Where and how Menippus received his initiation into this Order was a mystery, but that his initiation was more than the mere wearing of the symbols of the Order, he proved in vastly more ways than one. The few who came to his tower to leave it with greater knowledge than was contained in multiplicity of words and brief cryptic utterances, left it with sealed lips, but with hearts wherein awe and dread were strangely intermingled. Such power as Menippus showed them was unquestionably power, but whence it came was another matter. A high-nosed, thin-lipped man he was, his face yellow like the parchments he studied. His eyes, black as sloes, and very piercing, were set beneath shaggy eyebrows. The lids of them folding far back at his will, left them at times staring and unblinking. This gave them an hypnotic power. At other times, when in deep thought, they cut across the pupil of the eye; then you saw the eyes heavy-lidded. This alteration of the eyelids’ form was a marked characteristic of his. It set the hearts of curious women—those who sought his wisdom—a-beating; more than once sent them scuttling like frightened hens to the door, and adown the stairs, while Menippus sat chuckling cynically. Weak enough to desire his power to be sought and acknowledged by all men, mere curiosity bored him vastly. You may judge that he was more often bored by his visitors than not. Vanity alone made boredom worth the enduring. It was a strange quality to find in a man of his age and power. Pride and unscrupulousness one might well expect; but here was a strain of weakness running through his strength, one which had endured from his earliest years. It is perchance needless to say that but for it he would have been greater than he was, and he was no small man intellectually no more than physically. This same vanity had led him into works no man dare even name with impunity.