She came back into the room, and Randal drew the heavy curtains across the window. "Keep your eye on the end of the passage, Dick," he said. "There's no other door in it but ours."

Then he sat down. "Coal-tar," he said, "the mother of wealth, the aunt of colour, and the grandmother of drugs, is a mystery to the layman. The highest, if not the best known, of its priesthood, is my old friend Caldegard. Some little time ago he penetrated too far into the arcana of his cult; and on one of the branches of that terrific tree he found and coaxed into blossom a bud which grew into the fruit which his daughter has named Ambrotox—as if it were a beef essence or a cheap wine. Tell 'em its properties, Caldegard—in the vernacular."

Between the first and second puffs at a fresh cigar, Caldegard grunted a sort of final protest.

"You answer for him?" he asked, nodding to Dick.

"Of course. And you for your daughter."

"It is," began Caldegard, "the perfect opiate. As anodyne it gives more ease, and as anæsthetic leaves less after-effect to combat than any other. Morphia, opium, cannabis Indica, cocaine, heroin, veronal and sulphonal act less equally, need larger doses, tempt more rapidly to increase of dose, and, where the patient knows what drug he has taken, lead, in a certain proportion of cases, very quickly to an ineradicable habit. In wise hands, the patient's and the public's ignorance being maintained, Ambrotox"—and here he bestowed a little laugh on amateur nomenclature—"Ambrotox will be a blessing almost as notable as was chloroform in the fifties.

"But there's another side: carry the thing a step further, and you have a life, waking, and dreams, sleeping, of delight such as has never been—I think never could be expressed in words; not because, as with De Quincey and his laudanum, the coherent story of the dreams and visions cannot be remembered, but because the clear sunshine of personal happiness and confidence in the future—the pure joy of being alive—which the abuser of Ambrotox experiences in his whole daily life, is incommunicable. It is a period of bliss, of clear head, good impulses, celestial dreams, and steady hope. These effects last, on an even dose, longer than with any other drug of which I have experience. And then there begins and grows a desire for action, the devil preaching that no good works have resulted from the faith, the hope and the good intentions. A little more, and we shall accomplish, he assures us, the full measure of our dreams. The dose is 

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