rshipped, too; the man who had
first opened his own eyes when they were blind, and had led him to the
gates of knowledge, and no little distance along the difficult path
beyond; the man who, in another direction, had passed on the strength of
his faith into the hearts of thousands by his books.

"I may see them?" he asked at last, in a low voice he hardly recognized
as his own. "You will let me know--their message?"

Professor Ebor kept his eyes fixedly upon his assistant's face as he
answered, with a smile that was more like the grin of death than a
living human smile.

"When I am gone," he whispered; "when I have passed away. Then you
shall find them and read the translation I have made. And then, too, in
your turn, you must try, with the latest resources of science at your
disposal to aid you, to compass their utter destruction." He paused
a moment, and his face grew pale as the face of a corpse. "Until
that time," he added presently, without looking up, "I must ask
you not to refer to the subject again--and to keep my confidence
meanwhile--_ab--so--lute--ly_."

3

A year passed slowly by, and at the end of it Dr. Laidlaw had found it
necessary to sever his working connexion with his friend and one-time
leader. Professor Ebor was no longer the same man. The light had gone
out of his life; the laboratory was closed; he no longer put pen to
paper or applied his mind to a single problem. In the short space of
a few months he had passed from a hale and hearty man of late middle
life to the condition of old age--a man collapsed and on the edge of
dissolution. Death, it was plain, lay waiting for him in the shadows of
any day--and he knew it.

To describe faithfully the nature of this profound alteration in his
character and temperament is not easy, but Dr. Laidlaw summed it up to
himself in three words: _Loss of Hope_. The splendid mental powers
remained indeed undimmed, but the incentive to use them--to use them for
the help of others--had gone. The character still held to its fine and
unselfish habits of years, but the far goal to which they had been the
leading strings had faded away. The desire for knowledge--knowledge for
its own sake--had died, and the passionate hope which hitherto had
animated with tireless energy the heart and brain of this splendidly
equipped intellect had suffered total eclipse. The central fires had
gone out. Nothing was worth doing, thinking, working for. There _was_
nothing t