“Gradually the old clock-face seemed to clarify and expand, until, no longer obstructed by substance, I gazed out, and down, and up, through an avenue of the most astonishing light I had ever beheld. It seemed to me that I no longer occupied my body, but that, freed from flesh and time, I had become a denizen of Eternity; and on a fleecy vapor I was sustained in mid-air by the potent arm of a strange-looking old man--the veritable and precise image of him who, ten days before, had occasioned us such a fright by his mysterious conversations and evanishment. He told me not to fear, but to repose implicit confidence in myself and him; that he would not injure me, but do me good; that his name was Ettelavar; that his years were ages long; that he was the companion of those who die--who die, and live again--and of those who never taste of death. All this, and more, he told me; and he said that his design was to serve both himself and me; that he was familiar with certain mighty secrets, that had been claimed to be possessed, through many ages, by the wise and learned of earth--the Narek El Gebel, the Hermetists, the Pythagoreans, the three temples of the Rosie Cross, the mediæval and modern Rosicrucians, and the scattering delvers after mystery in all ages, times, and places. He said that among the things that I might learn from him, were the priceless secret of compounding the Elixir of Life, the drinking of which, by mortals, would confer perpetual youth and surprising beauty. Then there was the Lethean Draught, and whomsoever drank thereof, forthwith forgot all care, was oblivious to all that concerned the Future, and lived intensely in the Present. Then there was the Water of Love, and whoever drank thereof became irresistibly magnetic to the opposite sex, and could kindle affection in the heart of ice by mere personal presence. Then there was the Wondrous Stone of the Philosophers, not capable of transmuting, by a touch, whole tons of grossest substance into solid, shining gold, but of making it chemically. Then there was the Magic Crystal Ball, in which the gazer could behold whatever he wished to, that was then transpiring on this earth, or any of the planets. ‘All this knowledge,’ said he, ‘I will expound to you, on certain conditions to be hereafter mentioned.’