e grunted, and Culkin laid a restraining hand on his
arm. "Just a minute now, Tom," he said soothingly. "This stranger is no
alienist. He has a story to tell. Please permit him to finish."

* * * * *

Somewhat mollified, Tom Forsythe shrugged his assent.

"Tom," continued the stranger, more calmly now, "what I have said is the
truth. I shall prove it to you. I'll tell you things no mortals on earth
could know but we two. Remember the day I captured the big rooster for
you--the monster you had created? Remember the night you awakened me and
brought me here in the moonlight? Remember the rabbit whose leg you
amputated and re-grew? The poor guinea pig you had suffocated and whose
life you restored? Spot here? Don't you remember rejuvenating him? I was
here. And you refused to use your process on me, old man that I was.
Then is when I went mad and attacked you. Do you believe me, Tom?"

Then a strange thing happened. While Tom Forsythe gazed in growing
belief, the stranger's shoulders sagged and he trembled as with the
ague. The two older men who had kept in the background gasped their
astonishment as his hair faded to a sickly gray, then became as white as
the driven snow. Old Crompton was reverting to his previous state!
Within five minutes, instead of the handsome young stranger, there
stood before them a bent, withered old man--Old Crompton beyond a doubt.
The effects of Tom's process were spent.

"Well I'm damned!" ejaculated Alton Forsythe. "You have been right all
along, Asa. And I am mighty glad I did not commit Tom as I intended. He
has told us the truth all these years and we were not wise enough to see
it."

"We!" exclaimed the judge. "You, Alton Forsythe! I have always upheld
him. You have done your son a grave injustice and you owe him your
apologies if ever a father owed his son anything."

"You are right, Asa." And, his aristocratic pride forgotten, Alton
Forsythe rushed to the side of his son and embraced him.

The judge turned to Old Crompton pityingly. "Rather a bad ending for
you, Crompton," he said. "Still, it is better by far than being branded
as a murderer."

"Better? Better?" croaked Old Crompton. "It is wonderful, Judge. I have
never been so happy in my life!"

* * * * *

The face of the old man beamed, though scalding tears coursed down the
withered and seamed cheeks. The two Forsythes looked up from their
demonstrations of