increased, confidence returns, and performance is still for to-morrow. I have never seen a victim of Ambrotox pursue this descent to the grave, but all analogous experience assures me that the final stages must be hell."

"How do you know so much about the effects?" asked Dick.

"There was only one possible subject for experiment—myself," replied Caldegard.

Amaryllis sat upright in her chair, and drew in her breath sharply. But she did not speak.

"Ghastly risk to take," said Dick.

"Ghastly," assented Caldegard. "But it wasn't the first, nor the second time that I'd chanced it. The very memory of the horrors I went through in curing myself after a course of hashish, gave me faith in my power to push this tremendous experiment to the point I had determined upon, without overshooting the mark."

"What was the mark?" inquired Dick.

"The appearance," replied Caldegard, "of certain cardiac symptoms which I expected."

"Oh, dad!" exclaimed Amaryllis. "That must have been the time when you sent for Dr. Greaves at three in the morning."

Caldegard nodded.

"For three weeks after that," went on Amaryllis indignantly, "I thought you were horribly ill."

"That, my darling," answered her father, smiling at her, "was because I was getting better."

"I've been wondering, Caldegard," said Randal, "how often and how strongly the remembrance of that incommunicable bliss cries out for an epicurean repetition of those early stages of your scientific experiment."

Caldegard laughed. "Oh, she calls, and calls pretty loud sometimes," he said. "Let her call. It's all part of the experiment. Knowledge, you see, has the sweeter voice."

Amaryllis had tears in her eyes, and for a moment the others waited on her evident desire to speak.

"But do you think, father," she said at last, "that's it's really worth while to let the world know you have found a more delightful temptation than opium or cocaine, just for the sake of giving a few sick people a more comfortable medicine than they've been accustomed to. Ambrotox!" she sighed scornfully. "I wish I'd never given it that pretty name. I think it's horrid stuff!"

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