e tubes he had destroyed once more in place,
stood Tom Forsythe! Considerably older and with hair prematurely gray,
he was still the young man Old Crompton thought he had killed. Tom
Forsythe was not dead after all! And all of his years of misery had gone
for nothing. He advanced slowly to the side of the wondering young man,
Alton Forsythe and Asa Culkin watching silently from just inside the
door.

"Tom--Tom," spoke the stranger, "you are alive? You were not dead when I
left you on that terrible night when I smashed your precious tubes?
Oh--it is too good to be true! I can scarcely believe my eyes!"

* * * * *

He stretched forth trembling fingers to touch the body of the young man
to assure himself that it was not all a dream.

"Why," said Tom Forsythe, in astonishment. "I do not know you, sir.
Never saw you in my life. What do you mean by your talk of smashing my
tubes, of leaving me for dead?"

"Mean?" The stranger's voice rose now; he was growing excited. "Why,
Tom, I am Old Crompton. Remember the struggle, here in this very room?
You refused to rejuvenate an unhappy old man with your marvelous
apparatus, a temporarily insane old man--Crompton. I was that old man
and I fought with you. You fell, striking your head. There was blood.
You were unconscious. Yes, for many hours I was sure you were dead and
that I had murdered you. But I had watched your manipulations of the
apparatus and I subjected myself to the action of the rays. My youth was
miraculously restored. I became as you see me now. Detection was
impossible, for I looked no more like Old Crompton than you do. I
smashed your machinery to avoid suspicion. Then I escaped. And, for
twelve years, I have thought myself a murderer. I have suffered the
tortures of the damned!"

Tom Forsythe advanced on this remarkable visitor with clenched fists.
Staring him in the eyes with cold appraisal, his wrath was all too
apparent. The dog Spot, young as ever, entered the room and, upon
observing the stranger, set up an ominous growling and snarling. At
least the dog recognized him!

"What are you trying to do, catechise me? Are you another of these
alienists my father has been bringing around?" The young inventor was
furious. "If you are," he continued, "you can get out of here--now! I'll
have no more of this meddling with my affairs. I'm as sane as any of you
and I refuse to submit to this continual persecution."

The elder Forsyth