the present stage, as unprofitable as to deny it, but
it is an unimaginative numskull who is too dense to perceive that it is
well within the bounds of scientific possibility.

"Yours faithfully,
"GEORGE EDWARD CHALLENGER.

"THE BRIARS, ROTHERFIELD."

"It's a fine, steemulating letter," said McArdle thoughtfully, fitting a
cigarette into the long glass tube which he used as a holder. "What's
your opeenion of it, Mr. Malone?"

I had to confess my total and humiliating ignorance of the subject at
issue. What, for example, were Fraunhofer's lines? McArdle had just
been studying the matter with the aid of our tame scientist at the
office, and he picked from his desk two of those many-coloured spectral
bands which bear a general resemblance to the hat-ribbons of some young
and ambitious cricket club. He pointed out to me that there were certain
black lines which formed crossbars upon the series of brilliant colours
extending from the red at one end through gradations of orange, yellow,
green, blue, and indigo to the violet at the other.

"Those dark bands are Fraunhofer's lines," said he. "The colours are
just light itself. Every light, if you can split it up with a prism,
gives the same colours. They tell us nothing. It is the lines that
count, because they vary according to what it may be that produces the
light. It is these lines that have been blurred instead of clear this
last week, and all the astronomers have been quarreling over the reason.
Here's a photograph of the blurred lines for our issue to-morrow. The
public have taken no interest in the matter up to now, but this letter of
Challenger's in the Times will make them wake up, I'm thinking."

"And this about Sumatra?"

"Well, it's a long cry from a blurred line in a spectrum to a sick nigger
in Sumatra. And yet the chiel has shown us once before that he knows
what he's talking about. There is some queer illness down yonder, that's
beyond all doubt, and to-day there's a cable just come in from Singapore
that the lighthouses are out of action in the Straits of Sundan, and two
ships on the beach in consequence. Anyhow, it's good enough for you to
interview Challenger upon. If you get anything definite, let us have a
column by Monday."

I was coming out from the news editor's room, turning over my new mission
in my mind, when I heard my name called from the waiting-room below. It
was a telegraph-boy with a wire which had