risen to break up the meeting,
when our silent companion opened his month for the first time.

"Gentlemen," said he, "you appear to me to show an extraordinary
ignorance upon the subject of electricity. You have not mastered the
first principles of its actions upon a human being."

The committee was about to break into an angry reply to this brusque
comment, but the chairman of the Electrical Company tapped his forehead
to claim its indulgence for the crankiness of the speaker.

"Pray tell us, sir," said he, with an ironical smile, "what is there in
our conclusions with which you find fault?"

"With your assumption that a large dose of electricity will merely
increase the effect of a small dose. Do you not think it possible that
it might have an entirely different result? Do you know anything, by
actual experiment, of the effect of such powerful shocks?"

"We know it by analogy," said the chairman, pompously. "All drugs
increase their effect when they increase their dose; for example--for
example----"

"Whisky," said Joseph M'Connor.

"Quite so. Whisky. You see it there."

Peter Stulpnagel smiled and shook his head.

"Your argument is not very good," said he. "When I used to take
whisky, I used to find that one glass would excite me, but that six
would send me to sleep, which is just the opposite. Now, suppose that
electricity were to act in just the opposite way also, what then?"

We three practical men burst out laughing. We had known that our
colleague was queer, but we never had thought that he would be as queer
as this.

"What then?" repeated Philip Stulpnagel.

"We'll take our chances," said the chairman.

"Pray consider," said Peter, "that workmen who have touched the wires,
and who have received shocks of only a few hundred volts, have died
instantly. The fact is well known. And yet when a much greater force
was used upon a criminal at New York, the man struggled for some little
time. Do you not clearly see that the smaller dose is the more deadly?"

"I think, gentlemen, that this discussion has been carried on quite
long enough," said the chairman, rising again. "The point, I take it,
has already been decided by the majority of the committee, and Duncan
Warner shall be electrocuted on Tuesday by the full strength of the Los
Amigos dynamos. Is it not so?"

"I agree," said Joseph M'Connor.

"I agree," said I.

"And I protest," said Peter Stulpnagel.

"Then the motion is carri