Thirty years had gone by since he had suddenly appeared one day in the noble old house by the Weiss Thor, from which Graetz the wizard and his wife had been burned out by the fury of the populace.

Twenty years of artistic labor had made this place what it now was.

And the little impish maid who used to break unexpectedly upon the workmen of Thorn from behind doors, or who clapped hands upon their shoulders in dusky recesses, scaring them out of their wits with suggestions of witch-masters long dead and damned, had grown into this maid of the sea-green eyes and silken draperies.
"A good-day to you, Hugo Gottfried!" said Master Gerard, quietly, looking at me keenly across the table.

He wore a skull-cap on his closely cropped head.

One or two betraying locks of gray appeared under it in front, but did not conceal a flat forehead, which ran back at such an angle that, with the luminous eyes beneath it, it gave him the look of a serpent rearing his yellow head a little back in act to strike.