months, but he could hear Tom muttering and impatiently
pacing the flagstones before his door.

"What is it?" he asked, as he drew the bolt and emerged into the
brilliant light of the moon.

"Success!" breathed Tom excitedly. "I have produced growing, living
matter synthetically. More than this, I have learned the secret of the
vital force--the spark of life. Immortality is within easy reach. Come
and see for yourself."

They quickly traversed the short distance to the two-story building
which comprised Tom's workshop and living quarters. The entire ground
floor was taken up by the laboratory, and Old Crompton stared aghast at
the wealth of equipment it contained. Furnaces there were, and retorts
that reminded him of those pictured in the wood cuts in some of his
musty books. Then there were complicated machines with many levers and
dials mounted on their faces, and with huge glass bulbs of peculiar
shape with coils of wire connecting to knoblike protuberances of their
transparent walls. In the exact center of the great single room there
was what appeared to be a dissecting table, with a brilliant light
overhead and with two of the odd glass bulbs at either end. It was to
this table that Tom led the excited old man.

"This is my perfected apparatus," said Tom proudly, "and by its use I
intend to create a new race of supermen, men and women who will always
retain the vigor and strength of their youth and who can not die
excepting by actual destruction of their bodies. Under the influence of
the rays all bodily ailments vanish as if by magic, and organic defects
are quickly corrected. Watch this now."

* * * * *

He stepped to one of the many cages at the side of the room and returned
with a wriggling cottontail in his hands. Old Compton watched anxiously
as he picked a nickeled instrument from a tray of surgical appliances
and requested his visitor to hold the protesting animal while he covered
its head with a handkerchief.

"Ethyl chloride," explained Tom, noting with amusement the look of
distaste on the old man's face. "We'll just put him to sleep for a
minute while I amputate a leg."

The struggles of the rabbit quickly ceased when the spray soaked the
handkerchief and the anaesthetic took effect. With a shining scalpel and
a surgical saw, Tom speedily removed one of the forelegs of the animal
and then he placed the limp body in the center of the table, removing
the handkerch