ceeded."

"Hurrah!" cried Frank. "There, Landon."

"Bob ought to know better," cried the professor. "It's impossible--
that's impossible--the whole business is impossible. Can't be done."

"Well, I don't know," said the doctor, taking both hands to his beard
and stroking and spreading it out over his breast, where it lay in crisp
curls, glistening with many lights and giving him a very noble and
venerable aspect. "I'm beginning to like that idea of going as a
learned physician."

"Oh, yes, that's right enough," said the professor. "There's no
imposition there. The Arabs would have nothing to find out, and their
suspicions would be allayed at once. Then, too, you could humbug them
grandly with a few of your modern doctors' tools--one of those
double-barrelled stethoscopes, for instance; or a clinical thermometer."

"To be sure," cried Frank. "Modern Magic--good medicine for the
unbelieving savages. An electric battery, too; and look here, both of
you: the Rontgen rays."

"Ha, ha!" laughed the doctor, and making his beard wag with enjoyment.
"Yes, that would startle them. White man's magic. Fancy, Fred, old
chap, a wounded man with a bullet in him, and I at work with my black
slave, Frank, here, to help me, in a dark tent, while I made the poor
wretch transparent to find out where the bullet lay."

"Yes, or broken spear-head," said the professor eagerly. "I say, Bob,
there'd be no gammon over that: the savage beggars would believe that
they had a real live magician come amongst them then."

"Yes, ha, ha! wouldn't they? I say, old fellow, I'm beginning to think
it ought to be worked."

"Worked, yes," cried Frank excitedly. "I could take a few odds and ends
from my laboratory, too, so as to show them some beautiful experiments--
fire burning under water, throwing potassium on the river to make it
blaze; use some phosphorescent oil; and startle them with Lycopodium
dust in the air; or a little fulminating mercury or silver."

"H'm, yes, you might," said the professor thoughtfully. "You could both
of you astonish them pretty well, and all that would keep up your
character."

"But of course it's all impossible, isn't it?" said Frank, smiling.

"H'm! I don't quite know," said the professor slowly.

"Look here," said the doctor rising, to seat himself upon one end of the
hearthrug, where he began trying to drag his legs across into a
comfortable sitting position, but failed dismally; "I'm afraid I