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278 is, only for the best objects. You have been kind and hospitable to a poor old man, and in return I shall do all I can to assist you in holding your father's castle until he returns. They have not scrupled to use deceit against us; I shall use deceit against them, when the time arrives. Surely you can trust me? I tell you again, I do no evil."

"Trust you?" Edgar exclaimed. "You have won the right to be trusted, and to be rewarded richly for all you have done."

"Enough then," said the Friar, resuming his work upon the little picture. "But it will be best for you to tell your men—all of them—not to be affrighted by any strange appearances they may see."

Then closing the wooden shutters until the room was dark he brought from his mysterious little cupboard another strange bit of apparatus, and showed Edgar its mysteries. The young lord, at first terrified and amazed, at last fully understood the Friar's strange apparatus, and laughed heartily as the Franciscan caused strange figures to appear upon the wall, to move about and disappear at will. He promised to prepare his men for these mysteries, and departed, after the Friar had put away his queer contrivance in the locked cupboard.

About noon of that day, in spite of Luke's re-