Arthur had magicked them! "Ho!" cried Arthur. "This is some of my uncle's Amateur Magic. He had, indeed, discovered how to make living things grow small. Alas! That helps me little. I am small enough now. But if only it worked the other way I might become a giant. What a pity! what a pity! Stay--perhaps if I reverse the glass something better may be done!" He was about to turn the glass over and raise it to his eye again, when he spied a bit of parchment in the box. On it were scribbled some words, in faded ink.