"From the devil certainly!" cried Andrew interrupting him, having been gradually poking in his face nearer and nearer. "I am not talking to you, lowland lubber," said Conrad; "you would do better to seat yourself behind the stove; that is your right place when people are canvassing grave questions of science." Andrew muttered, and angrily drew back his chair a little; whereupon Conrad went on; "Look you man, this art in many countries is not the only one, nor even the highest, profitable as it may be for discovering veins of metal, or even gold and silver. Of much greater weight however, and far more formidable are those who have a power in their eyes to do one an injury, and with a single glance can infect one with a disease, a fever, a jaundice, a fit of madness, or even look one dead. The better and godlier part of these persons hence always of their own accord wear a bandage before one of their eyes--for this power will often exist only on one side--so that they may walk about and deal with their neighbours, without harming them." "Of these I have never heard," replied the stranger. "That is matter of surprise to me," continued the old miner with the most perfect gravity: "for since you come from Hungary, and probably were born there, where you have such a sight of vampires, or blood-sucking corpses, such swarms of goblins and manikins of the mountains, dwarfs and subterraneous creatures, that will often come across you even by broad daylight, I fancied everything belonging to witchcraft must be in high vogue there and generally notorious." "No," answered the traveller, "I never up to this present instant heard anything of these prodigies, much as I have seen and myself experienced that by such as have not been so far from home may be deemed remarkable enough." "Now then," said Conrad taking up his word again, "when the Zahori, as they call him, has once got so far that with his naked eye, instead of quietly seeing the treasures beneath his feet, he can give anyone a fit of sickness or put him to death, he has only one step further to become perfect and a master in his art. Look you, my good stranger, when he has thus reacht the highest degree, he will set himself down before a dish of baked meat, while it is still standing in the oven covered up and shut down, and without anybody being able to observe him will with his mere eyes devour you a goose, or a hare, or whatever it may be, swallowing it up so clean and neat, that, if he chooses, not a bone will be left. Place some nuts before him or melons, he will eat up all the kernel or pulp out of them, without making even a single scratch on the shell or rind, but leaving them undamaged just as if everything was still within. He has had a good meal; nobody can prove, or even suspect what he has done; and others have nothing left them but a fruitless search." "The devil again!" cried Andrew; "that's the trick I should like, if I could learn the art."