“Just before I came downstairs Tring was speaking to my uncle as if he were just a common servant. And my uncle instead of being angry seemed to be trying to please the student. At last Tring said: ‘This, now, you must do. You must learn the secret which will change brass into gold. Once you have gold, then you have the power to do all that man can do. You can go about over the earth and see all that there is to see, you can study with the most famous masters and buy all that you please.’ He repeated over and over again the word ‘gold,’ and it seemed to me that while he was speaking my uncle was working at something, for he never answered a word.” The woman shook her head. “I have known of those who sought to make gold out of baser metal. But no good ever befell them. . . .” Then thinking that she needed to draw the girl’s thoughts away from herself and her troubles, she said, “I am often lonely these nights when Joseph and his father are away. Yet I often listen for the sound of the trumpet in the church tower and I know that everything is well with them.” “And I. Joseph begins at the second hour. We have a secret, he and I, and I always listen for him to play.” “Bless your heart. Do you mean to say that you lie awake until the second hour?” “I do when he is playing. For he is my best friend, and one should be loyal unto friends.” “Can you tell when he is playing, and when the father?” “I could easily at first. Now it is much harder, but I think that I could distinguish did I not know at what hours each played. His notes are not quite so pointed as the father’s, but they are becoming more and more like them all the time.” The conversation ran to other matters and it grew late. Finally the woman made up a bed for the girl on a small couch which Joseph and his father had built. It was close to the outer door, and directly below the casement, over which a piece of tapestry hung; the window was open in this fair weather, and Elzbietka could easily hear noises from outside, especially the sound of the church bells and the trumpet, for the window faced in the direction of the tower. Joseph’s mother retired to the second room, where she slept when Joseph was at the church, and Elzbietka, without undressing, for she feared lest the alchemist should call her suddenly, threw herself on the couch and tried to sleep. She found sleep impossible. Visions of some terrible thing happening to her uncle and the student kept her thoughts boiling like water in a kettle. She kept remembering the words that other people had said, the remarks made by other students, the whispers up and down the lane that Pan Kreutz was engaged in some terrible work of Black Magic.