ried. "You must do it in less."

"It does not depend on me--"

"It does depend on you. I know life itself. You know the paltry science
of organic life. I have had no time for such trivial study. Get me well
within three days, or--"

"I am attending."

"By the hold over my sister's imagination which I have gained, I will
kill her on the fourth morning from now."

"You will--_not_."

"I tell you I will," Brande shrieked, starting up in his berth. "I could
do it now."

"You could--_not_."

"Man, do you know what you are saying? You to bandy words with me! A
clod-brained fool to dare a man of science! Man of science forsooth!
Your men of science are to me as brain-benumbed, as brain-bereft, as
that fly which I crush--thus!"

The buzzing insect was indeed dead. But I was something more than a fly.
At last I was on a fair field with this scientific magician or madman.
And on a fair field I was not afraid of him.

"You are agitating yourself unnecessarily and injuriously," I said in my
best professional manner. "And if you persist in doing so you will make
my one month three."

In a voice of undisguised scorn, Brande exclaimed, without noticing my
interruption:

"Bearded by a creature whose little mind is to me like the open page of
a book to read when the humour seizes me." Then with a fierce glance at
me he cried:

"I have read your mind before. I can read it now."

"You can--_not_."

He threw himself back in his berth and strove to concentrate his mind.
For nearly five minutes he lay quite still, and then he said gently:

"You are right. Have you, then, a higher power than I?"

"No; a lower!"

"A lower! What do you mean?"

"I mean that I have merely paralysed your brain--that for many months to
come it will not be restored to its normal power--that it will never
reach its normal power again unless I choose."

"Then all is lost--lost--lost!" he wailed out. "The end is as far off,
and the journey as long, and the way as hard, as if I had never striven.
And the tribute of human tears will be exacted to the uttermost. My life
has been in vain!"

The absolute agony in his voice, the note of almost superhuman suffering
and despair, was so intense, that, without thinking of what it was this
man was grieving over, I found myself saying soothingly:

"No, no! Nothing is lost. It is only your own overstrained nervous
system which sends these fantastic nightmares to your brain. I will soon
make you all ri