It was a superstitious age, an age when people believed that powers of evil could be called upon, like human beings, to perform certain dark deeds—that souls of the dead forever haunted certain lonely places on earth and would answer a question if one but knew how to address them. If a black cat crossed one’s path, then bad luck was sure to follow; if an owl hooted at exactly midnight from the tower of some deserted church then the witches were riding through the air on brooms or branches; if a dog howled in the night it was a sign that some one living near by was about to die. There were people who fostered such ideas for their own benefit. They were for the most part necromancers or magicians who took the gold of credulous ones for telling them of their own futures or for warding off some impending evil from them. Perhaps some few of these believed themselves honest; the greater number were thoroughly dishonest and unscrupulous, men who wore dark robes and practiced dark ways simply to frighten superstitious folk into giving them money. These magicians sold articles called “tokens” which were guaranteed to keep away certain evils. A little ball of black stone would prevent the possessor from being bitten by snakes. The little yellow, glasslike substance, created when lightning struck in sand and melted the fine particles, was greatly valued; crumbled and taken internally it would prevent stomach trouble. Worn about the neck in a small bag it would keep off lightning. Certain little bones from the bodies of cats, dogs, and hares had properties of benefit; the heart of a frog had many mystic qualities. It was quite apparent in the case of the alchemist, Kreutz, that something was going on that was undermining his health and perhaps his reason. Such a change as had come over him was not at all normal in a man with such a strong body and mind as he possessed. And as Elzbietka lay awake thinking of one thing after another she became a prey to many strange fears, among them this one, that Kreutz was no longer the master of his own soul, that somehow the student Tring had become the master of it; that Tring had discovered something in his studies which he was working out at the expense of the man who naturally should have been his teacher and master.