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drawn out sticking to the iron. Then they do beat off the half-exhausted cinders, now deprived of their sulphury and arsenic malignity, the which can then make up sweet and clear pleasant chamber fires.
    I fell once again to thinking of this ringing of bells, the which is only practised in this isle of ours: How admirable it is that in such a short time it hath increased, and that the depth of its intricacy is found out; for within these thirty or forty years last past, changes were not known, nor thought possible to be rang. And now we ring changes, ad infinitum, nor can any number confine us.
    And on a paper I did prick out a pattern that I think three bells might follow most melodiously, that one might then leave the pattern and be replaced by another, that even the treble might ring, for wherefore should he be ever constrained as he is? But I will think more on this.
    To return to this black man Roger Southwell, who was in such an ill humour this day, speaking much nonsense about the daughter of Master Pakeman (at which Nate Mundy hath nonsense of his own, that Master Pakeman hath a young mistress, the which I can tell him is not true; —I have seen her, she is most fair, quoth he; however I do believe that all he hath beheld is the man’s daughter Ann).
    Roger saith he hath seen the girl in church, and means to seduce her Attentions through his art. For I must note that he fancies himself an alchemist or magus or some such; though for myself I think a man must study many years and be of altogether more sober temperament than the good Roger, an he would be a mage. Though I have seen Ann Pakeman myself and she is a comely Maiden, who would not be like to look with favour upon the journeyman of her Father.
    However I expressed my scepticism to Master Southwell who then addressed me thus:
    —Fabian do you come to my lodging when that we are done here and I shall show you how it is that I mean to woo Mistress Ann.
    And I would fain see this thing, as what man would not, and went with him to his laboratory, and found it most wondrous strange. Tis a mean little attic, if the truth be told, and nothing in it but a pallet and by the window (the which letteth in so much light as a penny-candle) a bench.
    Twas this bench that drew my attention, for upon it sate all manner of arcane things, alembics, glass ware of many and divers kinds, sulfurous powders, bottles and jars, dried animals, and, horrid to relate, human bones and a very skull, a mortar and pestle (the which inside was most strangely discoloured), divers books (one lay open, I read its title, Pretiosa Margarita Novella, the which I understood to signify, A New Pearl of Great Price), and many other items too numerous to mention.
    Roger then showed me a substance like unto pitch in a jar the which he told me was called Mummy and sold by pothecaries as a specific.
    —It is hot in the second degree, he saith, and good against all bruisings, spitting of blood, and divers other diseases. There are two kinds on it, the one is digged out of the graves in Arabia and Syria of those bodies that were embalmed, and is called Arabian Mummy, and that is what this is. The second kind is only an equal mixture of the Jews lime and bitumen, and is of no use at all.
    Strangest of all, in a large jar (that which they do call a Jordan, which is to say not a chamber-pot) a most hideous thing: I cannot describe it for it had no shape, and it stank like unto a midden, and gave off much heat.
    —Tis an homunculus, Roger says to me, an it grows it will become a mannikin and be my servant. And more he told me too, about its making from shit and semen and other bodily excretions. I thought that it never looked like anything living, but I said naught to Roger. I had much misjudged the man; that he studied was plain to see; I remained sceptical about his powers; however he made for me a most persuasive demonstation that cuicunque in arte sua credendum est}
    Taking from his workbench some powders