ame submission, that bade him sell his life as dearly as he could.
Panting, gasping for breath, dragging them by sheer strength as they
clung to him, he got his back to the wall, fighting with the savage fury
and abandon of a wild cat.

But it could not last. Where one man went down before him, two
remorselessly appeared--the room seemed filled with men--they poured in
through the door--he laughed at them in a half-demented way--more
and more of them came--there was no play for his arms, no room to
fight--they seemed so close around him, so many of them upon him, that
he could not breathe--and he was bending, being crushed down as by an
intolerable weight. And then his feet were jerked from beneath him, he
crashed to the floor, and, in another moment, bound hand and foot, he
was tied into a chair beside that other chair whose grim occupant sat in
such ghastly apathy of the scene.

The room cleared instantly of all but the original five. His head was
drawn suddenly, violently backward, and clamped in that position; and
a metal instrument, forced into his mouth, while his lips bled in their
resistance, pried jaws apart and held them open.

"One drop!" the leader ordered curtly.

The man with the full glass bent over him, and dipped a glass rod into
the liquid. The drop glistened a ruby red on the end of the rod--and
fell with a sharp, acrid, burning sensation upon Jimmie Dale's tongue.

For a moment Jimmie Dale's animation, mental and physical, seemed swept
away from him in, as it were, a hiatus of hideous suspense. What was it
to be like this passing? Why did it not act at once, as it had acted on
the rabbit they had showed him in the other room? Yes, he remembered!
It took more than one drop for a man; and besides, this was diluted.
One drop had no effect on a man; it required--Good God, ONE DROP EVEN
OF THIS WAS ENOUGH? He strained forward in the chair until the sweat in
great beads sprang from his forehead, strained and fought and tore at
his bonds in a paroxysm of madness to free himself while there still
remained a little strength. There was something filming before his eyes,
a numbed feeling was creeping through his limbs, robbing them, sapping
them of their vitality and power. He felt himself slipping away into a
state of utter weakness, and his brain began to grow confused.

A voice seemed to float in the air near him: "For the last time--will
you answer?"

With a supreme effort, Jimmie Dale strove to rall