Page 237 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

definition.
‘Do you know one?’
‘No.’
‘Do you, Mr. Dawes?’
‘I knew a man once who thought himself one.’
‘What! A man who made gold?’
‘After a fashion.’
‘But did he make gold?’ persisted Sylvia.
‘No, not absolutely make it. But he was, in his worship of
money, an alchemist for all that.’
‘What became of him?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Dawes, with so much constraint in his
tone that the child instinctively turned the subject.
‘Then, alchemy is a very old art?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Did the Ancient Britons know it?’
‘No, not as old as that!’
Sylvia suddenly gave a little scream. The remembrance
of the evening when she read about the Ancient Britons
to poor Bates came vividly into her mind, and though she
had since re-read the passage that had then attracted her
attention a hundred times, it had never before presented
itself to her in its full significance. Hurriedly turning the
well-thumbed leaves, she read aloud the passage which had
provoked remark:-
‘‘The Ancient Britons were little better than Barbarians.
They painted their bodies with Woad, and, seated in their
light coracles of skin stretched upon slender wooden frames,
must have presented a wild and savage appearance.’’

For the Term of His Natural Life