that floated before the stormy winds and hurled the wretched wanderer to
destruction, or crushed him with the overthrown trees. In proof of this
the monk asked the reader if he had not heard of huge boughs falling
from trees without visible cause, suddenly and without warning, and even
of trees themselves in full foliage, in calm weather, toppling with a
crash, to the imminent danger or the death of those who happened to be
passing. Let all these purchase the amulets of St. Augustine, concluded
the writer, who it appeared was a monk in whose monastery the escaped
prisoner had taken refuge, and who had written down his relation and
copied his rude sketches.

Felix pored over the strange diagrams, striving to understand the hidden
meaning; some of them he thought were alchemical signs, and related to
the making of gold, especially as the prisoner stated the Romany
possessed much more of that metal in the tents than he had seen in the
palaces of our kings. Whether they had a gold mine from whence they drew
it, or whether they had the art of transmutation, he knew not, but he
had heard allusions to the wealth in the mountain of the apple trees,
which he supposed to be a mystical phrase.

When Felix at last looked up, the lamp was low, the moonbeams had
entered and fell upon the polished floor, and from the window he could
see a long white ghostly line of mist where a streamlet ran at the base
of the slope by the forest. The songs were silent; there was no sound
save the distant neigh of a horse and the heavy tramp of a guest coming
along the gallery. Half bewildered by poring over the magic scroll, full
of the signs and the demons, and still with a sense of injury and
jealousy cankering his heart, Felix retired to his couch, and, weary
beyond measure, instantly fell asleep.