Page:Stories from Old English Poetry-1899.djvu/130

108 astronomy as the time afforded, while all about were such evidences of work and study as made the place seem as much like the workshop of the artisan as the library of the scholar.

Stretched across the upper end of the apartment, a heavy green curtain fell in broken folds over some object which it was intended to conceal. Before this curtain sat the great necromancer, of whose art all England spoke in whispered wonder, and with bated breath, “the learned Friar Bacon of Oxford.”

No longer an inmate of the college from whose walls his suspected magic had caused him to be driven forth, he dwelt solitary among the surrounding rustics who feared and shunned him, and in secret wrought those mysterious works which made him dreaded among men.

He was now only a little past middle life, a man of commanding figure and noble head, which seemed heavy with the weight of knowledge it carried, and now dropped wearily upon his hands as he sat steeped in thought.

His reverie was broken by the entrance of his servant Miles, the only retainer he could keep about him, a half-witted, faithful fellow, who clung gratefully to the hand which fed him. “I cry you mercy, good master,” said Miles hastily entering, “but I could not stay upon ceremony. A lord is without the door, asking