said the man. "When they were put in prison for their pranks, the Old One came to their help, and carried them off in a flame of fire, leaving a long train of light after them in the sky, like the tail of a blazing comet. Dick Jones, who was telling me, swears he saw them all going off together. The old one hanging by the Devil's horn, and the young one keeping fast hold of his tail!"
"Shocking!" said Edric; scarcely able, however, to repress a smile at this proof of the vividness of Dick Jones's imagination.
"I haven't told you half," resumed the man. "All Sumatra rings with it; several have gone mad, and others died with fear; and the man who was with Dick Jones, and who was one of the soldiers of the guard set over them, assured me as a positive fact, that the chains they had had on, and left behind them, crumbled between his fingers like a bit of rotten wood."
"It is very awful!" said Edric.
"Ay, is it not?" rejoined the man; "thank God I was not there to see! I am sure the very look of one of those conjurors would have
