Five hundred generations have, it is alleged, gathered four times in each year in the Hall of Initiation; and every meeting has been concluded by the utterance from the same spot and in the same words of the solemn but simple _Zulvakalfe_ [word of peace]:-- "Peace be with you, near and far, Children of the Silver Star; Lore undoubting, conscience clean, Hope assured, and life serene.
By the Light that knows no flaw, By the Circle's perfect law, By the Serpent's life renewed, By the Wings' similitude-- Peace be yours no force can break; Peace not death hath power to shake; Peace from passion, sin, and gloom, Peace of spirit, heart, and home; Peace from peril, fear, and pain; Peace, until we meet again-- Meet--before yon sculptured stone, Or the All-Commander's Throne." Before we finally parted, Esmo gave me two or three articles to which he attached especial value.

The most important of these was a small cube of translucent stone, in which a multitude of diversely coloured fragments were combined; so set in a tiny swivel or swing of gold that it might be conveniently attached to the watch-chain, the only Terrestrial article that I still wore.

"This," he said, "will test nearly every poison known to our science; each poison discolouring for a time one or another of the various substances of which it is composed; and poison is perhaps the weapon least unlikely to be employed against you when known to be connected with myself, and, I will hope, to possess the favour of the Sovereign.

If you are curious to verify its powers, the contents of the tiny medicine-chest I have given you will enable you to do so.

There is scarcely one of those medicines which is not a single or a combined poison of great power.