TWILIGHT LAND

handsome and more powerful than the greatest magician
that ever lived. I myself, this castle, and everything that
is in it will be his, and, instead of your becoming a prince
or a king or an emperor, he will be so in your place.
That, I say, will happen if he wakens. Now the dagger
of death is the only thing in the world that has power to
kill him. You have it in your hand. You have but to give
him one stroke with it while he sleeps, and he will never
waken again, and then all will by yours—your very own.”

Gebhart neither spoke nor moved, but stood looking
down upon his master. Then he set down the goblet
very softly on the floor, and, shutting his eyes that he
might not see the blow, raised the dagger to strike.

“That is all your promises amount to,” said Nicholas .
Flamel the wise man. “After all, Babette, you need not
bring the bread and cheese, for he shall be no pupil of
mine.”

Then Gebhart opened his eyes.

There sat the wise man in the midst of his books and
bottles and diagrams and dust and chemicals: and cob-
webs, making strange figures upon the table with jack-
straws and a piece of chalk.

And Babette, who had just opened the cupboard door
for the loaf of bread and the cheese, shut it again with a
bang, and went back to her spinning.

So Gebhart had to go back again to his Greek and
Latin and algebra and geometry; for, after all, one can-
not pour a gallon of beer into a quart pot, or the wisdom
of a Nicholas Flamel into such an one as Gebhart.

As for the name of this story, why, if some promises
are not bottles full of nothing but wind, there is little
need to have a name for anything.

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