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
