When he had finished his third demonstration, Franklin Marmion, without
interrupting the hard thinking that was going on, took a chair by the
side of the President, poured out a glass of water, and waited for
results.

"Marmion, what is this white magic that you have been springing upon
us?" whispered the presiding genius of the learned assembly, looking up
from several sheets of paper which he had been rapidly covering with
formulae. "These things are impossible, you know--unless, of course, you
have got a good deal farther than any of us. And yet the calculations
are correct as far as I can follow them, and no one else seems to have
hit on any error yet. I must confess, though, that these progressives of
yours are too deep for me. I can follow them, and yet I can't. At a
certain point they seem to elude me, and yet the calculations are
rigidly right. It's almost enough to make one think you had done what
Cayley once told us in this room some one might do some day."

"My Lord," replied Franklin Marmion, almost inaudibly, "I began my
address by remarking, as you will remember, that perhaps, after all, the
word 'impossible' might not be scientific."

Their eyes met, and the President, than whose there was no greater name
in the higher realm of learning, saw something in Marmion's which sent a
little chill through him, and that something told him that he was in the
presence of a superior being.

"Dear me!" he murmured, looking down at his papers again, "the age of
miracles is not past, after all--in fact, it is only just beginning."

"It is re-beginning, my Lord--for us," came the reply, in a voice which
seemed to come from very far away.

The President did not reply. As a matter of fact, he had no reply ready,
and he had something else to do. He rose, and said in a somewhat
constrained voice:

"Ladies and gentlemen, Professor Marmion has shown us some very strange
demonstrations which have certainly amply justified the title which he
selected. A good many gentlemen, and some ladies as well, I am glad to
see, have followed his calculations very carefully. I have done the same
myself, but I am bound to confess that I have not been able to find any
error. I think I shall be right in saying that no one will be more
pleased than the learned and--er--gifted lecturer to hear that some one
else has been able to do so."

Franklin Marmion bowed his assent, and a faint smile flickered across
his clean-shaven lips. The n