It was late one evening in April, a few weeks after the unsuccessful attack of Peter upon the tower, that the alchemist, Kreutz, and the student, Johann Tring, were sitting upon rude stools in the loft above the alchemist’s lodging, arguing with much heat some question that had arisen between them. The day had been sultry for early spring and the sun was setting red over the distant hills, flooding with its crimson the high mound called the Krakus Mound over beyond the river on the road to Wieliczka and the salt mines. Tring sat where he could see the sunshine through the little window, but the alchemist sat within the gathering darkness of the room. Above their heads on the slanting walls vials and glass tubes of the alchemist’s craft gleamed like precious stones, and every now and then some substance lying upon the hot coals of the braziers would hiss up into a little flame and smoke, for all the world like a serpent suddenly raising its slender head and coils above a quiet patch of grass. “I tell you that I have had enough,” the alchemist replied to some remark of the student’s. “I am ready to forswear this scientific experiment into which we have so boldly launched and go back to my old studies which are much better suited to a God-fearing man.” Tring laughed, low but maliciously. “So that is where your courage lies,” he answered. “That is the crown of valor that you boast in exploring the wonders of the unknown world. Come,” he added after a minute, as if changing his tactics in dealing with this man who was now thoroughly in his power, or so he thought, “come and put a better complexion upon things; we are already past the hardest stretch of the road—if there is to be found the solution to that problem upon which we both have spent so much time, it will be found so much the more readily now because of the sacrifices that we have already made for it. Are the trances tiring you beyond endurance?” The alchemist let his head sink into his hands. “I am tired—I am tired,” was all that he could say. Tring regarded him with disgust, but held back the angry words which sprang to his lips and expressed himself more gently. “Then if there is a fault it must lie with you, Pan Kreutz,” he said. “It is beyond my understanding that such a man as you should find exhaustion in these simple experiments that I have performed. Many another person I have put into trances similar to yours, and for longer periods of time, too, and there has been no harm, nay, nor physical exhaustion from it.” “Alas,” the alchemist moaned as if making a confession, “I have been in trances other than those of your making, and almost continually, too.”