ad parted
company.

"I--I--" interrupted Mr. Ticks, with a start. "The fact is, I cannot as
yet account for that deadly atmosphere that enveloped this section. What
was in it to kill? Its effect on me was unlike any other experience that
I can recall. It is my inconsolable regret that it is not classified in
my mind."

"Did you know," asked Miss Magnet, suddenly, "that a new land
improvement company was started this spring for raising four crops a
year? All the farms for twenty miles around were bought up. They spent
over a million dollars in laying wires in the ground throughout the
whole country, on the theory that these voltaic currents applied to
grain and fruit and vegetables would excite such crops to quicker
verdure and maturity. The company said that it was an experiment on a
grand scale; but they were much laughed at. I said it was a dangerous
scheme, and nearly lost my position in consequence. I have heard,
though, that it was a great success."

During this recital Mr. Ticks' eyes glistened with excitement.

"Ah!" he said, "I am under a thousand obligations to you, young lady. Of
course I could not conceive of such a thing, not knowing the facts. It
is all plain now. The first discharge, enormous and deadly as it was,
was not enough. This network of wires attracted the surplus electricity.
The soil must be of such a quality as to convert this territory into an
enormous secondary battery. The subsoil must have acted as a monstrous
insulator. I shall subject it to a minute analysis. Are we on the verge
of a new electrical discovery? Was this deadly phenomenon a hitherto
unknown property of the electrical fluid? For to walk within the dead
line was like walking into a saturated Leyden jar. Its effect must have
also been to devitalize the oxygen and nitrogen of the atmosphere. The
victim was electrified and suffocated to death at the same instant. At
last I understand the complexity of my astonishing symptoms. The
vibratory storm that we so narrowly escaped was not due to barometric
depression, but came as a responsive consequence of this surcharged
area. When that wire ladder was finally cut off and fell; when it
reached a certain position; when one end touched the negative, the other
the positive pole, then the current became completed and this gigantic
battery was discharged. Had we not been rising at the rate of a hundred
feet a second we should have been fused after the fashion of the
inhabitants of this