Years afterwards (as it seemed to her) she awakened and found the chamber still as death, and--yes--this was the hair of death which she still clutched in her dead hand. She kissed it a hundred times before it brought back to her where she was and what had passed. She looked round then for the hermit. He, poor man, was lying as if also dead. But when she could bring herself to release her hoarded treasure, she speedily brought him to some sort of consciousness. He sat up, not without difficulty, and looked around. But his mind, already halfway to madness, had been totally overturned by what had occurred that woeful night. "We have saved his soul between us," she cried. "What do I not owe you for standing by me in that fell hour?" He regarded her in evident perplexity. "I cannot think how you come to be wearing that blood-stained dress of hers," was all he replied. "I have told you," she said, gently, "but you have forgotten that I cherished it through all my wanderings as my sole memento of her glorious death. She laid down the last drop of her blood for him. She chose the better part. But I! my God! what in the world is to become of me?" "I had a memento of her once," he muttered. "I had her beautiful head, but I have lost it." "That settles it," she said, "you shall cut off mine." "THE DEVIL'S DEBT." Somewhere about the Middle Ages--somewhere in a mediaeval town---there lived a man who walked always on the shady side of the way. None of his neighbours could have assigned a reason why he should only tread where the lapse of time leaves no trace on the dial, yet so it was. None had ever seen him in sunshine. This man was known by the name of Porphyro, though we may reasonably doubt if it was given to him in baptism. For he belonged to a class that baptised toads by night at their Sabbaths in mockery of the baptism of babes by day. In a word, Porphyro was a wizard, and for one circumstance (which will presently be mentioned) was perhaps better known among his like than any practiser of the Black Art before or since. There was, and likely enough still is, in Europe a University of the occult sciences, buried underground, carved out of the roots of mountains, far from the hum of men. Here taught weird professors--eerie, eldritch, elflocked. Here came weird students to tread the intoxicating wine-press of magical study. Your true wizard is set apart from birth by some particularity which bespeaks his vocation. To the University came representatives of every class which felt this call. Here was the demoniac and the stigmatic, the abortion and the albino, the hermaphrodite and the changeling, the hag-ridden and the pixy-led, sleep-walker, Cesarean, Sunday-child, seventh son, and he that is born with the caul. This motley crew was of as many hues as there are ends of the earth. Many tongued as Mithridates, all wrote their notes by common consent in the lingua angelorum.