"The wild ass may yet spurn the lion with her hoof," answered the other. "But what are sword and spear and human might to those forces we can summon from the world of spirits at our will? Would you not tremble, my son, to behold Typhon or Abitur of the mountains standing here on the floor between you and me?"
"Seeing is believing," was the reply of the stout-hearted Assyrian.
"I will not test your courage so far," said his visitor; "the more that I know it true as the steel you ought to wear on your thigh even now. Nor would I dare to summon such powerful aid as those I have named except at utmost need, or by the desire of Pharaoh himself. Nevertheless, I will show you here on the spot such manifestations of my power as will put to shame all the lore acquired from your lofty towers or your wide Northern plains. Which of your star-readers will bid this dry rod blossom like the almond-tree, or cause a fresh lotus to spring up in flower from the arid soil of that cemented brickwork beneath our feet?"
While he spoke, the same glow as before, though somewhat milder in lustre, shone through the cell, revealing to the astonished prisoner a slender figure draped up to the keen black eyes, that never seemed to leave his own. The magician, if such he were, looked imposing neither in gravity of age nor majesty of stature; yet Sarchedon felt a strange consciousness that he was in the presence of one superior to himself.
He watched with eager curiosity every motion of his visitor.
The latter brought out from beneath his robe a lamp of transparent glass, traced with mystic characters in waving lines of gold, and which shed the radiance that had so startled the Assyrian. Over the lamp he brandished a rod some two cubits long, apparently of polished ebony; and immediately a cloud of aromatic vapour filled the cell, hiding him for a space from the prisoner's sight. When it cleared away, he reached to Sarchedon the branch of an almond-tree, equal in length to the rod he had carried in his hand, green, full of sap, and fragrant in a rich growth of blossoms bursting into flower.
"The warrior can take life," said he gravely, "and the king can level fenced cities with the plain. Is not he greater than king and warrior who can call into existence that which these have only power to destroy?"
Sarchedon gazed on him in mute astonishment and awe. That the magician should have thus appeared in a dungeon of which the walls denoted no possibility for secret entrance was of itself surprising enough; but to inhale its fragrance, and behold in luxuriant blossom that which his own eyes had told him was but now a dry rod of ebony, could only be accounted for by supernatural influences; and he became a firm believer in magic forthwith. He made a last stand, however, for his incredulity, exclaiming almost unconsciously,
"You must have brought it beneath your cloak."
There was something of the kindly patience with which one instructs a child in the other's tone, while he replied,