And that day went by with its splendours and was added to past days; and night came up and covered the skies of Spain, and the magician sat all alone in his house in the wood. He was not wholly hostile to man; but, sitting there leaning forward upon a table whereon one taper flared, he was brooding on problems so far from our work-a-day cares, so far beyond even that starry paling which bounds our imaginations, that men and women were not to him that matter of first importance they are to us, but only something to be noted and studied as we might study whatever rumours may come of life upon planets of suns that are other than ours. His care for humanity was solely this, that amongst its children, whether in Spain or elsewhere, were those that were worthy to receive and cherish, and carry to those that would bring it to the far dimness of time, the mighty learning that he himself had had from the most illustrious of all the line of professors that had held the Chair of Magic at Saragossa. For the rest, his care was more with the dominion that he held over captive shadows, and their far wanderings; the messages that they carried and the inspirations they brought; than with that narrow scope, and the brief stay, with which we are familiar. Could we know the supplications that his shadows sometimes took for him to great spirits that chanced on a journey near to Earth’s orbit; could we know the songs and the splendours with which they often replied; it might be that our hearts would thrill to his strange traffic till we might forget to blame his aloofness from man. Only in rarest moments, perhaps as an organist sleeps, and his hand falls on to the keys playing one bar straight from dreams; or just at the apex of fever in tropical forests when strange birds are mating; or, eastwards from here, where a player upon a reed in barbarous mountains hits ancestrally on a note that his tribe have known from the days of Pan; or when some flash from the sunset shows a worldwide band of colour that is not one of the colours that man has named; only at rarest moments comes any guess to us of those songs and splendours that the lonely man drew from the spaces that lie bleak and bare about the turn of the comet. And only that day he had learned a curious story, a legend of the interstellar darkness, from a spirit that was going upon a journey, and had passed through the solar planets wrapped in thunder, and had been that morning at his nearest to Earth.

Ramon Alonzo had been absent now for six days; and, having no pupil to whom to transmit the mysteries that he himself had had from so glorious a source, the Master was solely occupied in his loneliness with legend and lore that are not of Earth or our peoples. And as he brooded on matters that are of moment outside our care and beyond the path of Neptune, the step of Ramon Alonzo was heard in the hush of the wood.

The young man entered vexed at that notable failure of the potion he had compounded, and angry for Mirandola, his father and mother, and the whole household of his home. He had pictured the consternation of that house, of which Peter had told him tremblingly not only all, but more; and he laid the blame on the author of the spells, which had seemed too easy for mistakes to be possible, rather than on his own forgetfulness. He entered believing that he owed nothing to the magician, and determined to learn no more of the making of gold so that he should still owe him nothing, and to get his own shadow back as his lawful due, and to rescue the charwoman’s as an act of Christian chivalry. The two men met, one brooding upon a wrong, the other upon affairs beyond the orbit of Neptune, so that they each spoke little. And presently Ramon Alonzo, drawing forth a parchment, said: “Master, this script which was brought to Spain by a wandering man of Cathay, perchance hath matter of moment, and may even be worthy of your skill in strange tongues.”

And with that he handed the parchment to the magician. The master took it and held it low near the candle. “Ting,” he said. “Ting.” Then was silent and shook his head.

So the first syllable was “Ting.” All the rest were nonsense that Ramon Alonzo had written in levity. More than that one syllable he durst not write, lest the Master should know that he was seeking his spell. There remained two more; and these he would get in the same manner hereafter, when the Master’s suspicions should have had time to sleep. For this he bided his time. But he thought within a week to have the key of the shadow-box.

“I know not what language it be,” said the Master.

“No?” said Ramon Alonzo.

“None of Earth,” said the Master.

And the young man took back the parchment, apologizing for troubling the Master’s learning. All had been as he had planned; and he went then to the dingy nook below the wooden stairs to share his high hopes with the charwoman. And there he found her among her brooms and pails, about to lie down for the night on her heap of straw. Her eyes flashed a welcome to him. And at once he said: “I have the first syllable of the spell.”

Then thought overcast her face, and a little slowly her old mind turned to the future and tried to find all it would mean if he came by all three syllables. And while youth, under those old stairs, was swiftly building hopes on the roof of hopes, age was finding objections.

“How will you find the others?” she asked.

“The same way,” he said, and told her how he had carried out his plan.

“He will suspect,” she said.

“He does not yet,” said he.

And she shook her head as she thought of old wiles of the Master.

“Has he taken back the false shadow he made?” she asked.

“I have not yet asked him,” the young man said, “but he will.”

“If he does not,” she said, “the false one will show whenever your own true shadow dwindles at noon.”

But these objections he had not come to hear in the triumphant moments that followed on his success. He had thought that his own high hopes would have driven away her melancholy, but now it was saddening him.

“You shall have your own shadow back,” he said, “and shall wear it in Aragona.”

That was his final attempt to cheer the old woman. Then he left while he still could hope.

He went to his spidery room in the lonely tower and there lay down to sleep, but plans came to that mouldering bed instead of dreams, and far on into the night he plotted the rescue of shadows. How many a man through hours of silent darkness has laid his lonely plans for things more insubstantial.

Plans of caution and plans of impatience came to Ramon Alonzo that night; and by the early hours he blended them, and decided to wait three days before asking the Master to read another script; and he satisfied his impatience, so far as it could be satisfied, by planning to go the next day into the wood to bring back another parchment, with a tale, when the time came, of a meeting with one from Cathay. And a certain radiance in the youthful mind decked the plan with glittering prospects of success. Then Ramon Alonzo slept.

Descending a little late on the next morning the young man found the food awaiting him that the magician never failed to supply. He ate, then went to the room that was sacred to magic. And there was the Master seated before his lectern considering things beyond the concern of man.

“Would you learn more of the making of gold?” he said.

“No,” said Ramon Alonzo.

A thin streak of joy passed through the Master’s mind. For it was the established duty of all the masters, more especially of those that were as glorious as he; however far they might fare down the ages, surviving the human span; to secure a pupil to whom when he might be worthy the ancient secrets should be revealed at last: so should the wisdom that had been brought so far, by caravans that had all crumbled away and were long since dust blowing over desolate lands, pass on to centuries that would surely need it. And he had thought that Ramon Alonzo might after years of toil, and loneliness, and study, and abnegation, be fit one day far hence for the dreadful initiation. But if he persisted with his uncouth interest in so trivial a matter as gold, then he was not the man. Therefore the Master’s mind was briefly lit by a joy when he heard his pupil renouncing this light pursuit; and then his thoughts were afar again with those things that lie beyond the concern of man. From these he was brought back by the young man speaking again.

“Master,” said Ramon Alonzo, “I would fain go to the wood, and walk there awhile before I study again.”

“As you will,” said the Master, and returned to the contemplation of the curious way of a star, which had not as yet been seen by any mortal watcher.

Again those contemplations were interrupted. “Master,” said Ramon Alonzo, “I thank you for that shadow that you designed for me; and having no longer any need of it, I pray you to take it back.”

However old he was, however far were his thoughts beyond the orbit of Earth, he was not to be wholly duped by that young mind. Doubtless he knew not Ramon Alonzo’s plan; yet the stir of a fetter upon a floor of stone may betray the hope of a slave to escape his prison, and Ramon Alonzo’s wish to be rid of that shadow showed that something was afoot which if left unchecked might rob the magical Art of a chosen pupil. Therefore, calling back his thoughts from beyond the path of the comet, across all the regions known to the human imagination, he replied to Ramon Alonzo, saying: “We that follow the Art, and that imitate so far as we are able the examples of the gods, do not take back our gifts.”

No protestations moved him; and Ramon Alonzo, seeing at last that by every word he said he was disclosing more and more clearly the existence of a plan, turned away silent at last and went into the wood.