"That's what I was going to ask," said Dick.

"As for publicity, my dear boy," replied Caldegard, "Ambrotox will very probably do more harm than good if its properties become general knowledge. But the Home Office is drafting a comprehensive measure for State control of the manufacture and distribution of injurious drugs. You all know that the growth of the drug habit caused serious alarm in the early days of the war, and that even the amendment to the Defence of the Realm Act, forbidding the unauthorised sale and possession of cocaine and other poisons, did little to diminish the illicit traffic. Such contrabrand dealing is immensely lucrative, and prices rise in direct ratio with the danger. But the new Bill may contain a clause vesting in the State the formulæ and the manufacture of all newly-discovered drugs of this kind. The Government is relying in this matter greatly upon the experience and advice of Sir Randal, and if a sufficiently stringent clause can be devised, it is probable that never more than three living persons, in addition to the discoverer, will be acquainted with the processes necessary to the manufacture of a newly discovered chemical compound which has been brought under State control. In regard to the good which may be done by Ambrotox—do you remember, Amaryllis, the two pretty little old ladies who lived in the small grey house with the red blinds? Don't say names, my child, nor mention the town. They were sisters and devotedly attached."

The girl's face was a picture of curiosity.

"Yes, father," she said. "And they grew pale and anxious. One of them came to see you, and then the other, several times; and once, just before I went to Scotland, they both came together. I remember how dreadfully ill they looked. But when I came home, their cheeks were pink again, one always laughed when the other did, and their garden was full of roses."

"What about 'em?" asked Dick.

"This," said Caldegard: "For several years each of those old women had been taking morphia; each had been concealing it from the other; each had suffered in conscience the torture of the damned; each confessed to me her vice, and the dreadful failure of her struggle to overcome it. Experimentally I treated each with Ambrotox, in gradually decreasing doses. The return to health was quicker and more complete than I had dared to hope; the craving for morphia has not reappeared, and I do not think it will."

"Oh, you darling!" cried Amaryllis. "I always thought you'd something to do with 

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