"It's a very precious symbol,
for Quimbleton explained to me that the amethyst is a talisman against
drunkenness. I looked it up in the dictionary, and found that he was
right. As long as I wear this ring the departed spirits have no ill
effect upon me. But I sometimes wonder," she added with a sigh,
"whether Virgil really loves me for myself, or only as a kind of
swinging door into the spirit world."

The car was now approaching an open belt of country. Behind them lay
the dark line of pine woods; far off, across a wide shimmer of sun and
sandy fields sweetened by purple clover; and flowering grasses, was a
blue ribbon of sea. But even in this remote shelf of New Jersey the
implacable hand of Chuff was at work. From a meadow near by they saw an
observation balloon going up and the windlass unwinding its cable. A
huge paraboloid breath-detector (or breathoscope) was stationed on a
low ridge. This terribly ingenious machine, which had just been
invented by the pan-antis, records the vibrations of any alcoholic
breath within five miles, and indicates on a sensitive dial the exact
direction and distance of the breath. It was only too evident that the
search for Quimbleton was going forward with fierce system. In the
shelter of an old barn they heard a cork-popping machine-gun going off
rapidly. This was one of the most atrocious ruses employed by the
chuffs in their search for conscientious drinkers. The gun fires no
projectile, but produces a pleasant detonation like the swift and
repeated drawing of corks. Set up in the neighborhood of any
bottle-habited man, it will invariably lure him into an approach. Near
it was an ice-tinkling device, used for the same purposes of stratagem.

"Poor Virgil!" said Miss Chuff with a sigh. "I'm afraid he has had a
grievous ordeal. We must run carefully now, so as not to give him away."

Fortunately Miss Chuff's presence at the wheel, and Bleak's credentials
as war correspondent, enabled them to pass several scouting parties of
chuff uhlans without suspicion. In this way they neared the extensive
grounds surrounding the Federal Home for Inebriates, Cana, N. J. This
magnificent Gothic building, already showing some signs of decay from
two years of vacancy, stands on a slight eminence among what the real
estate agents call "old shade," with a fine and carefully calculated
view over one of the largest bodies of undrinkable fluid known to man,
the Atlantic Ocean.

The car turned into a