up. This is putting on the
screw so as to move my sister."

"Whom he will not move," said Mark, smiling with content. "I suppose
you are not likely to take up your father's invention?"

"Good gracious, no! Millington, our big swell, told me, when I
mentioned it, that it was a craze, and that it was contrary to nature.
You can't arrest ordinary decay."

"No, of course not; life must go on till it reaches its highest pitch,
and then decline."

"Of course."

"Well, look here, Hendon, Janet and I have a little money between us in
Consols, and, as we are going to make a fresh start together, we'll do
so clearly, and your debt shall be paid."

"What, with Janet's money? Hang it, no!" cried Hendon fiercely; "I'm
not such a cad as that."

"You are going to be my brother," said Mark, smiling as he slapped him
on the shoulder, "my younger brother, and you'll do exactly what I bid
you."

"Yes, but--"

"That will do. I see my way clearly now, so let's go up-stairs and have
a chat with the girls."

Hendon put down his pipe very slowly, and glanced up at a shelf, upon
which some of the apparatus connected with his father's dreams was
standing; but it offered him no solution of his difficulties, and he
followed Mark Heath into the surgery just as Janet and Rich, who were
unable longer to bear the suspense, came down to press for an
explanation.

"Here, I say," saluted the party, from Bob, "who's been a-meddlin' with
these here preparations?"

"What preparations?" said Hendon sharply.

"These here," cried Bob, who had just taken down a large glass jar to
dust. "The doctor will be in a way. He don't like no one to meddle
with them."

The jar was labelled, like the row from which it had been taken, with a
gummed-on slip of letter paper, the contents being written in the
doctor's own bold hand, the ink now yellow with age, and the gummed-on
label beginning to peel off.

"Put the horrible thing away!" cried Hendon angrily.

"But some 'un's been a-stuffing something else in here as don't belong,"
cried the boy. "I knows 'em all by heart. Look here!"

He thrust his hand into the glass jar, after removing the great stopper.

"What are you doing, boy?" cried Hendon, stepping forward to arrest the
lad's action, as he drew out, all dripping with the spirit, a
disgusting-looking swollen object, evidently a portion of the digestive
viscera of a calf or sheep; but before he could reach him, Mark uttered
a wild cr