wherever you go. I doubt not old Aunt Keziah knows them, and very likely
she has brewed them up in that hell-drink, the remembrance of which is
still rankling in my stomach. I thought I had swallowed the Devil himself,
whom the old woman had been boiling down. It would be curious enough if
the hideous decoction was the same as old Friar Bacon and his acolyte
discovered by their science! One ingredient, however, one of those plants,
I scarcely think the old lady can have put into her pot of Devil's elixir;
for it is a rare plant, that does not grow in these parts."

"And what is that?" asked Septimius.

"_Sanguinea sanguinissima_" said the doctor; "it has no vulgar name;
but it produces a very beautiful flower, which I have never seen, though
some seeds of it were sent me by a learned friend in Siberia. The others,
divested of their Latin names, are as common as plantain, pig-weed, and
burdock; and it stands to reason that, if vegetable Nature has any such
wonderfully efficacious medicine in store for men, and means them to use
it, she would have strewn it everywhere plentifully within their reach."

"But, after all, it would be a mockery on the old dame's part," said the
young man, somewhat bitterly, "since she would thus hold the desired thing
seemingly within our reach; but because she never tells us how to prepare
and obtain its efficacy, we miss it just as much as if all the ingredients
were hidden from sight and knowledge in the centre of the earth. We are
the playthings and fools of Nature, which she amuses herself with during
our little lifetime, and then breaks for mere sport, and laughs in our
faces as she does so."

"Take care, my good fellow," said the doctor, with his great coarse laugh.
"I rather suspect that you have already got beyond the age when the great