nce as the doctor displayed toward the volcano I have never
known. If I ventured to warn him he would assure me that there was no
cause for alarm. I think he regarded that little hell's kitchen as merely
a feed-spout for his vast enterprise. He felt a sort of affection toward
it; he was tolerant of its petty fits of temper. That he completed his
work before the destruction came was sheer luck. Nothing else. The day
before the outburst he came to me with a tiny phial of complicated design.

"'Percy, I will at-a-reasonable-price sell this to you,' he said.

"'How much?' I inquired, responding to his playfulness.

"'A bargain,' he cried gaily. 'Five millions dollars. No! Shall I upon-a-
needy-friend hard-press? Never. One million. One little million dollars.'

"'I haven't that amount with me,' I began.

"'Of no account,' he declared airily. 'Soon we shall haf many more times
as that. Gif me your C.O. D.'

"'My I. O. U.?' I inquired.

"'It makes no matter. See. I will gif it to you gratis.'

"He handed me the metal contrivance. It was closed.

"'Inside iss a little, such a very little. Not yet iss it arranged the
motive-power to give-forth. One more change-to-be-made that shall require.
But the other phenomena are all in this little half-grain comprised. Later
I shall tell you more. Take it. It iss without price.' He laid his hand on
my shoulder. 'Like the love of friends,' he said gently."

Feeling in his upper waistcoat pocket, Darrow brought out a phial, so tiny
that it rolled in the palm of his hand. He contemplated it, lost in
thought.

"Radium?" queried Barnett, with the keen interest of the scientist.

"God knows what it is," said Darrow, rousing himself. "Not the perfected
product; the doctor said that when he gave it to me. If I could remember
one-tenth of what he told me that night! It is like a disordered dream, a
phantasmagoria of monstrous powers, lit up with an intolerable, almost an
infernal radiance. This much I did gather: that Dr. Schermerhorn had
achieved what the greatest minds before him had barely outlined. Yes, and
more. Becquerel, the Curies, Rutherford--they were playing with the
letters of the Greek alphabet, Alphas, Gammas, and Rhos, while the simple,
gentle old boy that I served had read the secret. From the molten
eruptions of the racked earth he had taken gases and potencies that are
nameless. By what methods of combination and refining I do not know, he
produced something that was