there lay a dozen bricks of ruddy
sparkling gold.

"You see, according to our calculations, our morning's work has been
worth twenty-four thousand pounds, and it has not taken us more than
twenty minutes," remarked the alchemist, as he picked up the newly-made
ingots, and threw them down among the others.

"We will devote one of them to experiment," said he, leaving the last
standing upon the glass insulator. "To the world it would seem an
expensive demonstration which cost two thousand pounds, but our
standard, you see, is a different one. Now you will see me run through
the whole gamut of metallic nature."

First of all men after the discoverer, Robert saw the gold mass, when
the electrodes were again applied to it, change swiftly and successively
to barium, to tin, to silver, to copper, to iron. He saw the long white
electric sparks change to crimson with the strontium, to purple with the
potassium, to yellow with the manganese. Then, finally, after a hundred
transformations, it disintegrated before his eyes, and lay as a little
mound of fluffy grey dust upon the glass table.

"And this is protyle," said Haw, passing his fingers through it. "The
chemist of the future may resolve it into further constituents, but to
me it is the Ultima Thule."

"And now, Robert," he continued, after a pause, "I have shown you enough
to enable you to understand something of my system. This is the great
secret. It is the secret which endows the man who knows it with such
a universal power as no man has ever enjoyed since the world was made.
This secret it is the dearest wish of my heart to use for good, and
I swear to you, Robert McIntyre, that if I thought it would tend to
anything but good I would have done with it for ever. No, I would
neither use it myself nor would any other man learn it from my lips. I
swear it by all that is holy and solemn!"

His eyes flashed as he spoke, and his voice quivered with emotion.
Standing, pale and lanky, amid his electrodes and his retorts, there was
still something majestic about this man, who, amid all his stupendous
good fortune, could still keep his moral sense undazzled by the glitter
of his gold. Robert's weak nature had never before realised the strength
which lay in those thin, firm lips and earnest eyes.

"Surely in your hands, Mr. Haw, nothing but good can come of it," he
said.

"I hope not--I pray not--most earnestly do I pray not. I have done for
you, Robert, what I might not