and austere thought for the ordeal, I promise thee the ordeal shall
commence. One caution alone I give thee: regard it as a peremptory
command, enter not this chamber!" (They were then standing in the room
where their experiments had been chiefly made, and in which Glyndon, on
the night he had sought the solitude of the mystic, had nearly fallen a
victim to his intrusion.)

"Enter not this chamber till my return; or, above all, if by any search
for materials necessary to thy toils thou shouldst venture hither,
forbear to light the naphtha in those vessels, and to open the vases on
yonder shelves. I leave the key of the room in thy keeping, in order to
try thy abstinence and self-control. Young man, this very temptation is
a part of thy trial."

With that, Mejnour placed the key in his hands; and at sunset he left
the castle.

For several days Glyndon continued immersed in employments which
strained to the utmost all the faculties of his intellect. Even the most
partial success depended so entirely on the abstraction of the mind, and
the minuteness of its calculations, that there was scarcely room for any
other thought than those absorbed in the occupation. And doubtless this
perpetual strain of the faculties was the object of Mejnour in works
that did not seem exactly pertinent to the purposes in view. As the
study of the elementary mathematics, for example, is not so profitable
in the solving of problems, useless in our after-callings, as it is
serviceable in training the intellect to the comprehension and analysis
of general truths.

But in less than half the time which Mejnour had stated for the duration