Friar Bacon was the greatest scholar in all Europe. He knew so much more than his brother professors and monks that some of them said he was a wizard and got all his learning by the practice of magic. The common people looked upon him with awe; and when they chanced to meet him, or saw him at a distance, they muttered a charm to ward off any evil spell that he might cast upon them. The friar cared but little for all the talk that was going on. He smiled, and continued his studies and experiments just as before. "It makes little difference what they say," he said.

One day he made a mixture of saltpeter, charcoal, and sulphur, and invited several of the professors to come and look at it. What was their amazement, when he touched it with the smallest spark, to see the whole mixture go up in air with a blinding flash and a fearful roar! It was only gun-powder; but people were then ignorant of that useful and fearful compound, and they would have nothing to do with it for yet two hundred years.

"We told you so!" shouted the frightened monks as they rushed out of the room. "He is a wizard. No honest man could kindle a blaze so blinding or make a sound so fearful. Why, the very earth trembled, and the smoke was like that from a volcano. If this man is allowed to go on he will destroy us all."

The end of the whole matter was that they put him out of the university and said that they would have no more of his magical doings. And to make sure that he would let them alone, they locked him up in a narrow cell and gave him only bread and water, and little enough of that. Some even talked of fagots and fire as the very best things to cure a wizard; but they dared not be too severe with the friar lest they should displease the Pope.

Now the Pope knew Friar Bacon very well. In fact, the two had been students at the same school in Paris when both were young. They had formed a friendship at that time which was never to be broken. The Pope was a wise and broad-minded man, and he did not object to a little magic of the kind in which Friar Bacon delighted; and when the fame of Bacon's learning came to his ears he felt himself honored by being the friend of such a man.

The action of the monks and professors at Oxford was anything but pleasing to him. "The foolish fellows!" he exclaimed. "They would punish the wisest man of the age simply because he shows them their own ignorance." And he commanded that the friar should be given his freedom and be permitted to go where he chose.

The professors could do nothing but obey. With solemn looks, but with oily words on their tongues, they unbolted the door of the prison cell and bade their prisoner come out and enjoy the sunshine again. "We would not do you any harm for the world," they said; "and to prove our friendship for you, we will pay your expenses to London, or even to Paris, if you wish to go there. The University of Oxford is but a poor place for a man of your talents. Another person has already been chosen to fill your chair."

This they said, hoping to get rid of him.

Friar Bacon was not ready, however, to go far from Oxford. In the tower of an old monastery near by he found a room which exactly suited his wants, and there he resolved to stay until he had finished some experiments that he wished to try. He had a learned friend, Friar Bungay, who came daily to visit him; and his servant Miles kept the room in order and attended to all his wants. He was happier there, with his books and his instruments and his chemicals, than he could have been in London or in Paris.

Every night, until long after the midnight hour, the light of the friar's little lamp could be seen glimmering through the narrow window of his study and feebly twinkling in the darkness. The country people who saw it at a distance shook their heads, and whispered that the old wizard was busy with his magic again. And then they talked of the fearful things that had been seen and heard around the gloomy old tower. One man who had ventured quite close to it on a dark night had beheld blue flames dancing on the eaves and sheets of fire leaping from the roof. Another had heard dreadful shrieks and sharp, deafening sounds like thunder-claps issuing from the tower. A third had seen a star shoot from the friar's window and lose itself far up in the sky. Such tales filled many a simple heart with awe.

Within his room, surrounded by his books and his instruments, Friar Bacon was content to let the world think of him as it would. One day Friar Bungay brought to him an old Arabic manuscript which some wandering knight had picked up in Spain or perhaps in far-away Palestine. The two friends set to work at once to make out its meaning. It was yellow and creased and covered with many a mysterious sign, but Friar Bacon did not lay it aside until he had read almost every word of it.

"It is strange, very strange," said he to Bungay, "but I believe it can be done."

"What!" cried Bungay, "can lifeless brass be made to speak and tell secrets that have been hidden from the wisest of men?"

"So says this manuscript," answered Bacon; "and here are careful directions for making an instrument that will give the dead metal a tongue;" and he translated them again for his friend.

"The thing seems not unreasonable," said Bungay.

"Let us try it," said Bacon.