d put you to sleep and talk it out of you in five minutes."

"I'll do it!" said Amidon. "I'll get Brassfield's views on them,
confound him. I'll do this while you're with Edgington. Good-by until
after luncheon."

Madame le Claire was examining Mr. Brassfield with reference to the
unanswered letters. Professor Blatherwick was engaged in taking down
his answers. In a disastrous moment, Mr. Alderson knocked at the door,
and, following his knocking, delivered a breathless message to
Brassfield that an important telegram demanded instant attention.

"All right," replied Mr. Brassfield cheerily, "I'll toddle right down
to the office with you, my boy. Excuse me, Madame; you may rely on my
seeking a resumption of this pleasant interview at the earliest
possible moment. _Au revoir_!"

Madame le Claire was perplexed. Should she allow him to go out in this
hypnotic state? Could she exercise her art in Alderson's presence?
While she debated, Mr. Brassfield airily bowed himself out, and was
gone!

Brassfield was gone, that was clear: but no system of Subliminal
Engineering had any rule for calculating the results of his escape back
into the world from which he had for a fortnight or so been absent.
What would he be, and what would he do? Would he return the same
hard-headed man of business who had won riches in five short years? Or
would he be changed by the return to the normal--his equilibrium made
unstable by the tendency to revert to his older self? How would he
adjust himself to the things done by Amidon? How would the change
affect his relations with Miss Waldron and this bright-haired inamorata
so balefully nearing the foreground, like an approaching comet? How
would the professor and Judge Blodgett stand with this new factor in
the problem? Would he continue to care for her, his rescuer? Owing to
some things which had taken place in the Brassfield intervals, her
heart fluttered at the thought of a possibly permanent Eugene.

For be it remembered, that many things had taken place in these days of
Bellevale life. The situation had, of course, been changing daily by
subsurface mutations which the intelligent student of this history will
not need to have explained to him. For instance (and herein the
explanation of that fluttering of Madame le Claire's heart) such things
as these:

Bellevale is not so large a place that neighbors' affairs are not
observed of neighbor. Prior to the elaboration of t