erations of men, and cycles of changes, and yet there
had been life left in the huge gaunt limbs and sight in the sunken eyes.
Then he had outlived pride itself, and the ancient scholar had begged
his bread. In his hundredth year he had leaned for rest against Unorna's
door, and she had taken him in and cared for him, and since that time
she had preserved his life. For his history was known in the ancient
city, and it was said that he had possessed great wisdom in his day.
Unorna knew that this wisdom could be hers if she could keep alive the
spark of life, and that she could employ his own learning to that end.
Already she had much experience of her powers, and knew that if she once
had the mastery of the old man's free will he must obey her fatally and
unresistingly. Then she conceived the idea of embalming, as it were, the
living being, in a perpetual hypnotic lethargy, from whence she recalled
him from time to time to an intermediate state, in which she caused
him to do mechanically all those things which she judged necessary to
prolong life.

Seeing her success from the first, she had begun to fancy that the
present condition of things might be made to continue indefinitely.
Since death was to-day no nearer than it had been seven years ago, there
was no reason why it might not be guarded against during seven years
more, and if during seven, why not during ten, twenty, fifty? She had
for a helper a physician of consummate practical skill--a man whose
interest in the result of the trial was, if anything, more keen than
her own; a friend, above all, whom she believed she might trust, and who
appeared to trust her.

But in the course of their great experiment they had together made
rules by which they had mutually agreed to be bound. They had of late
determined that the old man must not be disturbed in his profound rest
by any question tending to cause a state of mental activity. The test of
a very fine instrument had proved that the shortest interval of positive
lucidity was followed by a slight but distinctly perceptible rise
of temperature in the body, and this could mean only a waste of the
precious tissues they were so carefully preserving. They hoped and
believed that the grand crisis was at hand, and that, if the body did
not now lose strength and vitality for a considerable time, both would
slowly though surely increase, in consequence of the means they were
using to instill new blood into the system. But the