essly at the committee.

Peter Stulpnagel took a step forward.

"I'll tell you all about it," said he.

"You seem to be the only person who knows anything."

"I AM the only person who knows anything. I should have warned these
gentlemen; but, as they would not listen to me, I have allowed them to
learn by experience. What you have done with your electricity is that
you have increased this man's vitality until he can defy death for
centuries."

"Centuries!"

"Yes, it will take the wear of hundreds of years to exhaust the
enormous nervous energy with which you have drenched him. Electricity
is life, and you have charged him with it to the utmost. Perhaps in
fifty years you might execute him, but I am not sanguine about it."

"Great Scott! What shall I do with him?" cried the unhappy Marshal.

Peter Stulpnagel shrugged his shoulders.

"It seems to me that it does not much matter what you do with him now,"
said he.

"Maybe we could drain the electricity out of him again. Suppose we
hang him up by the heels?"

"No, no, it's out of the question."

"Well, well, he shall do no more mischief in Los Amigos, anyhow," said
the Marshal, with decision. "He shall go into the new gaol. The
prison will wear him out."

"On the contrary," said Peter Stulpnagel, "I think that it is much more
probable that he will wear out the prison."

It was rather a fiasco and for years we didn't talk more about it than
we could help, but it's no secret now and I thought you might like to
jot down the facts in your case-book.

THE DOCTORS OF HOYLAND.

Dr. James Ripley was always looked upon as an exceedingly lucky dog by
all of the profession who knew him. His father had preceded him in a
practice in the village of Hoyland, in the north of Hampshire, and all
was ready for him on the very first day that the law allowed him to put
his name at the foot of a prescription. In a few years the old
gentleman retired, and settled on the South Coast, leaving his son in
undisputed possession of the whole country side. Save for Dr. Horton,
near Basingstoke, the young surgeon had a clear run of six miles in
every direction, and took his fifteen hundred pounds a year, though, as
is usual in country practices, the stable swallowed up most of what the
consulting-room earned.

Dr. James Ripley was two-and-thirty years of age, reserved, learned,
unmarried, with set, rather stern features, and a thinning of the dark
hair upon the top