ecting
end of a highly polished tube of steel. And even as I gazed a man's
face peered out as though in the act of sighting--Aram Balencourt!

"Then I understood. The tube was the means of projecting some
enormously powerful heat-beam whose nature must be akin to that of the
so-called X-ray. The article I had been reading not ten minutes
ago--what was the title?--'Radium, the Wizard Metal'--that
incomprehensible substance, forever sending forth its terrible
emanations, yet never diminished by even the ten-thousandth part of a
grain--a natural force whose properties and functions were but
imperfectly understood, even by the learned men who had succeeded in
isolating it, an agent of such enormous potency that an ounce or two
might serve to put a battle-ship out of commission--a couple of pounds
and the universe itself were endangered. Even now from that steel tube,
sighted so carefully on the pedestal of the sun-dial, billions of ions
might be rushing, invisible to the eye, but certain death to whatever
of animal existence they chanced to encounter. There was the pigeon
lying dead on the walk.

"'Do hurry, George,' called out Betty's thin, sweet treble. She stood
at the entrance to the pavilion and waved a tennis-racquet impatiently.

"'Coming,' was the cheerful response, and Estes turned the corner of
the house. He took the gravelled path at full speed. In an instant or
two at the farthest he would be passing between the sun-dial and the
dead pigeon, in line with those deadly radiations.

"We had been playing a little single-wicket earlier in the day, and a
cricket-ball lay on the wicker table at my hand. I could not have
uttered a word or a cry to save my life--to save his--but instinct held
true. With a full, round-arm sweep the ball left my hand, catching the
boy squarely on the forehead. He fell within his stride.

"Betty was with us on the instant, but I seized and held her despite
her struggles. Naturally, she thought I had gone mad. Then I looked
over again at 'The Thimble,' just in time to see a sheet of
palest-colored flame shoot up from the island. The dense mass of green
foliage seemed to wither and consume away within the tick of a clock.
Through the glass I caught a glimpse of a dark figure that rolled down
to the water's edge, clutching feebly at the shifting shingle. Perhaps
a log, after all--it lay so still.

"An instant later 'The Thimble' disappeared in a cloud of grayish
vapor, the dull sound of