y minutes thoughtfully putting on his
boots. One or two acquaintances who saw him on the way from his house to
his office often recalled his demeanor that morning. Now he would loiter
along with bent shoulders, his hands behind his back, trailing his
umbrella and brooding as though he contemplated bankruptcy. Then
suddenly his pace would quicken, the umbrella whirled round and round
like a Catherine wheel, and with his head held jauntily and the merriest
smile he would swagger along like a young blood of twenty-six who had
just been accepted by an heiress. And then abruptly he would lapse into
his mournful gait.

"I want to see Mr. Andrew," said he, as soon as he was seated in his
private room.

The junior partner entered with a melancholy visage and a reproachful
eye.

"Oh, you've come at last," he remarked, too quietly to be rude, too
pointedly to be pleasant.

But his father seemed not to have heard.

"Sit down, sit down," he said; and then in an earnest manner and with
the gravest face began, "I've something to tell you, Andrew, that I
think you ought to know."

Andrew's visage relaxed. This gravity promised better than anything his
father's behavior had led him to expect of late.

"Something most extraordinary has happened. You've noticed a little kind
of difference in me of late, possibly?"

"I have," said Andrew, with an intonation that made his acquiescence
particularly thorough.

"A sort of cheerfulness and healthiness, and so on?"

"And so on," assented Andrew.

"Well, I've accounted for it at last!"

"Oh?" said Andrew.

This did not strike him as quite so interesting. He thought of the
papers he had left, and glanced at his watch.

"You mind my telling you about Cyrus's theory of the cells of the
body--that all they needed was the proper kind of stimulation, and
they'd be as good as new? Well, he went one better than that sometimes.
I never told you what his idea was--it sounded kind of daft-like when
you didn't hear him laying it down himself--but I'll tell you now."

His voice sank impressively, and his junior partner grew vaguely uneasy.
This was a most unsuitable place and hour to be discussing quack medical
theories. He didn't approve of it at all.

"His idea was that every cell of the body--mine and yours,
Andrew,"--(Andrew grew exceedingly uncomfortable: this verged on the
indecent),--"every single cell of them is just a kind of wee vessel in
which chemical and electrical changes