And down, and down, amidst the dark,
Hurling on every side they came.

AYTOUN.


Deep down in the rock upon which Nottingham Castle proudly stands,
there winds a passage which was used in the centuries long gone by as
the readiest way of bringing the victuals in the castle, and which has
long been commonly accepted as the veritable "Mortimer's Hole."

A man was busily engaged in arduous toil in one of the cavities
hollowed out in the very heart of the rock. It was the chamber in
which the dissolute Mortimer and the faithless Isabella had been
captured by the youthful monarch, Edward III., two centuries and
a half earlier, but no traces of its former grandeur--if it ever
possessed any--now remained. It was changed into the abode of an
alchemyst, and as Edmund Wynne ever and anon tapped an iron vessel his
eyes sparkled with delight.

The room was full of fumes and smoke. Phials of many shapes and
various sizes were ranged around on every side, filled with liquids of
every imaginable odour and hue. A long rude bench, which ran along
the farther side of the room, was crowded with boxes of crystals,
crucibles, and bottles, and, to complete the scene, a log fire was
smouldering away on the centre of the solid rock floor.

Edmund had long sought the elixir of life, but it had proved as
delusive as a will-o'-the-wisp to him, and ever, just as he felt
assured of success, the prize had slipped away from his grasp, leaving