But we are told that there is no hint of the Hiramic legend, still less any intimation of a tragedy associated with the building of the Temple. No Hiramic legend! No hint of tragedy! Why, both were almost as old as the Temple itself, rabbinic legend affirming that "_all the workmen were killed that they should not build another Temple devoted to idolatry, Hiram himself being translated to heaven like Enoch_."[127] The Talmud has many variations of this legend. Where would one expect the legends of the Temple to be kept alive and be made use of in ceremonial, if not in a religious order of builders like the Masons? Is it surprising that we find so few references in later literature to what was thus held as a sacred secret? As we have seen, the legend of Hiram was kept as a profound secret until 1841 by the French Companionage, who almost certainly learned it from the Free-masons. Naturally it was never made a matter of record,[128] but was transmitted by oral tradition within the order; and it was also natural, if not inevitable, that the legend, of the master-artist of the Temple should be "the Master's Part" among Masons who were temple-builders. How else explain the veiled allusions to the name in the _Old Charges_ as read to Entered Apprentices, if it was not a secret reserved for a higher rank of Mason? Why any disguise at all if it had no hidden meaning? Manifestly the motif of the Third Degree was purely Masonic, and we need not go outside the traditions of the order to account for it.