ord,
let alone a bomb or pistol. If we wish them ill, perhaps, that will do
instead."

"Possibly--but don't be such an ass as to wish any one any good!"
Hamar said. "Do your best to carry out the injunctions I have given
you, and we will meet here, this day week, to discuss the tests."

CHAPTER IV

THE TESTS

Seven days later, Hamar again knocked at Curtis's and Kelson's door
and walked in. A faint sigh of relief escaped him.

"I see we are all right so far," he said. "I wondered whether I should
find you both flown, or lying stretched in the icy hands of death.
Have you experimented?"

"We have," Curtis said. "We've done our best. In what way, we prefer
not to say."

"Perhaps there is no need," Hamar replied, eyeing the mantelshelf
which bore ample testimony to a full larder, and glancing at Curtis's
feet which were encased in a pair of new and very shiny boots. (A
handsome overcoat that was hanging on the door also attracted his
attention; but that he had seen before, and concluded that it had been
there on the occasion of his last visit.) "But you had better dry up
now, Ed," he continued somewhat caustically, "or there'll be no chance
of forming the Sorcery Society; it will be dissolved before it's
started. There's no need to ask if you've tried to carry out
instructions as to thoughts, I see it--in your faces. I could never
have believed one experimental week in badness would have made such a
difference to your looks."

"You told us to try hard!" Kelson murmured, "and naturally we did. I
reckon you've done the same by your expression. I should hardly have
known you."

"It shows pretty clearly," Curtis said, "what a lot of bad is latent
in most people; and that the right circumstances only are needed to
bring it out. Starvation, for instance, is calculated to bring out the
evil in any one--no matter whom. But what puzzles me, is how we have
escaped being caught!"

"That's a good sign," Hamar said. "It bears out what is written in the
book. If you give your whole mind to doing wrong during this trial
week you'll meet with no mishap. But you must be heart and soul in it.
Hunger made us--hunger has been our friend."

"What do you mean?" Curtis said.

"Why," Hamar replied, "if we hadn't been well-nigh starving we
shouldn't have been able to carry out the instructions quite so
thoroughly."

"Have you, too, stolen?" Curtis queried.

"I have certainly appropriated a few necessaries," Hamar said