s utter astonishment.

"I can affect no surprise at yours," said the visitor, attentively
regarding Polyhistor. "It is perfectly natural. Let me forestall some
unnecessary expression of it. My offer seems unaccountable to you, seeing
that we never met until last night. But I don't move entirely in the
dark. I have ventured in the interval to inform myself as to the details
of your career. I was entirely one with much of your expression of
opinion as to the treatment of criminals, in which you controverted the
crude and unpleasant scepticism of the lady you talked with." (Poor New
Charlie!) "Combining the two, I come to the immediate conclusion that you
are the man for my purpose."

"You have dumbfounded me. I don't know what to answer. You have views, I
know, as to prison treatment. Will you sketch them? Will you talk on,
while I try to bring my scattered wits to a focus?"

"Certainly I will. Let me, in the first instance, recall to you a few
words of your own. They ran somewhat in this fashion: Is not the man of
practical genius the man who is most apt at solving the little problems
of resourcefulness in life? Do you remember them?"

"Perhaps I do, in a cruder form."

"They attracted me at once. It is upon such a postulate I base my
practice. Their moral is this: To know the antidote the moment the snake
bites. That is to have the intuition of divinity. We shall rise to it
some day, no doubt, and climb the hither side of the new Olympus. Who
knows? Over the crest the spirit of creation may be ours."

Polyhistor nodded, still at sea, and the other went on with a smile:--

"I once knew a world-famous engineer with whom I used to breakfast
occasionally. He had a patent egg-boiler on the table, with a little
double-sided ladle underneath to hold the spirit. He complained that his
egg was always undercooked. I said, 'Why not reverse the ladle so as
to bring the deeper cup uppermost?' He was charmed with my perspicacity.
The solution had never occurred to him. You remember, too, no doubt, the
story of Coleridge and the horse collar. We aim too much at great
developments. If we cultivate resourcefulness, the rest will follow.
Shall I state my system _in nuce_? It is to encourage this spirit of
resourcefulness."

"Surely the habitual criminal has it in a marked degree?"

"Yes; but abnormally developed in a single direction. His one object is
to out-manoeuvre in a game of desperate and immoral chances. The tactical
sp