last she spoke as I
have said: "If I could only remember the chemicals!"

"My dear! What do you mean? The chemicals? For the coffee?" It was Miss
Craydocke who questioned, coming up with Mr. Wharne.

"Not the coffee,--no," said Sin Saxon, laughing rather absently, as too
intent to be purely amused. "But the--assaying. There,--I've remembered
_that_ word, at least!"

Miss Craydocke was more than ever bewildered. "What is it, my dear? An
experiment?"

"No; an analogy. Something that's been in my head these three days. I
can't make everything quite clear, Mr. Wharne, but I know it's there. I
went, I must tell you, a little while ago, to see some Colorado
specimens--ores and things--that some friends of ours had, who are
interested in the mines; and they talked about the processes, and
somebody explained. There were gold and silver and iron, and copper and
lead and sulphur, that had all been boiled up together some time, and
cooled into rock. And the thing was to sort them out. First, they
crushed the whole mass into powder, and then did something to
it--applied heat, I believe--to drive away the sulphur. That fumed off,
and left the rest as promiscuous as before. Then they--oxidized the
lead, however they managed it, and got that out. You see I'm not quite
sure of the order of things, or of the chemical part. But they got it
out, and something took it. Then they put in quicksilver, and that took
hold of the gold. Then there were silver and copper and iron. So they
had to put back the lead again, and that grappled the silver. And what
they did with the copper and iron is just what I can't possibly
recollect, but they divided them somehow, and there was the great rock
riddle all read out. Now, haven't we been just like that this summer?
And I wonder if the world isn't like it, somehow? And ourselves, too,
all muddled up, and not knowing what we _are_ made of, till the right
chemicals touch us? There's so much in it, Mr. Wharne, I can't put it
in clear order. But it _is_ there,--isn't it?"

"Yes, it is there," answered Mr. Wharne, with the briefest gravity. For
Miss Craydocke, there were little shining drops standing in her eyes,
and she tried not to wink lest they should fall out, pretending they had
been really tears. And what was there to cry about, you know?

"Here we have been," Sin Saxon resumed, "all crushed up together, and
the characters coming out little by little, with different things.
Sulphur's always the