There is but one condition, that he will keep perfectly silent; for if he speaks, the scene he beholds will vanish.

Come forward!" Sir Norman compressed his lips as closely as if they were forever hermetically sealed, and came forward accordingly.

Leaning over the edge of the ebony caldron, he found that it contained nothing more dreadful than water, for he labored under a vague and unpleasant idea that, like the witches' caldron in Macbeth, it might be filled with serpents' blood and childrens' brains.

La Masque opened her golden casket, and took from it a portion of red powder, with which it was filled.

Casting it into the caldron, she murmured an invocation in Sanscrit, or Coptic, or some other unknown tongue, and slowly there arose a dense cloud of dark-red smoke, that nearly filled the room.