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"Nay, nay; oh Holly," she answered, "it is no magic, that is a fiction
of ignorance. There is no such thing as magic, though there is such a
thing as a knowledge of the secrets of Nature. That water is my glass;
in it I see what passes if I will to summon up the pictures, which is
not often. Therein I can show thee what thou wilt of the past, if it be
anything that hath to do with this country and with what I have known,
or anything that thou, the gazer, hast known. Think of a face if thou
wilt, and it shall be reflected from thy mind upon the water. I know not
all the secret yet--I can read nothing in the future. But it is an old
secret; I did not find it. In Arabia and in Egypt the sorcerers knew
it centuries gone. So one day I chanced to bethink me of that old
canal--some twenty ages since I sailed upon it, and I was minded to
look thereon again. So I looked, and there I saw the boat and three men
walking, and one, whose face I could not see, but a youth of noble form,
sleeping in the boat, and so I sent and saved ye.


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