system."

"You certainly worked wonders. I distinctly remember that I marvelled
at the improvement which followed your treatment."

"In due season you were presented with a daughter. A beautiful, baby
girl!"

"My little angel Agnes!"

The Judge spoke softly, and with tenderness. In fancy he looked back
to the day when the nurse brought him the little cherub, newly
arrived, and he felt again the tightening of his heart-strings which
told him that he was a father.

"You held the babe in your arms," said the Doctor, "and you, as well
as all the others, recognized that it was an exceptional infant. But
none of you guessed that a child had been born, who, like Chauvau's
lambs, would be immune to all disease!"

"Do you really mean that you accomplished that almost incredible
miracle?" exclaimed the Judge, as at last he perceived the nature of
the claim upon Agnes, which the Doctor was endeavoring to establish.

"Do you doubt it? Glance back over her career. Remember the various
climates that she has visited; the many epidemics which she has passed
through in safety. Yellow fever in Memphis, small-pox in the Indies,
and several seasons of diphtheria at home, here in New York. She has
been near typhoid and scarlet fever; la grippe has visited us twice in
epidemic form, and is carrying off hundreds at this very time. Can you
recall a day in all her life, when Agnes has been ill? No! You
cannot!" The Doctor's tone was triumphant. The Judge's reply was low.

"Providence has certainly blessed her with remarkable health," he
murmured.

"Providence?" exclaimed the Doctor, passionately. "No! Not Providence,
but I! I, Emanuel Medjora, the Wizard! I have blessed her with her
wonderful health! To me she owes it all! I claim her! She is as much
mine as yours!"

He was grandly dramatic as he uttered these words, but, marvelling as
he did at what he had heard, the Judge was not yet ready to yield.
This iteration of the fact that he claimed Agnes, aroused the father's
antagonism, and, in an almost equally imperious tone, he sprang to his
feet and cried:

"No! She is mine! I am her father, and she is mine! All mine! I deny
your claim, and Wizard though you be, I defy you!"

The two men glared at each other for a moment, and then the Doctor
spoke suddenly.

"You defy me! Ha! Ha! Ha!" His laugh rang through the chamber with a
weird sound. "Agnes is yours! Ha! Ha! Ha!" Again the laugh, prolonged
and piercing. In an instant his