ght began for the
patients. He summoned his trusted assistant, the house-physician, again.

"I am about to attempt," said he, "an altogether new operation: the
patient has remained just as I left her, I suppose?"

"Just the same."

"Nervous Force, whether it be Electricity or not, is manifestly a fluid
of some sort: why should it not be transfused as the other vital fluid
is?"

"Indeed, sir, when you put it so," said the house-physician, suddenly
steeled and brightened into interest, "I should say, 'why not?' The only
reason against it is what can be assigned against all new things--it has
not, so far as I know, been done."

"Exactly. I am going to try. I think, in case we need a current, so to
say, to draw it along, that we shall use the apparatus too; we shall
therefore need the women."

"You mean, of course," said the young man, "you will cut a main nerve."

"I shall use this nerve," said Lefevre, indicating the main nerve in the
wrist,--upon which the young man, in his ready enthusiasm, began to bare
his arm.

"My dear fellow," said Lefevre, "do you consider what you are so
promptly offering? Do you know that my experiment, if successful, might
leave you a paralytic, or an imbecile, or even--a corpse?"

"I'll take the risk, sir," said the young man.

"I can't permit it, my boy," said Lefevre, laying his hand on his arm,
and giving him a look of kindness. "Nobody must run this risk but me. I
don't mean, however, to cut the nerve."

"What then, sir?"

"Well," said Lefevre, "this Nervous Force, or Nervous Ether, is clearly
a very volatile, and at the same time a very searching fluid. It can
easily pass through the skin from a nerve in one person to a nerve in
another. There is no difficulty about that; the difficulty is to set up
a rapid enough vibration to whirl the current through!" He said that in
meditative fashion: he was clearly at the moment repeating the working
out of the problem.

"I see," said the young man, looking thoughtful.

"Now, you are a musician, are you not?"

"I play a little," said the young man, with a bewildered look.

"You play the violin?"

"Yes."

"And, of course, you have it in your rooms. Would you be so good as
to bring me the bow of your violin, and borrow for me anywhere a
tuning-fork of as high a note as possible?"

The young man looked at Dr Lefevre in puzzled inquiry; but the doctor
was considering the electrical apparatus before him, and the young man
set of