Page:Randolph, Paschal Beverly; Eulis! the history of love.djvu/219

214 vault, skirting which was a railway just equipped and opened for traffic a month or two prior to the marine disaster! Lastly: Within eight months after my return I became sole male heir to our family-property in consequence of the death of my brother by a charge of shot, not a bullet in the groin, as the Mirror showed;—but full in the abdomen while climbing a fence for a drink at the brookside, and not at a well. Every fact shown so mysteriously was proved strangely true, though not literally so. I, just previous to my departure from the strange bridal, asked the old Sheikh some questions; and learned that the material on the crystal surface wherein we saw the strange miracles was but partially prepared,—as my readers will also recollect; but some which he placed on a glass just before I left, and which had been fully prepared, the finishing process being a secret one and conducted by the newly wedded couples by a peculiar process—and nameless—never made a mistake while in my possession; for I confess I lost it from a silly servant having shown it boastingly to a gypsy, who stole it that same night, through the most adroit bit of scientific burglary I ever heard or read of. The loss, however, was not irreparable, for I have since found that these strange Muntra-Wallahs, as they are contemptuously called by their Islamic foes in the Carnatic (but true magi in the opinion of better informed people), have brethren and correspondents in nearly every country on the globe—Brazil, China, Japan, Vienna, and even our own London; while they have a regular Lodge in Paris, of some of whom the initiated, and favored ignorants even, can and do obtain occasionally, not only well-charged and polished Bhatteyeh, but actually, now and then, a gourd full of Moulveh-Bhattah,—the strangely mysterious substance which constitutes the seeing surface, as mercury does in the ordinary looking-glass, and the two are alike in all save that the latter reflects matter and the living, while the former sometimes—but not at all times, or to all people, or to the successful seers on all occasions—reveals only spirit and the dead,—ay, and things that never die! Heaven help all whom a Muntra-Wallah hates!—or loves either, for that matter—unless that love be returned;for the magician in one case will bring up the hated one's shadow,—and