marrow,--waste wax, waste man!"

"Thou art a devil to do this thing, and a blockhead to think it, O
miserable friar!" exclaimed Adam, roused from all his gentleness.

"Ha!" cried the friar, no less vehemently, and his burly face purple
with passion, "dost thou think to bandy words with me? Wretch! I
will set goblins to pinch thee black and blue! I will drag thee at
night over all the jags of Mount Pepanon, at the tail of a mad
nightmare! I will put aches in all thy bones, and the blood in thy
veins shall run into sores and blotches. Am I not Friar Bungey? And
what art thou?"

At these terrible denunciations, the sturdy Robin, though far less
superstitious than most of his contemporaries, was seized with a
trembling from head to foot; and expecting to see goblins and imps
start forth from the walls, he retired hastily from his hiding-place,
and, without waiting for further commune with Warner, softly opened
the chamber door and stole down the stairs. Adam, however, bore the
storm unquailingly, and when the holy man paused to take breath, he
said calmly,--

"Verily, if thou canst do these things, there must be secrets in
Nature which I have not yet discovered. Howbeit, though thou art free
to try all thou canst against me, thy threats make it necessary that
this communication between us should be nailed up, and I shall so
order."

The friar, who was ever in want of Adam's aid, either to construe a
bit of Latin, or to help him in some chemical illusion, by no means