Page:Stories from Old English Poetry-1899.djvu/129



N a vast and ancient room, whose appliances denoted the abode of the scholar and philosopher, sat the learned and famous friar, Roger Bacon. Beside him, a dusty table was thickly strewn with scrolls of parchment, rich with age and erudition, while a large chest, heavily barred and bolted, was filled with other treasures in manuscript, each worth more than its weight in virgin gold.

At the farther end of the room a vast chimney, with smoky furnaces and crucibles, containing crude and half smelted ores, and all the various properties of the alchemist, occupied one side of the apartment. In one corner, a huge iron mortar, shielded by screens of metal from contact with any spark which might fly from the furnaces, was filled with an inodorous mixture of brimstone and saltpetre, and a black dust which locked like powdered charcoal. Everywhere, on floor and table, stood such rude instruments to aid in chemistry and