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 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 off on his errands. When he returned with the fiddle-bow and the tuning-fork, he saw Lefevre had placed the machine ready, with fresh chemicals in the vessels.

"Do you perceive my purpose?" asked Lefevre. He placed one

handle of the apparatus in the unconscious patient's right hand, while he himself took hold of her left arm with his right hand, so that the inner side of his wrist was in contact with the inner side of hers; and then, to complete the circle of connection, he took in his left hand the other handle of the apparatus. "You don't understand?"

"I do not," answered the young

man.

"We want a very rapid vibration -much more rapid than usual," said the doctor. "I can apply no more rapid vibration at present than that which the note of that tuning-fork will produce. I want you to sound the tuning-fork with the fiddle-bow, and then apply the

fork to this wire."

"Oh," said the young man, "I understand!"

"Now," said Lefevre, "you'd better call the Sister to set the electricity going."

The Sister came and took her place as before described. -with her hands, that is, on the cylinder of the electrode, her fingers dipping over into the vessels of chemicals. She opened her eyes and smiled at sight of the fiddle-bow and tuningfork.

"I am trying a new thing, Sister," said Lefevre, with a touch of severity. "I do not need you, I do not wish you, to exert yourself this time; I only wish you to keep that position, and to be calm. Maintain your composure, and attend. . . . Now!" said he. addressing the young man.

The fiddle-bow was drawn' across the tuning-fork, and the fork applied with its thrilling note to the conducting wire which Lefevre held. The wire hummed its vibration, and electricity tingled wildly through Lefevre's nerves.... There was an anxious, breathless pause

for some seconds, and fear of failure began to contract the doctor's heart.

"Take your hands away, Sister," said he. Then, turning to his assistant, "Apply that to the other wire," said he; and dropping his own wire, he put his hand over the cylinder, with his fingers dipping into the vessel from which the other wire sprang. When the wire hummed under the tuningfork and the vibration thrilled again, instantly he felt as if an inert obstruction had been removed. The vibratory influence whirled wildly through him, there was a pause of

a second or two (which seemed to him many minutes in duration), and then suddenly a kind of rigor passed upon the form and features of his patient, as if each individual nerve and muscle were being threaded with quick wire, a sharp rush of breath filled her chest, and she opened her eyes and closed them again.

"That will do," said Lefevre in a whisper, and, releasing his hands, he sank back in a chair. "It's a success," said he, turning his eyes with a thin smile on the housephysician, and then closing them in a deadly exhaustion.

For the first time since he had come into the world Dr Lefevre was that night attended by another doctor. The resident assistant physician took him home to Savilo Row in a cab, assisted him to bed, and sat with him a while after he had administered a tonic and soporific. Then he left him in charge of the silent man in black, whom he reassured by saying that there no danger; that his master had a magnificent constitution; that he was only exhausted though exhausted very much; and that all he needed was rest, sleep, nourishment,sleep above all.

Was

Lefevre slept the night through like a child, and awoke refreshed, though still very weak. He was bewildered with his condition for a moment or two, till he recalled the moving and exhausting experiences of the day before, and then he was suffused with a glow of elation,-elation which was not all satisfaction in the successful performance of a new experiment, nor in a good deed well done. His friend came to see him early, to anticipate the risk of his rising.

was

He insisted that he should keep his bed, for that day at least, if not for a second and a third day. He reported that the patient doing well; that she had asked with particularity, and had been informed with equal particularity, concerning the method of her recovery, upon which she was much bemused, and asked to see her physician.

"It is a pity she was told," said Lefevre; "it is not usual to tell a patient such a thing, and I meant it to be kept secret, at least till it was better established." But for all his protest he was again suffused with that new sense of inward joy.

search, and who, if captured, would be certainly overwhelmed with contumely, if not with punishment,-whether or not that strange creature was Julius's father, or any relation at all of Julius. He was not clear how he could well put the matter to Julius, since he so evidently shrank from discourse upon it, yet he thought some kind of certainty might be arrived at from an interview with him. On the chance of his having returned to his chambers, he called for pen and paper and wrote a note, asking him to look in, as he would be resting all day. "Try to come," he urged; "I have something important to speak about."

This he sent by the trusty hand of his man in black; and by midday Julius was announced. He came in confident, and bright as sunshine (Lefevre thought he had never seen him looking more serene); but suddenly the sunshine was beclouded, and Julius ceased to be himself, and became a restless, timorous kind of creature, like a bird put in a cage under the eye of his captor.

"What?" he cried when he entered, with an eloquent gesture. Lazying in bed on such a day as this? What does this mean?", But when he observed the pallor and weakness of Lefevre's appearance, he paused abruptly, refrained from the hand stretched out to greet him, and exclaimed in a tone of something like terror, "Good heavens! Are you ill?" A paleness, a shudder, and a dizziness passed upon him as if he sickened. May I," he said, "open the window?" "Certainly, Julius," said Lefevre, in surprise and alarm. "Do you feel ill?"

"No-no," said Julius from the window, where he stood letting the air play upon his face, and speak

I am unfortunately, miserably constituted: I cannot help it. I cannot bear the sight of illness, or lowness of health even. lt appals me; it-it horrifies me with a quite instinctive horror; it deadens me."

Lefevre, whose abundant sympathy and vitality went out instinctively to succour and bless the weak and the ill, was inexpressibly shocked and offended by this confession of what to his sense appeared selfish cowardice and inhumanity. He had again and again heard it said, and he had with pleasure assented to opinion, that Julius was a rare, finely-strung being, with such pure and glowing health that he shrank from contact with, or from the sight of, pain or ill-health, and even from their discussion; but now that the singularity of Julius's organisation impinged upon his own experience, now that he saw Julius shrink from himself, he was shocked and offended. Julius, on his part, was pitiably moved. He kept away from the bed; he fidgeted' to and fro, looking at this thing and that, without a sparkle of interest in his eye, yet all with his own peculiar grace.

"You wanted to speak to me,' he said. "Do you mind saying what you have to say and letting me go?"

"I reckoned upon your staying to lunch," said Lefevre.

"I can't!-I can't!... Very sorry, my dear Lefevre, but I really can't! Forgive what seems my rudeness. It distresses me that at such a time as this my sensations are so acute. But I cannot help it!-I cannot!"

"You have been in the country, -have you not?" said Lefevre, beginning with a resolve to get at something.

"I have just come back," said Julius. "My man told me you had called."

"Yes. My mother wrote in a state of great anxiety about you, and asked me to go and look at you. She said that she and my sister had seen a good deal of you lately; that you began to look unwell, and then ceased to appear, and she was afraid you might be ill."

This was put forth as an invitation to Julius to expound not only his own situation, but also his relations with Lady and Miss Lefevre, but Julius took no heed of it. He merely said, "No; I was not ill. I only wanted a little change to refresh me,"—and walked back to the window to lave himself in the air.

"Well," continued Lefevre, "since I called to see you, I have had an adventure or two. You never look at a newspaper except for the weather, and so it is probable you do not know that I had brought to me yesterday afternoon another strange case like that of the young officer a month ago,-a similar case, but worse."

"Worse !" exclaimed Julius, dropping into the chair by the window, and glancing, as a less preoccupied observer than the doctor would have remarked, with a wistful desire at the door.

"Much worse-though, I believe, from the same hand," said Lefevre. "A lady this time,-titularly and really a lady,-Lady Mary Fane, the daughter of Lord Rivercourt."

outrage. He pitied Julius's distress, and hurried though the rest of his revelation, careless of the result he had. sought.

"It may prove," said he, " a far more serious affair than the other. Lord Rivercourt is not the man to sit quietly under an outrage like that."

Julius astonished him by demanding, "What is the outrage? Has the lady given an account of it? What does she accuse the man of "

"She has not spoken yet,-to me, at least," said Lefevre; "and I don't know what the outrage can be called, but I am sure Lord Rivercourt-and he is a man of immense influence will move heaven and earth to give it a legal name, and to get it punishment. There is a detective on the man's track now.”

"Oh!" said Julius. "Well, it will be time enough to discuss the punishment when the man is caught. Now, if that is all your news," he added hurriedly, I think- He took up his hat, and was as if going to the door.

"

"It is not quite all," said the doctor, and Julius went back to the window, with his hat in his hand.

"I wonder," he broke out, "if we shall ever be simple enough and intelligent enough to perceive that real wickedness-the breaking of any of the laws of Nature, I mean, (or, if you prefer to say so, the laws of God)-is best punished by being left to itself? Outraged nature exacts a severe retribution! But you were going to say- "

"The night before last," continued Lefevre, determined to be brief and succinct, "I was walking in the Strand, and I could not help observing a man who fulfilled completely the description given of the author of this case and my former one."

You have a glimpse of a man who looks-well, something like me; and you instantly conclude, 'Ah! the Courtney person-the friend of Dr Rippon's

Lefevre stopped. There was a pause, in which Julius put his hend out of the window, as if he had a mind to be gone that way. Then he turned with a marked control upon himself.

"Really, Lefevre," said he, "this is the queerest stuff I've heard for a long time! This is hallucination with a vengeance! I don't like to apply such a tomfool word to anything, but observe how all this has come about. An excellent old gentleman, who has been dining out or something, has a glimpse at night, on a crowded pavement, of a man who looks like a friend of his youth. Very well. The excellent old gentleman tells you of that, and it impresses you. You walk on the same pavement the next evening-I won't emphasise the fact of its being

and, surely, some relative of my friend Julius!' Next day this hospital case turns up, and because the description of its author, given by more or less unobservant persons, fits the person you saw, argal, you jump to the conclusion that the three are one! Is your conclusion clear upon the evidence? Is it inevitable? Is it necessary? Is it not forced?"

"Well," began Lefevre.

"It is bad detective business," broke in Julius, "though it may be good friendship. You have thought there was trouble in this for me, and you wished to give me warning of it. But-que diable vas-tu faire dans cette galère? You are the best friend in the world, and whenever I am in trouble-and who knows? who knows? 'Man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward'-I may ask of you both your friendship and your skill.

One thing I ask of you here: don't speak of me as you see me now, thus miserably moved, to any one! Now I must go. Good-bye." And before Lefevre could find another word, Julius had opened the door and was gone.

"If it moves him like that," said the doctor to himself, through his bewilderment, "there must be something worse in it-God forgive me for thinking so!-than I have ever imagined.'

J. MACLAREN COBBAN.