powerfulest enchantment known to the princes of the oc-
cult arts in the lands of the East; an it fail me, naught
can avail. Peace, until I finish."

He raised a smoke this time that darkened all the
region, and must have made matters uncomfortable for
the hermits, for the wind was their way, and it rolled
down over their dens in a dense and billowy fog. He
poured out volumes of speech to match, and contorted
his body and sawed the air with his hands in a most
extraordinary way. At the end of twenty minutes he
dropped down panting, and about exhausted. Now
arrived the abbot and several hundred monks and nuns,
and behind them a multitude of pilgrims and a couple
of acres of foundlings, all drawn by the prodigious smoke,