be enraged with one who seems their brother, yet whose countenance will
never be furrowed with his age, nor his knees totter, nor his force be
abated; their little brevity will be rebuked by his age-long endurance,
above whom the oaken roof-tree of a thousand years would crumble, while
still he would be hale and strong. So that this house, or any other, would
be but a resting-place of a day, and then I must away into another
obscurity."

With almost a regret, he continued to look over the documents until he
reached one of the persons recorded in the line of pedigree,--a worthy,
apparently, of the reign of Elizabeth, to whom was attributed a title of
Doctor in Utriusque Juris; and against his name was a verse of Latin
written, for what purpose Septimius knew not, for, on reading it, it
appeared to have no discoverable appropriateness; but suddenly he
remembered the blotted and imperfect hieroglyphical passage in the recipe.
He thought an instant, and was convinced this was the full expression and
outwriting of that crabbed little mystery; and that here was part of that
secret writing for which the Age of Elizabeth was so famous and so
dexterous. His mind had a flash of light upon it, and from that moment he
was enabled to read not only the recipe but the rules, and all the rest of
that mysterious document, in a way which he had never thought of before;
to discern that it was not to be taken literally and simply, but had a
hidden process involved in it that made the whole thing infinitely deeper
than he had hitherto deemed it to be. His brain reeled, he seemed to have
taken a draught of some liquor that opened infinite depths before him, he
could scarcely refrain from giving a shout of triumphant exultation, the
house could not contain him, he rushed up to his hill-top, and there,
after walking swiftly to and fro, at length flung himself on the little
hillock, and burst forth, as if addressing him who slept beneath.