A furnace was in one corner, retorts, test tubes, crucibles, a huge pestle and mortar, jars, bottles were on a bench close handy.
The room was lighted by a window projecting over the Thames, and the roar of the river rushing through the narrow arches and swirling and dashing against the stone work never ceased, though it varied in violence according to wind and tide.

The house was a portion of the old chapel of St.Thomas, long since converted from ecclesiastical observances to commercial uses.
Dr.Mountchance, who at this moment was at a table in the centre examining a silver flagon and muttering comments upon it, was a little man about seventy, with an enormous head and a spare body and short legs.

His face was wrinkled like a piece of wet shrivelled silk and his skin was the colour of parchment.

His eyes, very small and deep-set, were surmounted by heavy brows once black, now of an iron grey.

His mouth was of prodigious width, the lips thin and straight and his nose long, narrow and pointed.