"What else does your art tell you?" demanded Jefferson, who was anxious to know how far the necromancer would venture to try and humbug them.
"I see here," said the conjurer, drawing his finger along a line of something on an open "book of fate," that looked like Arabic, "I see here that your lives are menaced, one and all, through the keeping of a wretched man under restraint."
The visitors looked at each other and exchanged a smile.
"Your art is at fault," said Jefferson; "we have no one under restraint."
"You are in some way connected with it."
"Wrong again."
The wizard looked uncomfortable at this.
"Strange," he said, "and yet I read it here as clearly as you might yourself if it were written in a book."
"You are mistaken," said Jefferson; "we are in no way concerned in any thing of the kind."
The wizard pored over the mystic tome again.