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INTRODUCTION.

The aim of the following chapters is to determine the conditions which are common to all machines, in order to decide what it is, among its great variety of forms, that essentially constitutes a machine;—they are therefore called Outlines of a Theory of Machines. The whole study of the constitution of machines—the Kinematics of Machinery—naturally divides itself into two parts, the one comprehending the theoretical, and the other the applied or practical side of the subject; of these the former alone forms the subject of this work. It deals chiefly with the establishment of those ideas which form the foundation of the applied part of the science, and in its treatment of these its method differs in great part essentially from those hitherto employed.

As I have here to do chiefly with theoretical questions, it might seem that I could hardly expect to interest others than those concerned only with the theoretical side of this special study. But Theory and Practice are not antagonistic, as is so often tacitly assumed. Theory is not necessarily unpractical, nor Practice unscientific, although both of these things may occur. Indeed in any department thoroughly elucidated by Science the truly practical coincides with the theoretical, if the theory be right. The popular antithesis should rather be between Theory and Empiricism. This will always remain, and the more Theory is extended the greater will be the drawback of the empirical, as compared with the theoretical methods. The latter can never be indifferent, therefore, to any who are able to use them, even if their work be

II.

On September 26, 1810, the Bowdoinham Baptist Association met at Livermore. Before the body adjourned it had taken action as follows:

"8. It being in contemplation to establish an institution in the District of Maine, for the purpose of promoting literary, and theological knowledge; brethren Blood, Boardman, Merrill, Titcomb and Tripp were appointed a committee to take into consideration the propriety of petitioning the General Court for incorporation."^[1]

So far as can be ascertained, this is the first formal step in the establishment of the institution now known as Colby College, although the opening words "it being in contemplation" indicate that the matter had at least been under consideration previous to the meeting of the Association. Later on in the session further action was taken:

"22. The committee appointed to consider 'the propriety of petitioning the General Court relative to the establishment of a Literary and Theological Institution'; suggested to the Association the propriety of appointing a committee, to digest the matter systematically, in concert with brethren from the Lincoln Association; and report thereon at the next annual meeting. Elders Blood, Low and Boardman were chosen for the above purpose.

23. Voted to recommend to the churches of this Association, to endeavor to obtain subscriptions to promote the proposed institution, and to forward the same, to the last mentioned committee."^[2]

That the committees appointed fulfilled their duties is evident from the minutes of the following year, for we read:

"15. Brethren Low, Francis, Billings, Kilgore, Palmer, Swett and Robinson were appointed a committee to petition the General Court, with such as may join them from the Lincoln and Cumberland Associations."^[3]

In the meantime the Lincoln Association had met and taken action:

"7. Voted to appoint the following brethren a committee to sign the petition to the Legislature, viz.—Daniel Merrill. Samuel Baker, Joseph Bayley, Samuel Stinson, Hezekiah Prince and Benja. Burton."^[4]

And at its first session the newly formed Cumberland Association passed the following:

"13. Voted, to appoint a committee of seven, in union with the Lincoln, and the Bowdoinham Associations to sign a petition to the Legislature of this Commonwealth, for the incorporation of an institution in the District of Maine, for the purpose of promoting literary and theological knowledge, viz.—Elders Caleb Blood, Thomas Green, Sylvanus Boardman, Benjamin Titcomb, John Haines, Ransom Norton and Deacon Thomas Beck. And that Brother Caleb Blood lay the petition before the legislature."^[5]

It is noteworthy that in these records the purpose of the proposed institution is invariably given as the promoting of "literary and theological knowledge." If the idea was simply the establishment of a theological school, why should the word "literary" be mentioned first in every case? And inasmuch as Hebron Academy had been in operation six years, the Baptists of Maine could hardly have wished to set up a second preparatory school. The inference is plain that the proposed school was to give literary instruction of collegiate grade. This purpose is more clearly manifest in the succeeding documents.

Another point worthy of our attention, which seems to have escaped the historians of the college, is that the Rev. Caleb Blood did not present the first petition to the legislature of 1812. That duty fell to the lot of Daniel Merrill, as we shall presently see.

III.

The first step in the proceedings before the General Court of Massachusetts is recorded on page 112 of the House Journal for that year, as follows:

"Monday 20 January 1812

P'n of Sundry Persons—praying that a tract of Land may be appropriated to the establishment of a Seminary for the benefit of the Baptist Denomination—Read & Committed to Mr. Smith of W. S. Mr. Webb of B. Hovey, M. V. Coburn of Canaan.

With such &c S up for Con."

The petition referred to is preserved in the Archives as House 7209. It reads as follows:

PETITION

To the Honorable Senate and Honorable House of Representatives in General Court Assembled.

Your petitioners humbly show, That whereas the encouragement of arts and sciences, and all good literature tends to the honor of God, the advantage of the Christian Religion, and the great benefit of this, and of the other United States of America: and whereas wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused, generally, among the body of the people, being necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties; and as these depend on spreading the opportunities and advantages of education in the various parts of the country, and among the different orders of the people, we believe it to be, as the Constitution of our State says it shall be, the duty of Legislators and Magistrates in all future periods of this Commonwealth, to cherish the interests of Literature and Sciences, and all seminaries of them, and encourage public institutions.

Your Petitioners beg leave further to show, that whereas Harvard College in Cambridge, as well as the other Colleges and seminaries, in this State, have been liberally endowed, either by the appropriation of public Lands, or otherwise, by grants of the General Court, and have been committed to the more particular direction and management of that specific part of the community, denominated Congregationalists; and whereas we have sustained a part, and not an inconsiderable part, of those appropriations, without having any particular share in the oversight and direction of such appropriations ever assigned, by authority, to that part of the community denominated Baptists, we therefore consider, and are firmly persuaded, that the General Court would do no injustice to any section of the Commonwealth, but would render more equal justice to the different sections, and largely promote the best good of the State generally by kindly receiving and favorably answering the petition, to which we solicit the attention of your honorable body.

Your petitioners also beg leave to show farther, that there are, belonging to the regular Baptist Churches, at least between six and seven thousand members, in the district of Maine, and, large congregations, generally united with the Churches in the same sentiment, so that the Baptists are, undoubtedly, more numerous, in this district, than any other denominations, if not, than all others.

Notwithstanding our numbers are so large, and daily increasing, yet we have no seminary over which we have any control. It is our judgment, that it would be for the furtherance of the gospel, and the general good, that a seminary should be founded in which some of our religious young men might be educated under the particular inspection of able men of the same sentiments. God having put into our heart a strong desire, that such an event might be amicably and speedily accomplished, your Petitioners humbly pray your honorable body to take their request into your wise and benevolent consideration, and grant them, for the furtherance of their object, a [township]^[6] tract of good land, and cause it to be located as nighly in the centre of the district, and as conveniently situated, as in your wisdom you may find convenient. For, it is contemplated, should it be deemed advisable by the Trustees, that the seminary be on the very [town]^[6] tract, which your honorable body may see fit to grant for its encouragement.

Your petitioners further pray, That your honorable body will cause the Overseers and Trustees of the proposed Seminary, to be appointed [from among the Ministers and churches of their own denomination]^[6] with the powers and privileges which in such cases are, by law made and provided, And as in duty bound, will ever pray.

Daniel Merrill	$\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right.}$	Committee in behalf of The Lincoln Association
Saml Baker
Samuel Stinson
Joseph Bailey
Hezekiah Prince
Phineas Pillsbury
Benj'n Burton
Robert Low	$\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right.}$	Committee in behalf of The Bowdoinham Association
Thos Francis
Oliver Billings
Joseph Killgore
Joseph Palmer
John Robinson
Saml Swett
Caleb Blood	$\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right.}$	Committee Cumberland Association
John Haines
Thomas Green
Sylvanus Boardman
Ransom Norton
Benjamin Titcomb
Thomas Beck

This document bears the following endorsements:

(1) "In the House of Reps. Jany 20, 1812. Read & Committed to Mr. Smith of W. S., Mr. Webb of Boston, a Mr. Hovey of Mount Vernon & Mr. Coburn of Canaan with such as the Honorable Senate may join—El. W. Ripley, Speaker."

"In the Senate Jany 22d 1812. Read and Concurred and the Hon. Messrs. King, Hastings and Hazard are joined of the Committee accordingly. Sam. Dana, Prest."

(2) "Petition of Daniel Merrill and others."

Why Daniel Merrill presented the petition in place of the Rev. Caleb Blood does not concern us here. Mr. Smith in his biography of Merrill answers that question fully. We are concerned with the petition itself, and it is worthy of note that the petitioners refer to "Harvard College in Cambridge, as well as the other colleges and seminaries" being under the direction and management of the Congregationalists. Why base their plea upon this ground if all they desired was a theological school? And again, it is alleged "we have no seminary over which we have any control." Yet Hebron Academy was already established, so they could not have had in mind the establishment of another academy.

As indicated by the endorsement (1) on the petition, the Senate acted in concurrence with the House. On page 226 of the Senate Journal we read:

"Wednesday Jan. 22. The petition of Daniel Merrill and others praying for the establishment of a Baptist College to Mr. Smith of W. S. Mr. Webb of B. Mr. Hovey of and Mr. Coburn of C. with such as the Senate may join Came up for Concurrence. Read and Concurred and the Hon. Mess King, Hastings & Hazard are joined."

Here we have it expressly stated that the petitioners desired the establishment of a college. Surely the men to whom the petition was submitted could not have been in error on so important a point.

The joint committee reported three days later. Their report is in the Archives as House 7196:

"Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In Senate January 25th, 1812. The Committee of both Houses to whom was committed the Petition of Daniel Merrill and others, a Committee of the Lincoln Association,—Robert Low and others, a Committee of the Bowdoinham Association,—and Caleb Blood and others, a Committee of the Cumberland Association, Praying for the establishment of a College in the District of Maine and for a grant of Land on which it is contemplated the Seminary should be established,—Have had the same under consideration, and [have directed me to]^[7] report that the Petitioners have leave to bring in a Bill embracing both the objects prayed for.—Which is Respectfully submitted—

by Wm. King per order.

"In Senate Jany 25th 1812. Read and accepted. Sent down for Concurrence. Saml Dana, Prest."

"In House of Rep. Jany 27, 1812. Read and concurred. El. W. Ripley, Speaker."

The Senate Journal for January 25, 1813, page 238, records the action indicated above in these words:

"Leave to bring in a Bill on the Petition of Daniel Merrill and others Read and Accepted. Sent down for Concurrence. Came up Concurred."

Up to this point things were apparently going smoothly. It was not until the bill had been introduced that the opposition is manifested. The bill presented is preserved in the Archives as House 7291, although first introduced in the Senate. It reads as follows:

Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and twelve. An Act.—To establish a, College in the District of Maine, within this Commonwealth.—

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives, in General Court assembled, and by the authority of the same, that there be erected and established in the District of Maine upon one of the Townships hereafter mentioned a College for the purpose of educating youth, to be called and known by the name of the Maine Literary and Theological College to be under the government and regulation of a body politic, as in this Act is hereafter described.—

Section 2d—And be it further enacted, that Daniel Merrill, Caleb Blood, Sylvanus Boardman, Thomas Green, Robert Low, Benjamin Titcomb, Thomas Francis, Daniel McMaster, Hon. James Campbell, John R. Stinson, John Haynes, Timothy Johnson, Daniel Hutchinson, Joshua Taylor, John Hubbard, Samuel Baker, Joseph Bailey, Phinehas Pilsbury, & Hezekiah Prince, together with the President, Treasurer and Fellows of the said College for the time being, to be chosen as in this Act is hereafter directed, be and hereby are erected a body politic and corporate by the name of the President, Fellows and Trustees of the Maine Literary and Theological College and that they and their successors and such others as shall be duly elected members of said Corporation, shall be and remain a body politic and corporate by that name forever.—

Section 3d—And be it further enacted—That the Trustees aforesaid be hereby empowered to elect nine persons of education to be Fellows of the said Institution and who shall be stiled the learned faculty whose duty it shall be to determine the qualifications of all Candidates for degrees, which shall be given only by their authority.—

Section 4th—And be it further enacted—That for the more orderly conducting the business of the said Corporation, the President, [and]^[8]Fellows and Trustees shall have full power and authority, from time to time, as they shall determine, to elect a Vice President, Treasurer, and Secretary of said Corporation; and to declare the tenure and duties of their respective offices, and also to remove any Trustee or Fellow from the said Corporation, when in their judgment, he shall be rendered incapiable, by age or otherwise of discharging the duties of his office, and to fill up all vacancies in the said Corporation by electing such persons for Fellows or Trustees as they shall judge best.—Provided nevertheless—That the number of the said Corporation including the President of the said College and the Treasurer for the time being shall never be greater than thirty one, nor less than twenty one.—

Section 5th — And be it further enacted That the said Corporation may have one common seal, which they may change, break or renew at their pleasure ; and that all deeds, signed and delivered by the Treasurer, and sealed with their seal by the order of the Corporation, shall when made in their [respective]^[8] Corporate name, be considered in Law as the deed of the said Corporation.—And that the said Corporation may sue and be sued, in all actions, real, personal and mixed, and may prosecute and defend the same, to final Judgement and execution, by the name of the President, and Corporation, of the Maine Literary & Theological [University]^[8] College, And that the said Corporation shall be capable of having, holding, and taking in fee simple, or any less estate, by gift, grant, devise, or otherwise, any lands, tenements, or other estate, real or personal.—Provided nevertheless, that the annual clear income of the same shall not exceed the sum of thirty thousand dollars.

Section 6th—And be it further enacted,—That the said Corporation shall have full power and authority determine at what times and places their meetings shall be holden, and on the manner of notifying the Trustees and Fellows to convene at such meetings:—And also from time to time to elect a President and Treasurer of said College, and such Professors, Tutors, Instructors, and other officers of said College, as they shall judge most for the interest thereof, and to determine the duties, salaries, emoluments and tenures of their several offices aforesaid: The said President, for the time being, when elected and inducted into his office, to be, ex-officio, the President of the said Corporation.—And the said Corporation are farther em powered to purchase or erect, and keep in repair, such houses and other buildings as they shall judge necessary for the said College; and also to make and ordain, as occasion may require, reasonable rules, orders and bye laws, not repugnant to the laws, of this Commonwealth, with reasonable penalties for the good government of the said College, and also to determine and prescribe the mode of ascertaining the qualifications of the students requisite to their admission.—Provided nevertheless. That no corporate business shall be transacted at any meeting unless thirteen at least of the Corporation are present.—

Section 7th—And be it further enacted—That the President, Professors, and Fellows of the said College are hereby empowered to confer [such degrees as are usually conferred by Universities established for the education of youth. Provided nevertheless—That the said Board shall confer no degrees other]^[9] the degrees of Bachelor of Arts, and Master of Arts, [untill after the first day of January, which will be in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and twenty.—]^[10]

Section 8th—And be it further enacted—That the clear rents, issues and profits of all the estate, real and personal, of which the said Corporation shall be seized or possessed, shall be appropriated to the endowment of the said College, in such manner as shall most effectually promote Virtue and Piety, and the knowledge of such of the languages, and of the liberal arts and sciences as shall hereafter be directed from time to time by the said Corporation.—

Section 9th—And be it further enacted—That the Hon. John Woodman, Esquire be and he is hereby authorized and impowered to fix the time and place for holding the first meeting of the said Corporation, of which he shall give notice, by an advertisement in a Portland and one other eastern newspaper, at least fourteen days previous to the time of said meeting.—

Section 10th—And be it further enacted—That the Treasurer of the said Corporation shall before he enters upon the execution of the duties of his office give bonds to the said Corporation, in such sums, and with such sureties as they shall approve of, conditioned for the faithful discharge of the said office, and for rendering a just and true account of his doings therein, when required.—And that all the money securities, and other property of the said corporation together with all the books in which his accounts and proceedings, as Treasurer, were entered and kept, that shall be in his hands at the expiration of his office, shall, upon demand made upon him, his executors or administrators, be paid and delivered over to his successor in that office. And all monies recovered by the virtue of any suit at law, upon such bond, shall be paid over to the Corporation aforesaid, and subjected to the appropriation above directed in the Act.—

Section 11th— And be it further enacted [A]^[11]—And the said Corporation shall be holden to [give]^[12] render an account to the Legislature, whenever they shall see fit to require it, of all their proceedings, and the manner of disposing of the funds of said [University]^[13] College.

Section 12th—And be it further enacted—That there be and hereby is granted, a tract of land, twelve miles square, or four Townships, either seperate or adjoining each other of the contents of six miles square each, either the one or the other as the Corporation of the said College may judge to be most conducive to the prosperity and interest of the same, to be laid out and assigned from any of the unappropriated land belonging to this Commonwealth in the District of Maine, under the same restrictions, reservations & limitations as other grants for similar purposes are usually made. The same to be vested in the Corporation of the said College and their successors forever, for the use benefit and purpose of suporting said College, to be by them holden in their Corporate capacity, with full power and authority to settle divide, and manage the same tract of land or townships, or any part thereof, or to sell, convey or dispose of the same for settlement only, and to no one person a larger quantity than one thousand acres, in such way and manner as shall best promote the welfare of said College, the same to be laid out under the direction of the Committee for the sale of Eastern Lands, and a plan or plans thereof returned into the Secretary's office.

(The spelling throughout the above copy is that of the original.)

If there had been any room for doubt in the earlier stages of the movement as to its real purpose, this draft of the proposed charter would dispel it. It is essentially a college charter. Indeed, it was more than that in its first form, for originally the word "University" was used in every place where the word "College" now appears. The change was made by erasure (the traces are still plainly visible in the manuscript) except in two cases: At the top of page three of the draft the word "University" is merely crossed out, as indicated by the [] in the above copy, and the word "College" was written beside it. The same change is found again on the fifth page. In addition to this indication of the broad character of the original draft, the seventh section in its first form gave the proposed institution the power to confer "such degrees as are usually conferred by Universities established for the education of youth". Evidently there was some objection to this and the power to grant degrees was restricted to those of Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts. How any one can read this draft of the proposed charter and maintain that the petitioners had in mind primarily a theological school, it is hard to understand.

The charter seems to have met with no great opposition in the Senate, for in the Journal we read, under date of Saturday, February 8th:

"Bill entitled an Act to establish a College in the District of Maine, within this Commonwealth having had two several readings passed to be ingrossed sent down for Concurrence."

As in the charter itself, the word "College" is here written over the erasure of "University", indicating- that the changes noticed above were made after the bill was introduced in the Senate.

Up to this point the petitioners had met, apparently, with no serious opposition. But their experience with the House was to be far different, although the bill passed the first reading, as indicated by an entry in the House Journal for Wednesday, February 12, 1812:

"Bill to establish a College in Maine—by the name of the Maine Literary and Theological College Read a first time & Friday 14th assd for a 2d Rdg & 400 Copies to be printed."

Of the four hundred printed copies only one has so far been located. That is in the Boston Public Library and can be seen by any visitor on request. It is bound with other pamphlets of the period.

Although the second reading was assigned for the 14th, it was not until Saturday, February 22d, that the bill was called up, to meet an overwhelming and, in view of the preceding votes, an unaccoimtable defeat. The brief record in the House Journal is as follows:

"Bill to establish a College in the District of Maine Read a 2d time & amended on Motion of Mr. Mudge.^[14] On motion of Dr. Dodge^[15] the House ordered the first Section to be stricken out."

The entry is followed by the figures "224-60", evidently the vote on the last motion. Of the nature of the amendments offered by Mr. Mudge we are not in doubt, for two slips of paper are inserted opposite the eleventh section of the bill, bearing what we may well assume to be the suggested amendments. The first comes at the very beginning of the section and reads:

"[Section 11th at] A [insert]^[16] that the Legislature of this Commonwealth may grant any further powers to or alter, limit, annul, or restrain any of the powers of this Act vested in the said Corporation, as shall be judged necessary to promote the best interest of the said College—"

The purpose of this is obvious; its effect was to limit the life of the institution to the pleasure of the Massachusetts legislature. The second amendment was even more important. It provided that "there shall never be in the said Corporation a majority of members who are of [any]^[17] the same religious denomination". The effect of this would have been entirely to defeat the purpose of the petitioners, which was to have a college under Baptist control. With the passage of these two amendments the battle was lost. The vote to strike out the first section, i. e., to kill the bill, was hardly necessary. Nothing more could be done for the time being, and the matter was dropped until a new legislature should meet.

IV.

What were the forces which opposed the passage of the charter of the "Maine Literary and Theological College" in February, 1812? While we cannot answer that question with absolute certainty, 'ther'e can be little doubt that the friends of the infant institution at Brunswick were averse to the establishment of a second college in the District of Maine, and used their influence to prevent the passage of the charter submitted.^[18] Be that as it may, there was sufficient opposition to secure the overwhelming defeat of the proposed charter.

That Merrill and his co-workers were not disposed to relinquish their attempt to secure full collegiate powers for their proposed institution is evident from their next move. Had they now submitted a bill for a strictly theological school, there is every reason to believe that it would have been speedily passed. But they did no such thing. When the new General Court met early in the summer of 1812, Daniel Merrill was present as a member of the lower house, and from this vantage point continued his fight. On the fifth of June he presented a second petition. This was identical with the first petition presented the previous January, with the exception of the signatures at the end. These were as follows:

Daniel Merrill	$\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right.}$	In behalf and by the direction of the Lincoln Association, containing forty-eight associate Churches.
Robert Low	$\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right.}$	In behalf and by the direction of the Bowdoinham Association; containing twenty associate Churches.
Sylvanus Boardman Thomas Green Caleb Blood	$\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right.}$	In behalf and by the direction of the the Cumberland Association, containing twenty-four associated Churches.

Why the change in the arrangement of signatures was made we can only surmise. The petitioners may have thought that the new method gave a better indication of their strength as representing a total of ninety-two associated Baptist churches. The petition bears two endorsements, written on a separate sheet and attached to the bottom by seals. The first of these reads:

"In Senate June 5th 1813 Read & Committed to the Hon Mess Phillips, Poor, and Foote—to consider and Report thereon. Sam. Dana, Prest."

The report of that committee, filed with the petition, is as follows :

Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

The Committee of the Senate to whom was referred the Petition of Daniel Merrill and others praying that they may allowed to establish a College in the district of Maine within this Commonwealth and for a Grant of Land, to aid them in the establishment of such Seminary, have had the same under consideration, and ask leave to Report—That the further consideration thereof be referred to the [next]^[19] last session of the present General Court. Which is respectfully submitted, by order of the Committee. E. Poor. Chairman

In the Senate June 11th 1812 Read & accepted Sam. Dana Pres.

Here again we find the purpose of the petitioners stated in the words "to establish a College in the district of Maine," showing plainly how the matter was viewed at the time. Why further consideration was postponed to the winter session of the General Court, is a question the documents do not answer. The second endorsement upon the petition shows the action taken by the Senate at that later session:

"In Senate, Feby 13th 1813. Read and Committed to the Hon Mess Phillips, Poor and Foote—to consider and report thereon. Sam. Dana, Pres."

This is the same committee to which it had been committed in the previous June, and that they were favorably disposed is shown by their report, which follows:

Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

The Committee of Senate to whom was referred the Petition of Daniel Merrill and others praying that they may be incorporated into a Literary Seminary in the District of Maine with the usual powers & privileges, and for a Grant of Land to enable them to carry into effect the object of the Petition, have had the same under consideration—and ask leave to Report—That the prayer of the Petition be so far granted, that the Petitioners have leave to bring in a Rill for that purpose.

Which is respectfully submitted, by order of the Committee, John Phillips, Chairman.

In Senate Feby 19th 1813 Read and accepted. Sam. Dana, Pres.

One significant change in phraseology is to be noted in this report. The word "college" is no longer used : in its place we find "Literary Seminary." That this change was made with a view to lessening opposition we may be allowed to assume in view of what came later. In accordance with the report of the commitee, a draft of the desired charter was submitted in this form:^[20]

Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and thirteen. An act.—To establish a Literary Institution in the District of Maine, within this Commonwealth.—

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives, in General Court assembled, and by the authority of the same, that there be erected and established in the District of Maine in the Township hereafter mentioned a Literary Institution, for the purpose of educating youth to be called and known by the name of the Maine Literary and Theological Institution, to be under the government and regulation of a body politic, as in this Act is hereafter described.

Sect. 2—[And] be it further enacted, That Daniel Merrill, Caleb Blood, Sylvanus Boardman, Thomas Green, Robert Low, Benjamin Titcomb, Thomas Francis, Ransom Norton, Daniel McMaster, Hon. James Campbell, Samuel Stinson, John Hovey, David Nelson, Alford Richardson, John Haynes, Samuel Baker, Joseph Bailey, Phinehas Pilsbury, Hezekiah Prince, Moses Dennett, and John Neal, together with the President, (A) Treasurer (B) and Fellows of the said Institution, for the time being, to be chosen, as in this Act, is hereafter directed, be and hereby are erected a body politic and corporate by the name of the President, (C) Fellows and Trustees of the Maine Literary and Theological Institution. And that they and their successors, and such others as shall be duly elected members of said Corporation, shall be and remain a body politic and corporate by that name forever.

Sect. 3—(D) [And] be it further enacted, That the Trustees aforesaid be hereby empowered to elect nine persons of education to be Fellows of the said Institution, and who shall be stiled the Learned Faculty, whose duty it shall he to determine the qualifications of all Candidates for degrees, which shall be given only by their authority.

Sect. 4—[And] be it further enacted, That for the more orderly conducting the business of the said Corporation, the President, (E) and Fellows and Trustees shall have full power and authority, from time to time, as they shall determine, to elect a Vice President, Treasurer, and Secretary of said Corporation, and to declare the tenure and duties of their respective offices, and also to remove any Trustee, (F) or Fellow from the said Corporation, when in their judgment, he shall be rendered incapable, by age or otherwise, of discharging the duties of his office, and to fill up all vacancies in the said Corporation, by electing such persons for (G) Fellows or Trustees as they shall judge best. Provided nevertheless That the number of the said Corporation, including the President of the said Institution, and the Treasurer for the time being, shall never be greater, than Thirty one, nor less than twenty one.

Sect. 5—And be it further enacted, That the said Corporation may have one common seal, which they may change, break, or renew at their pleasure; and that all deeds, signed and delivered by the Treasurer, and sealed with their seal by the order of the Corporation, shall when made in their Corporate name, be considered in Law as the deed of the said Corporation.—And that the said Corporation may sue and be sued, in all actions, real, personal and mixed, and may prosecute and defend the same, to final Judgment and execution, by the name of the President, and Corporation, of the Maine Literary & Theological Institution.—And that the said Corporation shall be capable of having, holding, and taking in fee simple, or any less estate, by gift, grant, devise, or otherwise, any lands, tenements, or other estate, real or personal. Provided nevertheless. That the annual clear income of the same shall not exceed sum of thirty thousand dollars.

Sect. 6—[And] be it further enacted, That the said Corporation shall have full power and authority to determine at what times and places their meetings shall be holden, and on the manner of notifying the Trustees (H) and Fellows to convene at such meetings; And also from time to time to elect a President of said Institution, and such Professors, Tutors, Instructors, and other officers of said Institution, as they shall judge most for the interest thereof, and to determine the duties, salaries, emoluments and tenures of their several officers aforesaid. The said President, for the time being, when elected and inducted into his office, to be, ex-officio, President of the said Corporation.—And the said Corporation are further empowered to purchase or erect, and keep in repair, such houses and other buildings as they shall judge necessary for the said Institution; and also to make and ordain, as occasion may require, reasonable rules, orders and by laws, not repugnant to the laws, of this Commonwealth, with reasonable penalties for the good government of said Institution, and also to determine and prescribe the mode of ascertaining the qualifications of the students requisite to their admission. Provided, nevertheless, That no corporate business shall be transacted at any meeting unless thirteen at least of the Corporation are present.

Sect. 7—(I) Be it further enacted, That the President, Professors, and Fellows of the said Institution are hereby empowered to confer degrees of Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts.

Sect. 8—[And] be it further enacted, That the clear rents, issues and profits of all the estate, real and personal, of which the said Corporation shall be seized or possessed, shall be appropriated to the endowment of the said Institution, in such manner as shall most effectually promote virtue and piety, and the knowledge of such of the languages, and of the liberal arts and sciences as shall hereafter be directed from time to time by the said Corporation.

Sect. 9—And be it further enacted. That the Hon. John Woodman, Esq. be, and he is hereby authorized and impowered to fix the time and place for holding the first meeting of the said Corporation, of which he shall give notice, by an advertisement in a Portland and one other Eastern newspaper, at least fourteen days previous to the time of said meeting

Sect. 10—And be it further enacted, That the Treasurer of the said Corporation shall, before he enters upon the execution of the duties of his office, give bonds to the said Corporation, in such sums, and with such sureties as they shall approve of, conditioned for the faithful discharge of the said office, and for rendering a just and true account of his doings therein, when required. And that all the money, securities, and other property of the said Corporation, together with all the books in which his accounts and proceedings, as Treasurer, were entered and kept, that shall be in his hands, at the expiration of his office, shall, upon demand made upon him, his executors [and] or administrators, be paid and delivered over to his successor in that office. And all monies recovered by the virtue of any suit at law, upon such bond, shall be paid over to the Corporation aforesaid, and subjected to the appropriation above directed in the Act.

Sect. 11—[And] be it further enacted. That the Legislature of this Commonwealth may grant any further powers to, or alter, limit, annul, or restrain, any of the powers by this Act vested in the said Corporation, as shall be judged necessary to promote the best interest of the said Institution. And the said [Institution] Corporation shall be holden to render an account to the Legislature, whenever they shall see fit to require it, of all their proceedings, and the manner of disposing of the funds of said Institution.

Sect. 12—[And] be it further enacted, That there be and hereby is granted a township of land, six miles square, to be laid out and assigned from any of the unappropriated land, belonging to this Commonwealth in the District of Maine, under the same restrictions, reservations and limitations as other grants, for similar purposes are usually made.—The same to be vested in the Corporation of said Institution, and their successors forever, for the use benefit and purpose of supporting said Institution, to be by them holden in their Corporate capacity, with full power and authority to settle, divide, and manage the same tract of land or township, or any part thereof, or to sell, convey or dispose of the same for settlement only, and to no one person a larger quantity than one thousand acres, in such way and manner as shall best promote the welfare of said Institution, the same to be laid out under the direction of the Committee for the sale of Eastern Lands, and a plan or plans thereof returned into the Secretary's office. (K)

Although the word "Institution" has been substituted for the word "College" in the title, this bill is practically the same as that submitted in 1812, and is still essentially a college charter. The slight changes which should be noted are these: Changes in the individuals named as incorporators in section two; change in the eleventh section giving the legislature the power to increase, alter, limit, or annul any of the powers granted; a grant of one township of land, in place of the four townships given by the previous bill. The petitioners seem to have believed that by substituting the word "Institution" for "College" and making the further concessions noted, they might appease the opposition and secure an institution with full collegiate powers under another name. Their hopes however, were ill-founded.

As had been the case the previous year, there was no opposition in the Senate, as the endorsement makes clear:

"In Senate, February 22d, 1813. This bill having had two several readings passed to be engrossed. Sent down for Concurrence. Sam. Dana, Pres."

The action of the House was not delayed, for the bill was disposed of on the following day. The record reads thus:

"In the House of Representatives, Feb. 23, 1813. This Bill having had three several reading passed to be engrossed in concurrence with the Hon. Senate with following amendments viz., at A insert 'and', at B dele 'and fellows', at C dele 'Fellows', at D dele the whole 3d Section; at E dele 'Fellows', at F dele 'or fellows', at G dele 'fellows or', at H dele 'and fellows', at I dele the whole seventh section.

"Sent up for concurrence, Timothy Bigelow Speaker."

A separate slip contains a draft of the above amendments and one other which was also adopted:

"At K add 'within three years after the expiration of the present war with Great Britain."

These are the changes which Dr. Burrage,^[21] characterizes as "trifling amendments !" They were in fact all-important and stripped the proposed institution completely of collegiate powers. Merrill and his colleagues were now convinced apparently, of the futility of pressing further at that juncture their request for a college charter, and signified their willingness to accept the amended bill. On the twenty-fifth of February the Senate concurred in the amendments, and on the twenty-seventh the bill was approved by the Governor.^[22] The petitioners had secured a charter for a "Literary and Theological Institution" only, but that they had not given up the idea of establishing a college the sequel shows. For the present, however, they allowed that matter to rest. As Dr. Hall remarks:^[23] "The name 'Literary and Theological Institution' was at that time a favorite designation attached to many schools of a higher order in which collegiate and theological classes were united," and there was nothing to prevent the giving of collegiate courses under the charter granted, although no degrees could be conferred. In fact, such collegiate courses were given by the institution, beginning in 1819.

V.

When the Maine Literary and Theological Institution came into corporate existence two years and four months had passed since the first action of the Bowdoinham Association. Five years more went by before the work of instruction actually commenced at Waterville. They were not years of inactivity, but were spent in securing from the State the township of land donated by the act of incorporation, in deciding upon a suitable location, and in endeavors to obtain further state aid. We cannot follow in detail all the steps taken, but must confine our attention solely to the documents which have a direct bearing on the character of the institution which the founders had in mind to set up.

As early as June 4, 1813, the Trustees attempted to secure by a Resolution'^[24] of the General Court the laying out of Township No. 3 on the West side of the Penobscot river for the benefit of the Institution, but it was not until February 15, 1815, that the grant was made. And on June 14, 1813^[25], the Trustees sought to obtain permission to locate the Institution elsewhere than on the township specified, but not until June 15, 1816 was the desired permission given. By a vote of the Trustees on October 1, 1817, Waterville was chosen as the site of the Institution. This meeting, which occupied two days, October first and second, was a most important one. Among the votes recorded we find:

"Vote 17. Voted that the price of tuition shall be the same in this Institution as in Bowdoin College."

While in itself of no great importance, this indicates that the Trustees had in view the establishment of an institution of a grade equal to that of the college in Brunswick. Taken in connection with what comes later it is an interesting link in the chain of evidence. At this meeting, also, the Trustees considered the "expediency of electing any of the officers of the Institution," and "also at what time tuition may probably commence;" but it was not until the following February that the Rev. Jeremiah Chaplin was chosen Professor of Theology and Rev. Irah Chase, Professor of Languages. Mr. Chase declined the appointment, and on July 6, 1818, Mr. Chaplin alone commenced the work of instruction. The Trustees continued to seek a man for the position declined by Mr. Chase, but it was some months before they were successful.

Experimental Researches in Electricity

I^[26]

§ 1. identity of electricities derived from different sources.§2. relation by measure of common and voltaic electricity

§1. Identity of Electricities derived from different sources.

1. The progress of the electrical researches which I have had the honour to present to the Royal Society, brought me to a point at which it was essential for the further prosecution of my inquiries that no doubt should remain of this identity or distinction of electricities excited by different means. It is perfectly true that Cavendish,^[27] Wollaston,^[28] Colladon^[29] and others have in succession removed some of the greatest objections to the acknowledgment of the identity of the common, animal and voltaic electricity, and I believe that most philosophers consider these electricities as really the same. But on the other hand it is also true, that the accuracy of Wollaston's experiments has been denied;^[30] and also that one of them, which really is no proper proof of chemical decomposition by common electricity (45, 63), has been that selected by several experimenters as the test of chemical action (72, 82). It is a fact, too, that many philosophers are still drawing distinctions between the electricities from different sources; or at least doubting whether their identity is proved. Sir Humphry Davy, for instance, in his paper on the Torpedo,^[31] thought it probable that animal electricity would be found of a peculiar kind; and referring to it, to common electricity, voltaic electricity and magnetism, has said, "Distinctions might be established in pursuing the various modifications or properties of electricity in these different forms, etc." Indeed I need only refer to the last volume of the Philosophical Transactions to show that the question is by no means considered as settled.^[32]

2. Notwithstanding, therefore, the general impression of the identity of electricities, it is evident that the proofs have not been sufficiently clear and distinct to obtain the assent of all those who were competent to consider the subject; and the question seemed to me very much in the condition of that which Sir H. Davy solved so beautifully,—namely, whether voltaic electricity in all cases merely eliminated, or did not in some actually produce, the acid and alkali found after its action upon water. The same necessity that urged him to decide the doubtful point, which interfered with the extension of his views, and destroyed the strictness of his reasoning, has obliged me to ascertain the identity or difference of common and voltaic electricity. I have satisfied myself that they are identical, and I hope the experiments which I have to offer, and the proofs flowing from them, will be found worthy the attention of the Royal Society.

3. The various phenomena exhibited by electricity may, for the purposes of comparison, be arranged under two heads; namely, those connected with electricity of tension, and those belonging to electricity in motion. This distinction is taken at present not as philosophical, but merely as convenient. The effect of electricity of tension, at rest, is either attraction or repulsion at sensible distances. The effects of electricity in motion or electrical currents may be considered as 1st, Evolution of heat; 2nd, Magnetism; 3rd, Chemical decomposition; 4th, Physiological phenomena; 5th, Spark. It will be my object to compare electricities from different sources, and especially common and voltaic electricities, by their power of producing these effects.

I. Voltaic Electricity

4. Tension.—When a voltaic battery of 100 pairs of plates has its extremities examined by the ordinary electrometer, it is well known that they are found positive and negative, the gold leaves at the same extremity repelling each other, the gold leaves at different extremities attracting each other, even when half an inch or more of air intervenes.

5. That ordinary electricity is discharged by points with facility through air; that it is readily transmitted through highly rarefied air; and also through heated air, as for instance a flame; is due to its high tension. I sought, therefore, for similar effects in the discharge of voltaic electricity, using as a test of the passage of the electricity either the galvanometer or chemical action produced by the arrangement hereafter to be described (48, 52).

6. The voltaic battery I had at my disposal consisted of 140 pairs of plates four inches square, with double coppers. It was insulated throughout, and diverged a gold leaf electrometer about one-third of an inch. On endeavouring to discharge this battery by delicate points very nicely arranged and approximated, either in the air or in an exhausted receiver, I could obtain no indications of a current, either by magnetic or chemical action. In this, however, was found no point of discordance between voltaic and common electricity; for when a Leyden battery (27) was charged so as to deflect the gold leaf electrometer to the same degree, the points were found equally unable to discharge it with such effect as to produce either magnetic or chemical action. This was not because common electricity could not produce both these effects (43, 46), but because when of such low intensity the quantity required to make the effects visible (being enormously great (107, 111)) could not be transmitted in any reasonable time. In conjunction with the other proofs of identity hereafter to be given, these effects of points also prove identity instead of difference between voltaic and common electricity.

7. As heated air discharges common electricity with far greater facility than points, I hoped that voltaic electricity might in this way also be discharged. An apparatus was therefore
Fig. 1. constructed (fig. 1), in which A B is an insulated glass rod upon which two copper wires, C, D, are fixed firmly; to these wires are soldered two pieces of fine platina wire, the ends of which are brought very close to each other at e, but without touching; the copper wire C was connected with the positive pole of a voltaic battery, and the wire D with a decomposing apparatus (48, 52), from which the communication was completed to the negative pole of the battery. In these experiments only two troughs, or twenty pairs of plates, were used.

8. Whilst in the state described, no decomposition took place at the point a, but when the side of a spirit-lamp flame was applied to the two platina extremities at e, so as to make them bright red-hot, decomposition occurred; iodine soon appeared at the point a, and the transference of electricity through the heated air was established. On raising the temperature of the points e by a blowpipe, the discharge was rendered still more free, and decomposition took place instantly. On removing the source of heat, the current immediately ceased. On putting the ends of the wires very close by the side of and parallel to each other, but not touching, the effects were perhaps more readily obtained than before. On using a larger voltaic battery (6), they were also more freely obtained.

9. On removing the decomposing apparatus and interposing a galvanometer instead, heating the points e as the needle would swing one way, and removing the heat during the time of its return (38), feeble deflections were soon obtained: thus also proving the current through heated air; but the instrument used was not so sensible under the circumstances as chemical action.

10. These effects, not hitherto known or expected under this form, are only cases of the discharge which takes place through air between the charcoal terminations of the poles of a powerful battery, when they are gradually separated after contact. Then the passage is through heated air exactly as with common electricity, and Sir H. Davy has recorded that with the original battery of the Royal Institution this discharge passed through a space of at least four inches.^[33] In the exhausted receiver the electricity would strike through nearly half an inch of space, and the combined effects of rarefaction and heat was such upon the inclosed air as to enable it to conduct the electricity through a space of six or seven inches.

11. The instantaneous charge of a Leyden battery by the poles of a voltaic apparatus is another proof of the tension, and also the quantity, of electricity evolved by the latter. Sir H. Davy says,^[34] "When the two conductors from the ends of the combination were connected with a Leyden battery, one with the internal, the other with the external coating, the battery instantly became charged; and on removing the wires and making the proper connections, either a shock or a spark could be perceived: and the least possible time of contact was sufficient to renew the charge to its full intensity."

12. In motion: i. Evolution of heat.—The evolution of heat in wires and fluids by the voltaic current is matter of general notoriety.

13. ii. Magnetism.—No fact is better known to philosophers than the power of the voltaic current to deflect the magnetic needle, and to make magnets according to certain laws; and no effect can be more distinctive of an electrical current.

14. iii. Chemical decomposition.—The chemical powers of the voltaic current, and their subjection to certain laws, are also perfectly well known.

15. iv. Physiological effects.—The power of the voltaic current, when strong, to shock and convulse the whole animal system, and when weak to affect the tongue and the eyes, is very characteristic.

16. v. Spark.—The brilliant star of light produced by the discharge of a voltaic battery is known to all as the most beautiful light that man can produce by art.

17. That these effects may be almost infinitely varied, some being exalted whilst others are diminished, is universally acknowledged; and yet without any doubt of the identity of character of the voltaic currents thus made to differ in their effect. The beautiful explication of these variations afforded by Cavendish's theory of quantity and intensity requires no support at present, as it is not supposed to be doubted.

18. In consequence of the comparisons that will hereafter arise between wires carrying voltaic and ordinary electricities, and also because of certain views of the condition of a wire or any other conducting substance connecting the poles of a voltaic apparatus, it will be necessary to give some definite expression of what is called the voltaic current, in contradistinction to any supposed peculiar state of arrangement, not progressive, which the wire or the electricity within it may be supposed to assume. If two voltaic troughs P N, P' N', fig. 2, be symmetrically arranged and insulated, and the ends N P' connected by a wire, over which a magnetic needle is suspended, the wire will exert no effect over the needle; but immediately that the

Fig. 2.

ends P N' are connected by another wire, the needle will be deflected, and will remain so as long as the circuit is complete. Now if the troughs merely act by causing a peculiar arrangement in the wire either of its particles or its electricity, that arrangement constituting its electrical and magnetic state, then the wire N P' should be in a similar state of arrangement before P and N' were connected, to what it is afterwards, and should have deflected the needle, although less powerfully, perhaps to one-half the extent which would result when the communication is complete throughout. But if the magnetic effects depend upon a current, then it is evident why they could not be produced in any degree before the circuit was complete; because prior to that no current could exist.

19. By current, I mean anything progressive, whether it be a fluid of electricity, or two fluids moving in opposite directions, or merely vibrations, or, speaking still more generally, progressive forces. By arrangement, I understand a local adjustment of particles, or fluids, or forces, not progressive. Many other reasons might be urged in support of the view of a current rather than an arrangement, but I am anxious to avoid stating unnecessarily what will occur to others at the moment.

II. Ordinary Electricity

20. By ordinary electricity I understand that which can be obtained from the common machine, or from the atmosphere, or by pressure, or cleavage of crystals, or by a multitude of other operations; its distinctive character being that of great intensity, and the exertion of attractive and repulsive powers, not merely at sensible but at considerable distances.

21. Tension,—The attractions and repulsions at sensible distances, caused by ordinary electricity, are well known to be so powerful in certain cases, as to surpass, almost infinitely, the similar phenomena produced by electricity, otherwise excited. But still those attractions and repulsions are exactly of the same nature as those already referred to under the head Tension, Voltaic electricity (4); and the difference in degree between them is not greater than often occurs between cases of ordinary electricity only. I think it will be unnecessary to enter minutely into the proofs of the identity of this character in the two instances. They are abundant; are generally admitted as good; and lie upon the surface of the subject: and whenever in other parts of the comparison I am about to draw, a similar case occurs, I shall content myself with a mere announcement of the similarity, enlarging only upon those parts where the great question of distinction or identity still exists.

22. The discharge of common electricity through heated air is a well-known fact. The parallel case of voltaic electricity has already been described (8, etc.).

23. In motion: i. Evolution of heat.—The heating power of common electricity, when passed through wires or other substances, is perfectly well known. The accordance between it and voltaic electricity is in this respect complete. Mr. Harris has constructed and described^[35] a very beautiful and sensible instrument on this principle, in which the heat produced in a wire by the discharge of a small portion of common electricity is readily shown, and to which I shall have occasion to refer for experimental proof in a future part of this paper (80).

24. ii. Magnetism. Voltaic electricity has most extraordinary and exalted magnetic powers. If common electricity be identical with it, it ought to have the same powers. In rendering needles or bars magnetic, it is found to agree with voltaic electricity, and the direction of the magnetism, in both cases, is the same; but in deflecting the magnetic needle, common electricity has been found deficient, so that sometimes its power has been denied altogether, and at other times distinctions have been hypothetically assumed for the purpose of avoiding the difficulty.^[36]

25. M. Colladon, of Geneva, considered that the difference might be due to the use of insufficient quantities of common electricity in all the experiments before made on this head; and in a memoir read to the Académie des Sciences in 1826,^[37] describes experiments, in which, by the use of a battery, points, and a delicate galvanometer, he succeeded in obtaining deflections, and thus establishing identity in that respect. MM. Arago, Ampère, and Savary, are mentioned in the paper as having witnessed a successful repetition of the experiments. But as no other one has come forward in confirmation, MM. Arago, Ampère, and Savary, not having themselves published (that I am aware of) their admission of the results, and as some have not been able to obtain them, M. Colladon's conclusions have been occasionally doubted or denied; and an important point with me was to establish their accuracy, or remove them entirely from the body of received experimental research. I am happy to say that my results fully confirm those by M. Colladon, and I should have had no occasion to describe them, but that they are essential as proofs of the accuracy of the final and general conclusions I am enabled to draw respecting the magnetic and chemical action of electricity (96, 102, 103, 113, etc.).

26. The plate electrical machine I have used is fifty inches in diameter; it has two sets of rubbers; its prime conductor consists of two brass cylinders connected by a third, the whole length being twelve feet, and the surface in contact with air about 1422 square inches. When in good excitation, one revolution of the plate will give ten or twelve sparks from the conductors, each an inch in length. Sparks or flashes from ten to fourteen inches in length may easily be drawn from the conductors. Each turn of the machine, when worked moderately, occupies about four-fifths of a second.

27. The electric battery consisted of fifteen equal jars. They are coated eight inches upwards from the bottom, and are twenty-three inches in circumference, so that each contains 184 square inches of glass, coated on both sides; this is independent of the bottoms, which are of thicker glass, and contain each about fifty square inches.

28. A good discharging train was arranged by connecting metallically a sufficiently thick wire with the metallic gas pipes of the house, with the metallic gas pipes belonging to the public gas works of London, and also with the metallic water pipes of London. It was so effectual in its office as to carry off instantaneously electricity of the feeblest tension, even that of a single voltaic trough, and was essential to many of the experiments.

29. The galvanometer was one or the other of those formerly described,^[38] but the glass jar covering it and supporting the needle was coated inside and outside with tinfoil, and the upper part (left uncoated, that the motions of the needle might be examined) was covered with a frame of wirework, having numerous sharp points projecting from it. When this frame and the two coatings were connected with the discharging train (28), an insulated point or ball, connected with the machine when most active, might be brought within an inch of any part of the galvanometer, yet without affecting the needle within by ordinary electrical attraction or repulsion.

30. In connection with these precautions, it may be necessary to state that the needle of the galvanometer is very liable to have its magnetic power deranged, diminished, or even inverted by the passage of a shock through the instrument. If the needle be at all oblique, in the wrong direction, to the coils of the galvanometer when the shock passes, effects of this kind are sure to happen.

31. It was to the retarding power of bad conductors, with the intention of diminishing its intensity without altering its quantity, that I first looked with the hope of being able to make common electricity assume more of the characters and power of voltaic electricity, than it is usally supposed to have.

32. The coating and armour of the galvanometer were first connected with the discharging train (28); the end B (fig. 3)
Fig. 3. of the galvanometer wire was connected with the outside coating of the battery, and then both these with the discharging train; the end A of the galvanometer wire was connected with a discharging rod by a wet thread four feet long; and finally, when the battery (27) had been positively charged by about forty turns of the machine, it was discharged by the rod and the thread through the galvanometer. The needle immediately moved.

33. During the time that the needle completed its vibration in the first direction and returned, the machine was worked, and the battery recharged; and when the needle in vibrating resumed its first direction, the discharge was again made through the galvanometer. By repeating this action a few times, the vibrations soon extended to above 40° on each side of the line of rest.

34. This effect could be obtained at pleasure. Nor was it varied, apparently, either in direction or degree, by using a short thick string, or even four short thick strings in place of the long fine thread. With a more delicate galvanometer, an excellent swing of the needle could be obtained by one discharge of the battery.

35. On reversing the galvanometer communications so as to pass the discharge through from B to A, the needle was equally well deflected, but in the opposite direction.

36. The deflections were in the same direction as if a voltaic current had been passed through the galvanometer, i.e. the positively charged surface of the electric battery coincided with the positive end of the voltaic apparatus (4), and the negative surface of the former with the negative end of the latter.

37. The battery was then thrown out of use, and the communications so arranged that the current could be passed from the prime conductor, by the discharging rod held against it, through the wet string, through the galvanometer coil, and into the discharging train, by which it was finally dispersed. This current could be stopped at any moment, by removing the discharging rod, and either stopping the machine or connecting the prime conductor by another rod with the discharging train; and could be as instantly renewed. The needle was so adjusted, that whilst vibrating in moderate and small arcs, it required time equal to twenty-five beats of a watch to pass in one direction through the arc, and of course an equal time to pass in the other direction.

38. Thus arranged, and the needle being stationary, the current, direct from the machine, was sent through the galvanometer for twenty-five beats, then interrupted for other twenty-five beats, renewed for twenty-five beats more, again interrupted for an equal time, and so on continually. The needle soon began to vibrate visibly, and after several alternations of this kind, the vibration increased to 40° or more.

39. On changing the direction of the current through the galvanometer, the direction of the deflection of the needle was also changed. In all cases the motion of the needle was in direction the same as that caused either by the use of the electric battery or a voltaic trough (36).

40. I now rejected the wet string, and substituted a copper wire, so that the electricity of the machine passed at once into wires communicating directly with the discharging train, the galvanometer coil being one of the wires used for the discharge. The effects were exactly those obtained above (38).

41. Instead of passing the electricity through the system, by bringing the discharging rod at the end of it into contact with the conductor, four points were fixed on to the rod; when the current was to pass, they were held about twelve inches from the conductor, and when it was not to pass, they were turned away. Then operating as before (38), except with this variation, the needle was soon powerfully deflected, and in perfect consistency with the former results. Points afforded the means by which Colladon, in all cases, made his discharges.

42. Finally, I passed the electricity first through an exhausted receiver, so as to make it there resemble the aurora borealis, and then through the galvanometer to the earth; and it was found still effective in deflecting the needle, and apparently with the same force as before.

43. From all these experiments, it appears that a current of common electricity, whether transmitted through water or metal, or rarefied air, or by means of points in common air, is still able to deflect the needle: the only requisite being, apparently, to allow time for its action: that it is, in fact, just as magnetic in every respect as a voltaic current, and that in this character therefore no distinction exists.

44. Imperfect conductors, as water, brine, acids, etc., etc., will be found far more convenient for exhibiting these effects than other modes of discharge, as by points or balls; for the former convert at once the charge of a powerful battery into a feeble spark discharge, or rather continuous current, and involve little or no risk of deranging the magnetism of the needles (30).

45. iii. Chemical decomposition.—The chemical action of voltaic electricity is characteristic of that agent, but not more characteristic than are the laws under which the bodies evolved by decomposition arrange themselves at the poles. Dr. Wollaston showed^[39] that common electricity resembled it in these effects, and "that they are both essentially the same;" but he mingled with his proofs an experiment having a resemblance, and nothing more, to a case of voltaic decomposition, which however he himself partly distinguished; and this has been more frequently referred to by some, on the one hand, to prove the occurrence of electro-chemical decomposition, like that of the pile, and by others to throw doubt upon the whole paper, than the more numerous and decisive experiments which he has detailed.

46. I take the liberty of describing briefly my results, and of thus adding my testimony to that of Dr. Wollaston on the identity of voltaic and common electricity as to chemical action, not only that I may facilitate the repetition of the experiments, but also lead to some new consequences respecting electro-chemical decomposition (112, 113).

47. I first repeated Wollaston's fourth experiment,^[40] in which the ends of coated silver wires are immersed in a drop of sulphate of copper. By passing the electricity of the machine through such an arrangement, that end in the drop which received the electricity became coated with metallic copper. One hundred turns of the machine produced an evident effect; two hundred turns a very sensible one. The decomposing action was however very feeble. Very little copper was precipitated, and no sensible trace of silver from the other pole appeared in the solution.

48. A much more convenient and effectual arrangement for chemical decompositions by common electricity is the following. Upon a glass plate, fig. 4, placed over, but raised above a piece of white paper, so that shadows may not interfere, put two pieces of tinfoil a, b; connect one of these by an insulated

Fig. 4.

wire c, or wire and string (37), with the machine, and the other g, with the discharging train (28) or the negative conductor; provide two pieces of fine platina wire, bent as in fig. 5, so that the part d, f shall be nearly upright, whilst the whole is resting on the three bearing points p', c, f; place these as in fig. 4; the points p, n then become the decomposing poles. In this way surfaces of contact, as minute as possible, can be obtained at pleasure, and the connection can be broken or
Fig. 5. renewed in a moment, and the substances acted upon examined with the utmost facility.

49. A coarse line was made on the glass with solution of sulphate of copper, and the terminations p and n put into it; the foil a was connected with the positive conductor of the machine by wire and wet string, so that no sparks passed: twenty turns of the machine caused the precipitation of so much copper on the end n, that it looked like copper wire; no apparent change took place at p.

50. A mixture of equal parts of muriatic acid and water was rendered deep blue by sulphate of indigo, and a large drop put on the glass, fig. 4, so that p and n were immersed at opposite sides: a single turn of the machine showed bleaching effects round p, from evolved chlorine. After twenty revolutions no effect of the kind was visible at n, but so much chlorine had been set free at p, that when the drop was stirred the whole became colourless.

51. A drop of solution of iodide of potassium mingled with starch was put into the same position at p and n; on turning the machine, iodine was evolved at p, but not at n.

52. A still further improvement in this form of apparatus consists in wetting a piece of filtering paper in the solution to be experimented on, and placing that under the points p and n, on the glass: the paper retains the substance evolved at the point of evolution, by its whiteness renders any change of colour visible, and allows of the point of contact between it and the decomposing wires being contracted to the utmost degree. A piece of paper moistened in the solution of iodide of potassium and starch, or of the iodide alone, with certain precautions (58), is a most admirable test of electro-chemical action; and when thus placed and acted upon by the electric current, will show iodine evolved at p by only half a turn of the machine. With these adjustments and the use of iodide of potassium on paper, chemical action is sometimes a more delicate test of electrical currents than the galvanometer (9). Such cases occur when the bodies traversed by the current are bad conductors, or when the quantity of electricity evolved or transmitted in a given time is very small.

53. A piece of litmus paper moistened in solution of common salt or sulphate of soda was quickly reddened at p. A similar piece moistened in muriatic acid was very soon bleached at p. No effects of a similar kind took place at n.

54. A piece of turmeric paper moistened in solution of sulphate of soda was reddened at n by two or three turns of the machine, and in twenty or thirty turns plenty of alkali was there evolved. On turning the paper round, so that the spot came under p, and then working the machine, the alkali soon disappeared, the place became yellow, and a brown alkaline spot appeared in the new part under n.

55. On combining a piece of litmus with a piece of turmeric paper, wetting both with solution of sulphate of soda, and putting the paper on the glass, so that p was on the litmus and n on the turmeric, a very few turns of the machine sufficed to show the evolution of acid at the former and alkali at the latter, exactly in the manner effected by a volta-electric current.

56. All these decompositions took place equally well, whether the electricity passed from the machine to the foil a, through water, or through wire only; by contact with the conductor, or by sparks there; provided the sparks were not so large as to cause the electricity to pass in sparks from p to n, or towards n; and I have seen no reason to believe that in cases of true electro-chemical decomposition by the machine, the electricity passed in sparks from the conductor, or at any part of the current, is able to do more, because of its tension, than that which is made to pass merely as a regular current.

57. Finally, the experiment was extended into the following form, supplying in this case the fullest analogy between common and voltaic electricity. Three compound pieces of litmus and turmeric paper (55) were moistened in solution of sulphate of soda, and arranged on a plate of glass with platina wires, as in fig. 6. The wire m was connected with the prime conductor

Fig. 6.

of the machine, the wire t with the discharging train, and the wires r and s entered into the course of the electrical current by means of the pieces of moistened paper; they were so bent as to rest each on three points, n, r, p; n, s, p, the points r and s being supported by the glass, and the others by the papers: the three terminations p, p, p rested on the litmus, and the other three n, n, n on the turmeric paper. On working the machine for a short time only, acid was evolved at all the poles or terminations p, p, p, by which the electricity entered the solution, and alkali at the other poles n, n, n, by which the electricity left the solution.

58. In all experiments of electro-chemical decomposition by the common machine and moistened papers (52), it is necessary to be aware of and to avoid the following important source of error. If a spark passes over moistened litmus and turmeric paper, the litmus paper (provided it be delicate and not too alkaline) is reddened by it; and if several sparks are passed, it becomes powerfully reddened. If the electricity pass a little way from the wire over the surface of the moistened paper, before it finds mass and moisture enough to conduct it, then the reddening extends as far as the ramifications. If similar ramifications occur at the termination n, on the turmeric paper, they prevent the occurrence of the red spot due to the alkali, which would otherwise collect there: sparks or ramifications from the points n will also redden litmus paper. If paper moistened by a solution of iodide of potassium (which is an admirably delicate test of electro-chemical action) be exposed to the sparks or ramifications, or even a feeble stream of electricity through the air from either the point p or n, iodine will be immediately evolved.

59. These effects must not be confounded with those due to the true electro-chemical powers of common electricity, and must be carefully avoided when the latter are to be observed. No sparks should be passed, therefore, in any part of the current, nor any increase of intensity allowed, by which the electricity may be induced to pass between the platina wires and the moistened papers, otherwise than by conductidn; for if it burst through the air, the effect referred to above (58) ensues.

60. The effect itself is due to the formation of nitric acid by the combination of the oxygen and nitrogen of the air, and is, in fact, only a delicate repetition of Cavendish's beautiful experiment. The acid so formed, though small in quantity, is in a high state of concentration as to water, and produces the consequent effects of reddening the litmus paper; or preventing the exhibition of alkali on the turmeric paper; or, by acting on the iodide of potassium, evolving iodine.

61. By moistening a very small slip of litmus paper in solution of caustic potassa, and then passing the electric spark over its length in the air, I gradually neutralised the alkali, and ultimately rendered the paper red; on drying it, I found that nitrate of potassa had resulted from the operation, and that the paper had become touch paper.

62. Either litmus paper or white paper, moistened in a strong solution of iodide of potassium, offers therefore a very simple, beautiful, and ready means of illustrating Cavendish's experiment of the formation of nitric acid from the atmosphere.

63. I have already had occasion to refer to an experiment (i, 45) made by Dr. Wollaston, which is insisted upon too much, both by those who oppose and those who agree with the accuracy of his views respecting the identity of voltaic and ordinary electricity. By covering fine wires with glass or other insulating substances, and then removing only so much matter as to expose the point, or a section of the wires, and by passing electricity through two such wires, the guarded points of which were immersed in water, Wollaston found that the water could be decomposed even by the current from the machine, without sparks, and that two streams of gas arose from the points, exactly resembling, in appearance, those produced by voltaic electricity, and, like the latter, giving a mixture of oxygen and hydrogen gases. But Dr. Wollaston himself points out that the effect is different from that of the voltaic pile, inasmuch as both oxygen and hydrogen are evolved from each pole; he calls it "a very close imitation of the galvanic phenomena," but adds that "in fact the resemblance is not complete," and does not trust to it to establish the principles correctly laid down in his paper.

64. This experiment is neither more nor less than a repetition, in a refined manner, of that made by Dr. Pearson in 1797,^[41]and previously by MM. Paets Van Troostwyk and Deiman in 1789 or earlier. That the experiment should never be quoted as proving true electro-chemical decomposition, is sufficiently evident from the circumstance, that the law which regulates the transference and final place of the evolved bodies (14, 45) has no influence here. The water is decomposed at both poles independently of each other, and the oxygen and hydrogen evolved at the wires are the elements of the water existing the instant before in those places. That the poles, or rather points, have no mutual decomposing dependence, may be shown by substituting a wire, or the finger, for one of them, a change which does not at all interfere with the other, though it stops all action at the changed pole. This fact may be observed by turning the machine for some time; for though bubbles will rise from the point left unaltered, in quantity sufficient to cover entirely the wire used for the other communication, if they could be applied to it, yet not a single bubble will appear on that wire.

65. When electro-chemical decomposition takes place, there is great reason to believe that the quantity of matter decomposed is not proportionate to the intensity, but to the quantity of electricity passed (56). Of this I shall be able to offer some proofs in a future part of this paper (111, 113). But in the experiment under consideration, this is not the case. If, with a constant pair of points, the electricity be passed from the machine in sparks, a certain proportion of gas is evolved; but if the sparks be rendered shorter, less gas is evolved; and if no sparks be passed, there is scarcely a sensible portion of gases set free. On substituting solution of sulphate of soda for water, scarcely a sensible quantity of gas could be procured even with powerful sparks, and nearly none with the mere current; yet the quantity of electricity in a given time was the same in all these cases.

66. I do not intend to deny that with such an apparatus common electricity can decompose water in a manner analogous to that of the voltaic pile; I believe at present that it can. But when what I consider the true effect only was obtained, the quantity of gas given off was so small that I could not ascertain whether it was, as it ought to be, oxygen at one wire and hydrogen at the other. Of the two streams one seemed more copious than the other, and on turning the apparatus round, still the same side in relation to the machine gave the largest stream. On substituting solution of sulphate of soda for pure water (65), these minute streams were still observed. But the quantities were so small, that on working the machine for half an hour I could not obtain at either pole a bubble of gas larger than a small grain of sand. If the conclusion which I have drawn (113) relating to the amount of chemical action be correct, this ought to be the case.

67. I have been the more anxious to assign the true value of this experiment as a test of electro-chemical action, because I shall have occasion to refer to it in cases of supposed chemical action by magneto-electric and other electric currents (72, 82) and elsewhere. But, independent of it, there cannot be now a doubt that Dr. Wollaston was right in his general conclusion; and that voltaic and common electricity have powers of chemical decomposition, alike in their nature, and governed by the same law of arrangement.

68. iv. Physiological effects.—The power of the common electric current to shock and convulse the animal system, and when weak to affect the tongue and the eyes, may be considered as the same with the similar power of voltaic electricity, account being taken of the intensity of the one electricity and duration of the other. When a wet thread was interposed in the course of the current of common electricity from the battery (27) charged by eight or ten^[42] revolutions of the machine in good action (26), and the discharge made by platina spatulas through the tongue or the gums, the effect upon the tongue and eyes was exactly that of a momentary feeble voltaic circuit.

69. v. Spark.—The beautiful flash of light attending the discharge of common electricity is well known. It rivals in brilliancy, if it does not even very much surpass, the light from the discharge of voltaic electricity; but it endures for an instant only, and is attended by a sharp noise like that of a small explosion. Still no difficulty can arise in recognising it to be the same spark as that from the voltaic battery, especially under certain circumstances. The eye cannot distinguish the difference between a voltaic and a common electricity spark, if they be taken between amalgamated surfaces of metal, at intervals only, and through the same distance of air.

70. When the Leyden battery (27) was discharged through a wet string placed in some part of the circuit away from the place where the spark was to pass, the spark was yellowish, flamy, having a duration sensibly longer than if the water had not been interposed, was about three-fourths of an inch in length, was accompanied by little or no noise, and whilst losing part of its usual character had approximated in some degree to the voltaic spark. When the electricity retarded by water was discharged between pieces of charcoal, it was exceedingly luminous and bright upon both surfaces of the charcoal, resembling the brightness of the voltaic discharge on such surfaces. When the discharge of the unretarded electricity was taken upon charcoal, it was bright upon both the surfaces (in that respect resembling the voltaic spark), but the noise was loud, sharp, and ringing.

71. I have assumed, in accordance, I believe, with the opinion of every other philosopher, that atmospheric electricity is of the same nature with ordinary electricity (20), and I might therefore refer to certain published statements of chemical effects produced by the former as proofs that the latter enjoys the power of decomposition in common with voltaic electricity. But the comparison I am drawing is far too rigorous to allow me to use these statements without being fully assured of their accuracy; yet I have no right to suppress them, because, if accurate, they establish what I am labouring to put on an undoubted foundation, and have priority to my results.

72. M. Bonijol of Geneva^[43]is said to have constructed very delicate apparatus for the decomposition of water by common electricity. By connecting an insulated lightning rod with his apparatus, the decomposition of the water proceeded in a continuous and rapid manner even when the electricity of the atmosphere was not very powerful. The apparatus is not described; but as the diameter of the wire is mentioned as very small, it appears to have been similar in construction to that of Wollaston (63); and as that does not furnish a case of true polar electro-chemical decomposition (64), this result of M. Bonijol does not prove the identity in chemical action of common and voltaic electricity.

73. At the same page of the Bibliothèque Universelle, M. Bonijol is said to have decomposed potash, and also chloride of silver, by putting them into very narrow tubes and passing electric sparks from an ordinary machine over them. It is evident that these offer no analogy to cases of true voltaic decomposition, where the electricity only decomposes when it is conducted by the body acted upon, and ceases to decompose, according to its ordinary laws, when it passes in sparks. These effects are probably partly analogous to that which takes place with water in Pearson's or Wollaston's apparatus, and may be due to very high temperature acting on minute portions of matter; or they may be connected with the results in air (58). As nitrogen can combine directly with oxygen under the influence of the electric spark (60), it is not impossible that it should even take it from the potassium of the potash, especially as there would be plenty of potassa in contact with the acting particles to combine with the nitric acid formed. However distinct all these actions may be from true polar electro-chemical decompositions, they are still highly important, and well worthy of investigation.

74. The late Mr. Barry communicated a paper to the Royal Society^[44] last year, so distinct in the details, that it would seem at once to prove the identity in chemical action of common and voltaic electricity; but, when examined, considerable difficulty arises in reconciling certain of the effects with the remainder. He used two tubes, each having a wire within it passing through the closed end, as is usual for voltaic decompositions. The tubes were filled with solution of sulphate of soda, coloured with syrup of violets, and connected by a portion of the same solution, in the ordinary manner; the wire in one tube was connected by a gilt thread with the string of an insulated electrical kite, and the wire in the other tube by a similar gilt thread with the ground. Hydrogen soon appeared in the tube connected with the kite, and oxygen in the other, and in ten minutes the liquid in the first tube was green from the alkali evolved, and that in the other red from free acid produced. The only indication of the strength or intensity of the atmospheric electricity is in the expression, "the usual shocks were felt on touching the string."

75. That the electricity in this case does not resemble that from any ordinary source of common electricity, is shown by several circumstances. Wollaston could not effect the decomposition of water by such an arrangement, and obtain the gases in separate vessels, using common electricity; nor have any of the numerous philosophers, who have employed such an apparatus, obtained any such decomposition, either of water or of a neutral salt, by the use of the machine. I have lately tried the large machine (26) in full action for a quarter of an hour, during which time seven hundred revolutions were made, without producing any sensible effects, although the shocks that it would then give must have been far more powerful and numerous than could have been taken, with any chance of safety, from an electrical kite-string; and by reference to the comparison hereafter to be made (107), it will be seen that for common electricity to have produced the effect, the quantity must have been awfully great, and apparently far more than could have been conducted to the earth by a gilt thread, and at the same time only have produced the "usual shocks."

76. That the electricity was apparently not analogous to voltaic electricity is evident, for the "usual shocks" only were produced, and nothing like the terrible sensation due to a voltaic battery, even when it has a tension so feeble as not to strike through the eighth of an inch of air.

77. It seems just possible that the air which was passing by the kite and string, being in an electrical state sufficient to produce the "usual shocks" only, could still, when the electricity was drawn off below, renew the charge, and so continue the current. The string was 1500 feet long, and contained two double threads. But when the enormous quantity which must have been thus collected is considered (107, 112), the explanation seems very doubtful. I charged a voltaic battery of twenty pairs of plates four inches square with double coppers very strongly, insulated it, connected its positive extremity with the discharging train (28), and its negative pole with an apparatus like that of Mr. Barry, communicating by a wire inserted three inches into the wet soil of the ground. This battery thus arranged produced feeble decomposing effects, as nearly as I could judge answering the description Mr. Barry has given. Its intensity was, of course, far lower than the electricity of the kite-string, but the supply of quantity from the discharging train was unlimited. It gave no shocks to compare with the "usual shocks" of a kite-string.

78. Mr. Barry's experiment is a very important one to repeat and verify. If confirmed, it will be, as far as I am aware, the first recorded case of true electro-chemical decomposition of water by common electricity, and it will supply a form of electrical current, which, both in quantity and intensity, is exactly intermediate with those of the common electrical machine and the voltaic pile.

III. Magneto-Electricity

79. Tension.—The attractions and repulsions due to the tension of ordinary electricity have been well observed with that evolved by magneto-electric induction. M. Pixii, by using an apparatus, clever in its construction and powerful in its action,^[45] was able to obtain great divergence of the gold leaves of an electrometer.^[46]

80. In motion: i. Evolution of heat.—The current produced by magneto-electric induction can heat a wire in the manner of ordinary electricity. At the British Association of Science at Oxford, in June of the present year, I had the pleasure, in conjunction with Mr. Harris, Professor Daniell, Mr. Duncan, and others, of making an experiment, for which the great magnet in the museum, Mr. Harris's new electrometer and the magneto-electric coil^[47] were put in requisition. The latter had been modified in the manner I have elsewhere described,^[48] so as to produce an electric spark when its contact with the magnet was made or broken. The terminations of the spiral, adjusted so as to have their contact with each other broken when the spark was to pass, were connected with the wire in the electrometer, and it was found that each time the magnetic contact was made and broken, expansion of the air within the instrument occurred, indicating an increase, at the moment, of the temperature of the wire.

81. ii. Magnetism.—These currents were discovered by their magnetic power.

82. iii. Chemical decomposition.—I have made many endeavours to effect chemical decomposition by magneto-electricity, but unavailingly. In July last I received an anonymous letter (which has since been published)^[49] describing a magneto-electric apparatus, by which the decomposition of water was effected. As the term "guarded points" is used, I suppose the apparatus to have been Wollaston's (63, etc.), in which case the results did not indicate polar electro-chemical decomposition. Signor Botto has recently published certain results which he has obtained;^[50] but they are, as at present described, inconclusive. The apparatus he used was apparently that of Dr. Wollaston, which gives only fallacious indications (63, etc.). As magneto-electricity can produce sparks, it would be able to show the effects proper to this apparatus. The apparatus of M. Pixii already referred to (79), has however, in the hands of himself^[51] and M. Hachette,^[52] given decisive chemical results, so as to complete this link in the chain of evidence. Water was decomposed by it, and the oxygen and hydrogen obtained in separate tubes according to the law governing volta-electric and machine-electric decomposition.

83. iv. Physiological effects.—A frog was convulsed in the earliest experiments on these currents. The sensation upon the tongue, and the flash before the eyes, which I at first obtained only in a feeble degree, have been since exalted by more powerful apparatus, so as to become even disagreeable.

84. v. Spark.—The feeble spark which I first obtained with these currents has been varied and strengthened by Signori Nobili and Antinori, and others, so as to leave no doubt as to its identity with the common electric spark.

IV. Thermo-Electricity

85. With regard to thermo-electricity (that beautiful form of electricity discovered by Seebeck), the very conditions under which it is excited are such as to give no ground for expecting that it can be raised like common electricity to any high degree of tension; the effects, therefore, due to that state are not to be expected. The sum of evidence respecting its analogy to the electricities already described, is, I believe, as follows:—Tension. The attractions and repulsions due to a certain degree of tension have not been observed. In currents : i. Evolution of heat. I am not aware that its power of raising temperature has been observed, ii. Magnetism. It was discovered, and is best recognised, by its magnetic powers, iii. Chemical decomposition has not been effected by it. iv. Physiological effects. Nobili has shown^[53] that these currents are able to cause contractions in the limbs of a frog. v. Spark. The spark has not yet been seen.

86. Only those effects are weak or deficient which depend upon a certain high degree of intensity; and if common electricity be reduced in that quality to a similar degree with the thermo-electricity, it can produce no effects beyond the latter.

V. Animal Electricity

87. After an examination of the experiments of Walsh,^[54] Ingenhousz,^[55] Cavendish,^[56] Sir H. Davy,^[57] and Dr. Davy,^[58] no doubt remains on my mind as to the identity of the electricity of the torpedo with common and voltaic electricity; and I presume that so little will remain on the minds of others as to justify my refraining from entering at length into the philosophical proofs of that identity. The doubts raised by Sir H. Davy have been removed by his brother Dr. Davy; the results of the latter being the reverse of those of the former. At present the sum of evidence is as follows:—

88. Tension.—No sensible attractions or repulsions due to tension have been observed.

89. In motion: i. Evolution of heat; not yet observed; I have little or no doubt that Harris's electrometer would show it (23, 95).

90. ii. Magnetism.—Perfectly distinct. According to Dr. Davy,^[59] the current deflected the needle and made magnets under the same law, as to direction, which governs currents of ordinary and voltaic electricity.

91. iii. Chemical decomposition.—Also distinct; and though Dr. Davy used an apparatus of similar construction with that of Dr. Wollaston (63), still no error in the present case is involved, for the decompositions were polar, and in their nature truly electro-chemical. By the direction of the magnet, it was found that the under surface of the fish was negative, and the upper positive; and in the chemical decompositions, silver and lead were precipitated on the wire connected with the under surface, and not on the other; and when these wires were either steel or silver, in solution of common salt, gas (hydrogen?) rose from the negative wire, but none from the positive.

92. Another reason for the decomposition being electro-chemical is, that a Wollaston's apparatus constructed with wires, coated by sealing-wax, would most probably not have decomposed water, even in its own peculiar way, unless the electricity had risen high enough in intensity to produce sparks in some part of the circuit; whereas the torpedo was not able to produce sensible sparks. A third reason is, that the purer the water in Wollaston's apparatus, the more abundant is the decomposition: and I have found that a machine and wire points which succeeded perfectly well with distilled water, failed altogether when the water was rendered a good conductor by sulphate of soda, common salt, or other saline bodies. But in Dr. Davy's experiments with the torpedo, strong solutions of salt, nitrate of silver, and superacetate of lead were used successfully, and there is no doubt with more success than weaker ones.

93. iv. Physiological effects.—These are so characteristic, that by them the peculiar powers of the torpedo and gymnotus are principally recognised.

94. v. Spark.—The electric spark has not yet been obtained, or at least I think not; but perhaps I had better refer to the evidence on this point. Humboldt, speaking of results obtained by M. Fahlberg, of Sweden, says, "This philosopher has seen an electric spark, as Walsh and Ingenhousz had done before him at London, by placing the gymnotus in the air, and interrupting the conducting chain by two gold leaves pasted upon glass, and a line distant from each other."^[60] I cannot, however, find any record of such an observation by either Walsh or Ingenhousz, and do not know where to refer to that by M. Fahlberg. M. Humboldt could not himself perceive any luminous effect.

Again, Sir John Leslie, in his dissertation on the progress of mathematical and physical science, prefixed to the seventh edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, Edinburgh, 1830, p. 622, says, "From a healthy specimen" of the Silurus electricus, meaning rather the gymnotus, "exhibited in London, vivid sparks were drawn in a darkened room;" but he does not say he saw them himself, nor state who did see them; nor can I find any account of such a phenomenon; so that the statement is doubtful.^[61]

95. In concluding this summary of the powers of torpedinal electricity, I cannot refrain from pointing out the enormous absolute quantity of electricity which the animal must put in circulation at each effort. It is doubtful whether any common electrical machine has as yet been able to supply electricity sufficient in a reasonable time to cause true electro-chemical decomposition of water (66, 75), yet the current from the torpedo has done it. The same high proportion is shown by the magnetic effects (32, 107). These circumstances indicate that the torpedo has power (in the way probably that Cavendish describes) to continue the evolution for a sensible time, so that its successive discharges rather resemble those of a voltaic arrangement, intermitting in its action, than those of a Leyden apparatus, charged and discharged many times in succession. In reality, however, there is no philosophical difference between these two cases.

96. The general conclusion which must, I think, be drawn from this collection of facts is, that electricity, whatever may be its source, is identical in its nature. The phenomena in the five kinds of species quoted, differ, not in their character but only in degree; and in that respect vary in proportion to the variable circumstances of quantity and intensity^[62] which can at pleasure be made to change in almost any one of the kinds of electricity, as much as it does between one kind and another.

Table of the experimental Effects common to the Electricities derived from different Sources.^[63]

	Physiological Effects.	Magnetic Deflection.	Magnets made.	Spark.	Heating Power.	True Chemical Action.	Attraction and Repulsion.	Discharge by Hot Air.
1. Voltaic electricity .	X	X	X	X	X	X	X	X
2. Common electricity	X	X	X	X	X	X	X	X
3. Magneto-electricity	X	X	X	X	X	X	X
4. Thermo-electricity	X	X	+	+	+	+
5. Animal electricity	X	X	X	+	+	X

§2. Relation by Measure of Common and Voltaic Electricity^[64]

97. Believing the point of identity to be satisfactorily established, I next endeavoured to obtain a common measure, or a known relation as to quantity, of the electricity excited by a machine, and that from a voltaic pile; for the purpose not only of confirming their identity (114), but also of demonstrating certain general principles (102, 113, etc.), and creating an extension of the means of investigating and applying the chemical powers of this wonderful and subtile agent.

98. The first point to be determined was, whether the same absolute quantity of ordinary electricity, sent through a galvanometer, under different circumstances, would cause the same deflection of the needle. An arbitrary scale was therefore attached to the galvanometer, each division of which was equal to about 4°, and the instrument arranged as in former experiments (32). The machine (26), battery (27), and other parts of the apparatus were brought into good order, and retained for the time as nearly as possible in the same condition. The experiments were alternated so as to indicate any change in the condition of the apparatus and supply the necessary corrections.

99. Seven of the battery jars were removed, and eight retained for present use. It was found that about forty turns would fully charge the eight jars. They were then charged by thirty turns of the machine, and discharged through the galvanometer, a thick wet string, about ten inches long, being included in the circuit. The needle was immediately deflected five divisions and a half, on the one side of the zero, and in vibrating passed as nearly as possible through five divisions and a half on the other side.

100. The other seven jars were then added to the eight, and the whole fifteen charged by thirty turns of the machine. The Henley's electrometer stood not quite half as high as before; but when the discharge was made through the galvanometer, previously at rest, the needle immediately vibrated, passing exactly to the same division as in the former instance. These experiments with eight and with fifteen jars were repeated several times alternately with the same results.

101. Other experiments were then made, in which all the battery was used, and its charge (being fifty turns of the machine) sent through the galvanometer: but it was modified by being passed sometimes through a mere wet thread, sometimes through thirty-eight inches of thin string wetted by distilled water, and sometimes through a string of twelve times the thickness, only twelve inches in length, and soaked in dilute acid (34). With the thick string the charge passed at once; with the thin string it occupied a sensible time, and with the thread it required two or three seconds before the electrometer fell entirely down. The current therefore must have varied extremely in intensity in these different cases, and yet the deflection of the needle was sensibly the same in all of them. If any difference occurred, it was that the thin string and thread caused greatest deflection; and if there is any lateral transmission, as M. Colladon says, through the silk in the galvanometer coil, it ought to have been so, because then the intensity is lower and the lateral transmission less.

102. Hence it would appear that if the same absolute quantity of electricity pass through the galvanometer, whatever may be its intensity, the deflecting force upon the magnetic needle is the same.

103. The battery of fifteen jars was then charged by sixty revolutions of the machine, and discharged, as before, through the galvanometer. The deflection of the needle was now as nearly as possible to the eleventh division, but the graduation was not accurate enough for me to assert that the arc was exactly double the former arc; to the eye it appeared to be so. The probability is, that the deflecting force of an electric current is directly proportional to the absolute quantity of electricity passed, at whatever intensity that electricity may be.^[65]

104. Dr. Ritchie has shown that in a case where the intensity of the electricity remained the same, the deflection of the magnetic needle was directly as the quantity of electricity passed through the galvanometer.^[66]Mr. Harris has shown that the heating power of common electricity on metallic wires is the same for the same quantity of electricity whatever its intensity might have previously been.^[67]

105. The next point was to obtain a voltaic arrangement producing an effect equal to that just described (103). A platina and a zinc wire were passed through the same hole of a draw-plate, being then one-eighteenth of an inch in diameter; these were fastened to a support, so that their lower ends projected, were parallel, and five-sixteenths of an inch apart. The upper ends were well connected with the galvanometer wires. Some acid was diluted, and, after various preliminary experiments, that adopted as a standard which consisted of one drop strong sulphuric acid in four ounces distilled water. Finally, the time was noted which the needle required in swinging either from right to left or left to right: it was equal to seventeen beats of my watch, the latter giving one hundred and fifty in a minute. The object of these preparations was to arrange a voltaic apparatus, which, by immersion in a given acid for a given time, much less than that required by the needle to swing in one direction, should give equal deflection to the instrument with the discharge of ordinary electricity from the battery (99, 100); and a new part of the zinc wire having been brought into position with the platina, the comparative experiments were made.

106. On plunging the zinc and platina wires five-eighths of an inch deep into the acid, and retaining them there for eight beats of the watch (after which they were quickly withdrawn), the needle was deflected, and continued to advance in the same direction some time after the voltaic apparatus had been removed from the acid. It attained the five-and-a—half division, and then returned swinging an equal distance on the other side. This experiment was repeated many times, and always with the same result.

107. Hence, as an approximation, and judging from magnetic force only at present (112), it would appear that two wires, one of platina and one of zinc, each one-eighteenth of an inch in diameter, placed five-sixteenths of an inch apart and immersed to the depth of five—eighths of an inch in acid, consisting of one drop oil of vitriol and four ounces distilled water, at a temperature about 60°, and connected at the other extremities by a copper wire eighteen feet long and one-eighteenth of an inch thick (being the wire of the galvanometer coils), yield as much electricity in eight beats of my watch, or in 8/150ths of a minute, as the electrical battery charged by thirty turns of the large machine, in excellent order (99, 1OO). Notwithstanding this apparently enormous disproportion, the results are perfectly in harmony with those ·effects which are known to be produced by variations in the intensity and quantity of the electric fluid.

108. In order to procure a reference to chemical action, the wires were now retained immersed in the acid to the depth of five-eighths of an inch,and the needle, when stationary, observed; it stood, as nearly as the unassisted eye could decide, at 5 1/3 division. Hence a permanent deflection to that extent might be considered as indicating a constant voltaic current, which in eight beats of my watch (105) could supply as much electricity as the electrical battery charged by thirty turns of the machine.

109. The following arrangements and results are selected from many that were made and obtained relative to chemical action. A platina wire one-twelfth of an inch in diameter, Weighing two hundred and sixty grains, had the extremity rendered plain, so as to offer a definite surface equal to a circle of the same diameter as the wire; it was then connected in turn with the conductor of the machine, or with the voltaic apparatus (105), so as always to form the positive pole, and at the same time retain a perpendicular position, that it might rest, with its whole weight, upon the test paper to be employed. The test paper itself was supported upon a platina spatula, connected either with the discharging train (28), or with the negative wire of the voltaic apparatus, and it consisted of four thicknesses, moistened at all times to an equal degree in a standard solution of hydriodate of potassa (52).

110. When the platina wire was connected with the prime conductor of the machine, and the spatula with the discharging train, ten turns of the machine had such decomposing power as to produce a pale round spot of iodine of the diameter of the wire; twenty turns made a much darker mark, and thirty turns made a dark brown spot penetrating to the second thickness of the paper. The difference in effect produced by two or three turns, more or less, could be distinguished with facility.

111. The wire and spatula were then connected with the voltaic apparatus (105), the galvanometeer being also included in the arrangement; and, a stronger acid having been prepared, consisting of nitric acid and water, the voltaic apparatus was immersed so far as to give a permanent deflection of the needle to the 5⅓ division (108), the fourfold moistened paper intervening as before.^[68] Then by shifting the end of the wire from place to place upon the test paper, the effect of the current for five, six, seven, or any number of the beats of the watch (105) was observed, and compared with that of the machine. After alternating and repeating the experiments of comparison many times, it was constantly found that this standard current of voltaic electricity, continued for eight beats of the watch, was equal, in chemical effect, to thirty turns of the machine; twenty-eight revolutions of the machine were sensibly too few.

112. Hence it results that both in magnetic deflection (107) and in chemical force, the current of electricity of the standard voltaic battery for eight beats of the watch was equal to that of the machine evolved by thirty revolutions.

113. It also follows that for this case of electro-chemical decomposition, and it is probable for all cases, that the chemical power, like the magnetic force (102), is in direct proportion to the absolute quantity of electricity which passes.

114. Hence arises still further confirmation, if any were required, of the identity of common and voltaic electricity, and that the differences of intensity and quantity are quite sufficient to account for what were supposed to be their distinctive qualities.

115. The extension which the present investigations have enabled me to make of the facts and views constituting the theory of electro-chemical decomposition, will, with some other points of electrical doctrine, be almost immediately submitted to the Royal Society in another series of these Researches.

December 15, 1832.

II^[69]

§3. ON A NEW LAW OF ELECTRIC CONDUCTION. §4. ON CONDUCTING POWER GENERALLY

§ 3. On a new Law of Electric Conduction

116. It was during the progress of investigations relating to electro-chemical decomposition, which I still have to submit to the Royal Society, that I encountered effects due to a very general law of electric conduction not hitherto recognised; and though they prevented me from obtaining the condition I sought for, they afforded abundant compensation for the momentary disappointment, by the new and important interest which they gave to an extensive part of electrical science.

117. I was working with ice, and the solids resulting from the freezing of solutions, arranged either as barriers across a substance to be decomposed, or as the actual poles of a voltaic battery, that I might trace and catch certain elements in their transit, when I was suddenly stopped in my progress by finding that ice was in such circumstances a non-conductor of electricity; and that as soon as a thin film of it was interposed, in the circuit of a very powerful voltaic battery, the transmission of electricity was prevented, and all decomposition ceased.

118. At first the experiments were made with common ice, during the cold freezing weather of the latter end of January 1833; but the results were fallacious, from the imperfection of the arrangements, and the following more unexceptionable form of experiment was adopted.

119. Tin vessels were formed, five inches deep, one inch and a quarter wide in one direction, of different widths from three-eighths to five-eighths of an inch in the other, and open at one extremity. Into these were fixed by corks, plates of platina, so that the latter should not touch the tin cases; and copper wires having previously been soldered to the plates, these were easily connected, when required, with a voltaic pile. Then distilled water, previously boiled for three hours, was poured into the vessels, and frozen by a mixture of salt and snow, so that pure transparent solid ice intervened between the platina and tin: and finally these metals were connected with the opposite extremities of the voltaic apparatus, a galvanometer being at the same time included in the circuit.

120. In the first experiment, the platina pole was three inches and a half long, and seven-eighths of an inch wide; it was wholly immersed in the water or ice, and as the vessel was four-eighths of an inch in width, the average thickness of the intervening ice was only a quarter of an inch, whilst the surface of contact with it at both poles was nearly fourteen square inches. After the water was frozen, the vessel was still retained in the frigorific mixture, whilst contact between the tin and platina respectively was made with the extremities of a well-charged voltaic battery, consisting of twenty pairs of four-inch plates, each with double coppers. Not the slightest deflection of the galvanometer needle occurred.

121. On taking the frozen arrangement out of the cold mixture, and applying warmth to the bottom of the tin case, so as to melt part of the ice, the connection with the battery being in the meantime retained, the needle did not at first move; and it was only when the thawing process had extended so far as to liquefy part of the ice touching the platina pole, that conduction took place; but then it occurred effectually, and the galvanometer needle was permanently deflected nearly 70°.

122. In another experiment, a platina spatula, five inches in length and seven-eighths of an inch in width, had four inches fixed in the ice, and the latter was only three-sixteenths of an inch thick between one metallic surface and the other; yet this arrangement insulated as perfectly as the former.

123. Upon pouring a little water in at the top of this vessel on the ice, still the arrangement did not conduct; yet fluid water was evidently there. This result was the consequence of the cold metals having frozen the water where they touched it, and thus insulating the fluid part; and it well illustrates the non-conducting power of ice, by showing how thin a film could prevent the transmission of the battery current. Upon thawing parts of this thin film, at both metals, conduction occurred.

124. Upon warming the tin case and removing the piece of ice, it was found that a cork having slipped, one of the edges of the platina had been all but in contact with the inner surface of the tin vessel; yet, notwithstanding the extreme thinness of the interfering ice in this place, no sensible portion of electricity had passed.

125. These experiments were repeated many times with the same results. At last a battery of fifteen troughs, or one hundred and fifty pairs of four-inch plates, powerfully charged, was used; yet even here no sensible quantity of electricity passed the thin barrier of ice.

126. It seemed at first as if occasional departures from these effects occurred; but they could always be traced to some interfering circumstances. The water should in every instance be well frozen; for though it is not necessary that the ice should reach from pole to pole, since a barrier of it about one pole would be quite sufficient to prevent conduction, yet, if part remain fluid, the mere necessary exposure of the apparatus to the air, or the approximation of the hands, is sufficient to produce, at the upper surface of the water and ice, a film of fluid, extending from the platina to the tin; and then conduction occurs. Again, if the corks used to block the platina in its place are damp or wet within, it is necessary that the cold be sufficiently well applied to freeze the water in them, or else when the surfaces of their contact with the tin become slightly warm by handling, that part will conduct, and the interior being ready to conduct also, the current will pass. The water should be pure, not only that unembarrassed results may be obtained, but also that, as the freezing proceeds, a minute portion of concentrated saline solution may not be formed, which remaining fluid, and being interposed in the ice, or passing into cracks resulting from contraction, may exhibit conducting powers independent of the ice itself.

127. On one occasion I was surprised to find that after thawing much of the ice the conducting power had not been restored; but I found that a cork which held the wire just where it joined the platina, dipped so far into the ice, that with the ice itself it protected the platina from contact with the melted part long after that contact was expected.

128. This insulating power of ice is not effective with electricity of exalted intensity. On touching a diverged gold-leaf electrometer with a wire connected with the platina, whilst the tin case was touched by the hand or another wire, the electrometer was instantly discharged (155).

129. But though electricity of an intensity so low that it cannot diverge the electrometer, can still pass (though in very limited quantities (155) ) through ice; the comparative relation of water and ice to the electricity of the voltaic apparatus is not less extraordinary on that account, or less important in its consequences.

130. As it did not seem likely that this law of the assumption of conducting power during liquefaction, and loss of it during congelation, would be peculiar to water, I immediately proceeded to ascertain its influence in other cases, and found it to be very general. For this purpose bodies were chosen which were solid at common temperatures, but readily fusible; and of such composition as, for other reasons connected with electrochemical action, led to the conclusion that they would be able when fused to replace water as conductors. A voltaic battery of two troughs, or twenty pairs of four-inch plates (120), was used as the source of electricity, and a galvanometer introduced into the circuit to indicate the presence or absence of a current.

131. On fusing a little chloride of lead by a spirit-lamp on a fragment of a Florence flask, and introducing two platina wires connected with the poles of the battery, there was instantly powerful action, the galvanometer was most violently affected, and the chloride rapidly decomposed. On removing the lamp, the instant the chloride solidified all current and consequent effects ceased, though the platina wires remained inclosed in the chloride not more than the one-sixteenth of an inch from each other. On renewing the heat, as soon as the fusion had proceeded far enough to allow liquid matter to connect the poles, the electrical current instantly passed.

132. On fusing the chloride, with one wire introduced, and then touching the liquid with the other, the latter being cold, caused a little knob to concrete on its extremity, and no current passed; it was only when the wire became so hot as to be able to admit or allow of contact with the liquid matter, that conduction took place, and then it was very powerful.

133. When chloride of silver and chlorate of potassa were experimented with, in a similar manner, exactly the same results occurred.

134. Whenever the current passed in these cases, there was decomposition of the substances; but the electro-chemical part of this subject I purpose connecting with more general views in a future paper.^[70]

135. Other substances, which could not be melted on glass, were fused by the lamp and blowpipe on platina connected with one pole of the battery, and then a wire, connected with the other, dipped into them. In this way chloride of sodium, sulphate of soda, protoxide of lead, mixed carbonates of potash and soda, etc., etc., exhibited exactly the same phenomena as those already described: whilst liquid, they conducted and were decomposed; whilst solid, though very hot, they insulated the battery current even when four troughs were used.

136. Occasionally the substances were contained in small bent tubes of green glass, and when fused, the platina poles
Fig. 7. introduced, one on each side. In such cases the same general results as those already described were procured; but a further advantage was obtained, namely, that whilst the substance was conducting and suffering decomposition, the final arrangement of the elements could be observed. Thus, iodides of potassium and lead gave iodine at the positive pole, and potassium or lead at the negative pole. Chlorides of lead and silver gave chlorine at the positive, and metals at the negative pole. Nitre and chlorate of potassa gave oxygen, etc., at the positive, and alkali, or even potassium, at the negative pole.

137. A fourth arrangement was used for substances requiring very high temperatures for their fusion. A platina wire was connected with one pole of the battery; its extremity bent into a small ring, in the manner described by Berzelius, for blow-pipe experiments; a little of the salt, glass, or other substance, was melted on this ring by the ordinary blowpipe, or even in some cases by the oxy-hydrogen blowpipe, and when the drop, retained in its place by the ring, was thoroughly hot and fluid, a platina wire from the opposite pole of the battery was made to touch it, and the effects observed.

138. The following are various substances, taken from very different classes chemically considered, which are subject to this law. The list might, no doubt, be enormously extended; but I have not had time to do more than confirm the law by a sufficient number of instances.

First, Water. Amongst oxides;—potassa, protoxide of lead, glass of antimony, protoxide of antimony, oxide of bismuth.

Chlorides of potassium, sodium, barium, strontium, calcium, magnesium, manganese, zinc, copper (proto-), lead, tin (proto-), antimony, silver.

Iodides of potassium, zinc and lead, protiodide of tin, periodide of mercury; fluoride of potassium; cyanide of potassium; sulpha-cyanide of potassium.

Salts. Chlorate of potassa; nitrates of potassa, soda, baryta, strontia, lead, copper, and silver; sulphates of soda and lead, proto-sulphate of mercury; phosphates of potassa, soda, lead, copper, phosphoric glass or acid phosphate of lime; carbonates of potassa and soda, mingled and separate; borax, borate of lead, per-borate of tin; chromate of potassa, bi-chromate of potassa, chromate of lead; acetate of potassa.

Sulphurets. Sulphuret of antimony, sulphuret of potassium made by reducing sulphate of potassa by hydrogen; ordinary sulphuret of potassa.

Silicated potassa; chameleon mineral.

139. It is highly interesting in the instances of those substances which soften before they liquefy, to observe at what period the conducting power is acquired, and to what degree it is exalted by perfect fluidity. Thus, with the borate of lead, when heated by the lamp upon glass, it becomes as soft as treacle, but it did not conduct, and it was only when urged by the blowpipe and brought to a fair red heat, that it conducted. When rendered quite liquid, it conducted with extreme facility.

140. I do not mean to deny that part of the increased conducting power in these cases of softening was probably due to the elevation of temperature (168, 181); but I have no doubt that by far the greater part was due to the influence of the general law already demonstrated, and which in these instances came gradually, instead of suddenly, into operation.

141. The following are bodies which acquired no conducting power upon assuming the liquid state:—

Sulphur, phosphorus; iodide of sulphur, per-iodide of tin; orpiment, realgar; glacial acetic acid, mixed margaric and oleic acids, artificial camphor; caffeine, sugar, adipocire, stearine of cocoa-nut oil, spermaceti, camphor, naphthaline, resin, gum sandarach, shell lac.

142. Perchloride of tin, chloride of arsenic, and the hydrated chloride of arsenic, being liquids, had no sensible conducting power indicated by the galvanometer, nor were they decomposed.

143. Some of the above substances are sufficiently remarkable as exceptions to the general law governing the former cases. These are orpiment, realgar, acetic acid, artificial camphor, periodide of tin, and the chlorides of tin and arsenic. I shall have occasion to refer to these cases in the paper on Electrochemical Decomposition.

144. Boracic acid was raised to the highest possible temperature by an oxy-hydrogen flame (137), yet regained no conducting powers sufficient to affect the galvanometer, and underwent no apparent voltaic decomposition. It seemed to be quite as bad a conductor as air. Green bottle-glass, heated in the same manner, did not gain conducting power sensible to the galvanometer. Flint glass, when highly heated, did conduct a little and decompose; and as the proportion of potash or oxide of lead was increased in the glass, the effects were more powerful. Those glasses, consisting of boracic acid on the one hand, and oxide of lead or potassa on the other, show the assumption of conducting power upon fusion and the accompanying decomposition very well.

145. I was very anxious to try the general experiment with sulphuric acid, of about specific gravity 1.783, containing that proportion of water which gives it the power of crystallising at 40° Fahr.; but I found it impossible to obtain it so that I could be sure the whole would congeal even at 0° Fahr. A ten-thousandth part of water, more or less than necessary, would, upon cooling the whole, cause a portion of uncongealable liquid to separate, and that remaining in the interstices of the solid mass, and moistening the planes of division, would prevent the correct observation of the phenomena due to entire solidification and subsequent liquefaction.

146. With regard to the substances on which conducting power is thus conferred by liquidity, the degree of power so given is generally very great. Water is that body in which this acquired power is feeblest. In the various oxides, chlorides, salts, etc., etc., it is given in a much higher degree. I have not had time to measure the conducting power in these cases, but it is apparently some hundred times that of pure water. The increased conducting power known to be given to water by the addition of salts would seem to be in a great degree dependent upon the high conducting power of these bodies when in the liquid state, that state being given them for the time, not by heat but solution in the water.

147. Whether the conducting power of these liquefied bodies is a consequence of their decomposition or not (149), or whether the two actions of conduction and decomposition are essentially connected or not, would introduce no difference affecting the probable accuracy of the preceding statement.

148. This general assumption of conducting power by bodies as soon as they pass from the solid to the liquid state, offers a new and extraordinary character, the existence of which, as far as I know, has not before been suspected; and it seems importantly connected with some properties and relations of the particles of matter which I may now briefly point out.

149. In almost all the instances, as yet observed, which are governed by this law, the substances experimented with have been those which were not only compound bodies, but such as contain elements known to arrange themselves at the opposite poles; and were also such as could be decomposed by the electrical current. When conduction took place, decomposition occurred; when decomposition ceased, conduction ceased also; and it becomes a fair and an important question, Whether the conduction itself may not, wherever the law holds good, be a consequence not merely of the capability, but of the act of decomposition? And that question may be accompanied by another, namely, Whether solidification does not prevent conduction, merely by chaining the particles to their places, under the influence of aggregation, and preventing their final separation in the manner necessary for decomposition?

150. But, on the other hand, there is one substance (and others may occur), the per-iodide of mercury, which, being experimented with like the others (136), was found to insulate when solid, and to acquire conducting power when fluid; yet it did not seem to undergo decomposition in the latter case.

151. Again, there are many substances which contain elements such as would be expected to arrange themselves at the opposite poles of the pile, and therefore in that respect fitted for decomposition, which yet do not conduct. Amongst these are the iodide of sulphur, per-iodide of zinc, per-chloride of tin, chloride of arsenic, hydrated chloride of arsenic, acetic acid, orpiment, realgar, artificial camphor, etc.; and from these it might perhaps be assumed that decomposition is dependent upon conducting power, and not the latter upon the former. The true relation, however, of conduction and decomposition in those bodies governed by the general law which it is the object of this paper to establish, can only be satisfactorily made out from a far more extensive series of observations than those I have yet been able to supply.^[71]

152. The relation, under this law, of the conducting power of electricity to that for heat, is very remarkable, and seems to imply a natural dependence of the two. As the solid becomes a fluid, it loses almost entirely the power of conduction for heat, but gains in a high degree that for electricity; but as it reverts back to the solid state, it gains the power of conducting heat, and loses that of conducting electricity. If, therefore, the properties are not incompatible, still they are most strongly contrasted, one being lost as the other is gained. We may hope, perhaps, hereafter to understand the physical reason of this very extraordinary relation of the two conducting powers, both of which appear to be directly connected with the corpuscular condition of the substances concerned.

153. The assumption of conducting power and a decomposable condition by liquefaction, promises new opportunities of, and great facilities in, voltaic decomposition. Thus, such bodies as the oxides, chlorides, cyanides, sulpho-cyanides, fluorides, certain vitreous mixtures, etc., etc., may be submitted to the action of the voltaic battery under new circumstances; and indeed I have already been able, with ten pairs of plates, to decompose common salt, chloride of magnesium, borax, etc., etc., and to obtain sodium, magnesium, boron, etc., in their separate states.

§ 4. On Conducting Power generally^[72]

154. It is not my intention here to enter into an examination of all the circumstances connected with conducting power, but to record certain facts and observations which have arisen during recent inquiries, as additions to the general stock of knowledge relating to this point of electrical science.

155. I was anxious, in the first place, to obtain some idea of the conducting power of ice and solid salts for electricity of high tension (128), that a comparison might be made between it and the large accession of the same power gained upon liquefaction. For this purpose the large electrical machine (26) was brought into excellent action, its conductor connected with a delicate gold-leaf electrometer, and also with the platina inclosed in the ice (119), whilst the tin case was connected with the discharging train (28). On working the machine moderately, the gold leaves barely separated; on working it rapidly, they could be opened nearly two inches. In this instance the tin case was five-eighths of an inch in width; and as, after the experiment, the platina plate was found very nearly in the middle of the ice, the average thickness of the latter had been five-sixteenths of an inch, and the extent of surface of contact with tin and platina fourteen square inches (120). Yet, under these circumstances, it was but just able to conduct the small quantity of electricity which this machine could evolve (107), even when of a tension competent to open the leaves two inches; no wonder, therefore, that it could not conduct any sensible portion of the electricity of the troughs (120), which, though almost infinitely surpassing that of the machine in quantity, had a tension so low as not to be sensible to an electrometer.

156. In another experiment, the tin case was only four-eighths of an inch in width, and it was found afterwards that the platina had been not quite one-eighth of an inch distant in the ice from one side of the tin vessel. When this was introduced into the course of the electricity from the machine (155), the gold leaves could be opened, but not more than half an inch; the thinness of the ice favouring the conduction of the electricity, and permitting the same quantity to pass in the same time, though of a much lower tension.

157. Iodide of potassium which had been fused and cooled was introduced into the course of the electricity from the machine. There were two pieces, each about a quarter of an inch in thickness, and exposing a surface on each side equal to about half a square inch; these were placed upon platina plates, one connected with the machine and electrometer (155), and the other with the discharging train, whilst a fine platina wire connected the two pieces, resting upon them by its two points. On working the electrical machine, it was possible to open the electrometer leaves about two-thirds of an inch.

158. As the platina wire touched only by points, the facts show that this salt is a far better conductor than ice; but as the leaves of the electrometer opened, it is also evident with what difficulty conduction, even of the small portion of electricity produced by the machine, is effected by this body in the solid state, when compared to the facility with which enormous quantities at very low tensions are transmitted by it when in the fluid state.

159. In order to confirm these results by others, obtained from the voltaic apparatus, a battery of one hundred and fifty plates, four inches square, was well charged: its action was good; the shock from it strong; the discharge would continue from copper to copper through four-tenths of an inch of air, and the gold-leaf electrometer before used could be opened nearly a quarter of an inch.

160. The ice vessel employed (156) was half an inch in width: as the extent of contact of the ice with the tin and platina was nearly fourteen square inches, the whole was equivalent to a plate of ice having a surface of seven square inches of perfect contact at each side, and only one-fourth of an inch thick. It was retained in a freezing mixture during the experiment.

161. The order of arrangement in the course of the electric current was as follows. The positive pole of the battery was connected by a wire with the platina plate in the ice; the plate was in contact with the ice, the ice with the tin jacket, the jacket with a wire, which communicated with a piece of tin foil, on which rested one end of a bent platina wire (48), the other or decomposing end being supported on paper moistened with solution of iodide of potassium (52): the paper was laid flat on a platina spatula connected with the negative end of the battery. All that part of the arrangement between the ice vessel and the decomposing wire point, including both these, was insulated, so that no electricity might pass through the latter which had not traversed the former also.

162. Under these circumstances, it was found that a pale brown spot of iodine was slowly formed under the decomposing platina point, thus indicating that ice could conduct a little of the electricity evolved by a voltaic battery charged up to the degree of intensity indicated by the electrometer. But it is quite evident that notwithstanding the enormous quantity of electricity which the battery could furnish, it was, under present circumstances, a very inferior instrument to the ordinary machine; for the latter could send as much through the ice as it could carry, being of a far higher intensity, i.e. able to open the electrometer leaves half an inch or more (155, 156).

163. The decomposing wire and solution of iodide of potassium were then removed, and replaced by a very delicate galvanometer; it was so nearly astatic, that it vibrated to and fro in about sixty-three beats of a watch giving one hundred and fifty beats in a minute. The same feebleness of current as before was still indicated; the galvanometer needle was deflected, but it required to break and make contact three or four times (33) before the effect was decided.

164. The galvanometer being removed, two platina plates were connected with the extremities of the wires, and the tongue placed between them, so that the whole charge of the battery, so far as the ice would let it pass, was free to go through the tongue. Whilst standing on the stone floor, there was shock, etc., but when insulated, I could feel no sensation. I think a frog would have been scarcely, if at all, affected.

165. The ice was now removed, and experiments made with other solid bodies, for which purpose they were placed under the end of the decomposing wire instead of the solution of iodide of potassium (161). For instance, a piece of dry iodide of potassium was placed on the spatula connected with the negative pole of the battery, and the point of the decomposing wire placed upon it, whilst the positive end of the battery communicated with the latter. A brown spot of iodine very slowly appeared, indicating the passage of a little electricity, and agreeing in that respect with the results obtained by the use of the electrical machine (157). When the galvanometer was introduced into the circuit at the same time with the iodide, it was with difficulty that the action of the current on it could be rendered sensible.

166. A piece of common salt previously fused and solidified being introduced into the circuit was sufficient almost entirely to destroy the action on the galvanometer. Fused and cooled chloride of lead produced the same effect. The conducting power of these bodies, when fluid, is very great (131, 138).

167. These effects, produced by using the common machine and the voltaic battery, agree therefore with each other, and with the law laid down in this paper (130); and also with the opinion I have supported, in the First Part of these Researches, of the identity of electricity derived from different sources (96).

168. The effect of heat in increasing the conducting power of many substances, especially for electricity of high tension, is well known. I have lately met with an extraordinary case of this kind, for electricity of low tension, or that of the voltaic pile, and which is in direct contrast with the influence of heat upon metallic bodies, as observed and described by Sir Humphry Davy.^[73]

169. The substance presenting this effect is sulphuret of silver. It was made by fusing a mixture of precipitated silver and sublimed sulphur, removing the film of silver by a file from the exterior of the fused mass, pulverising the sulphuret, mingling it with more sulphur, and fusing it again in a green glass tube, so that no air should obtain access during the process. The surface of the sulphuret being again removed by a file or knife, it was considered quite free from uncombined silver.

170. When a piece of this sulphuret, half an inch in thickness, was put between surfaces of platina, terminating the poles of a voltaic battery of twenty pairs of four-inch plates, a galvanometer being also included in the circuit, the needle was slightly deflected, indicating a feeble conducting power. On pressing the platina poles and sulphuret together with the fingers, the conducting power increased as the whole became warm. On applying a lamp under the sulphuret between the poles, the conducting power rose rapidly with the heat, and at last the galvanometer needle jumped into a fixed position, and the sulphuret was found conducting in the manner of a metal. On removing the lamp and allowing the heat to fall, the effects were reversed, the needle at first began to vibrate a little, then gradually left its transverse direction, and at last returned to a position very nearly that which it would take when no current was passing through the galvanometer.

171. Occasionally, when the contact of the sulphuret with the platina poles was good, the battery freshly charged, and the commencing temperature not too low, the mere current of electricity from the battery was sufficient to raise the temperature of the sulphuret; and then, without any application of extraneous heat, it went on increasing conjointly in temperature and conducting power, until the cooling influence of the air limited the effects. In such cases it was generally necessary to cool the whole purposely, to show the returning series of phenomena.

172. Occasionally, also, the effects would sink of themselves, and could not be renewed until a fresh surface of the sulphuret had been applied to the positive pole. This was in consequence of peculiar results of decomposition, to which I shall have occasion to revert in the section on Electro-chemical Decomposition, and was conveniently avoided by inserting the ends of two pieces of platina wire into the opposite extremities of a portion of sulphuret fused in a glass tube, and placing this arrangement between the poles of the battery.

173. The hot sulphuret of silver conducts sufficiently well to give a bright spark with charcoal, etc., etc., in the manner of a metal.

174. The native grey sulphuret of silver, and the ruby silver ore, both presented the same phenomena. The native malleable sulphuret of silver presented precisely the same appearances as the artificial sulphuret.

175. There is no other body with which I am acquainted, that, like sulphuret of silver, can compare with metals in conducting power for electricity of low tension when hot, but which, unlike them, during cooling, loses in power, whilst they, on the contrary, gain. Probably, however, many others may, when sought for, be found.

176. The proto-sulphuret of iron, the native per-sulphuret of iron, arsenical sulphuret of iron, native yellow sulphuret of copper and iron, grey artificial sulphuret of copper, artificial sulphuret of bismuth, and artificial grey sulphuret of tin, all conduct the voltaic battery current when cold, more or less, some giving sparks like the metals, others not being sufficient for that high effect. They did not seem to conduct better when heated than before; but I had not time to enter accurately into the investigation of this point. Almost all of them became much heated by the transmission of the current, and present some very interesting phenomena in that respect. The sulphuret of antimony does not conduct the same current sensibly either hot or cold, but is amongst those bodies acquiring conducting power when fused (138). The sulphuret of silver and perhaps some others decompose whilst in the solid state; but the phenomena of this decomposition will be reserved for its proper place in the next series of these Researches.

177. Notwithstanding the extreme dissimilarity between sulphuret of silver and gases or vapours, I cannot help suspecting the action of heat upon them to be the same, bringing them all into the same class as conductors of electricity, although with those great differences in degree which are found to exist under common circumstances. When gases are heated, they increase in conducting power, both for common and voltaic electricity (7); and it is probable that if we could compress and condense them at the same time, we should still further increase their conducting power. Cagniard de la Tour has shown that a substance, for instance water, may be so expanded by heat whilst in the liquid state, or condensed whilst in the vaporous state, that the two states shall coincide at one point, and the transition from one to the other be so gradual that no line of demarcation can be pointed out;^[74] that, in fact, the two states shall become one;—which one state presents us at different times with differences in degree as to certain properties and relations; and which differences are, under ordinary circumstances, so great as to be equivalent to two different states.

178. I cannot but suppose at present that at that point where the liquid and the gaseous state coincide, the conducting properties are the same for both; but that they diminish as the expansion of the matter into a rarer form takes place by the removal of the necessary pressure; still, however, retaining, as might be expected, the capability of having what feeble conducting power remains increased by the action of heat.

179. I venture to give the following summary of the conditions of electric conduction in bodies, not however without fearing that I may have omitted some important points.

180. All bodies conduct electricity in the same manner from metals to lac and gases, but in very different degrees.

181. Conducting power is in some bodies powerfully increased by heat, and in others diminished, yet without our perceiving any accompanying essential electrical difference, either in the bodies or in the changes occasioned by the electricity conducted.

182. A numerous class of bodies, insulating electricity of low intensity, when solid, conduct it very freely when fluid, and are then decomposed by it.

183. But there are many fluid bodies which do not sensibly conduct electricity of this low intensity; there are some which conduct it and are not decomposed; nor is fluidity essential to decomposition.^[75]

184. There is but one body yet discovered^[76] which, insulating a voltaic current when solid, and conducting it when fluid, is not decomposed in the latter case (150).

. There is no strict electrical distinction of conduction which can, as yet, be drawn between bodies supposed to be elementary, and those known to be compounds.

April 15, 1833.

III^[77]

§5. ON ELECTRO-CHEMICAL DECOMPOSITION. ¶ i. NEW CONDITIONS OF ELECTRO-CHEMICAL DECOMPOSITION. ¶ ii. INFLUENCE OF WATER IN ELECTRO-CHEMICAL DECOMPOSITION. ¶ iii. THEORY OF ELECTRO-CHEMICAL DECOM- POSITION

§ 5. On Electro-chemical Decomposition^[78]

186. I have in a recent series of these Researches (i) proved (to my own satisfaction, at least) the identity of electricities derived from different sources, and have especially dwelt upon the proofs of the sameness of those obtained by the use of the common electrical machine and the voltaic battery.

187. The great distinction of the electricities obtained from these two sources is the very high tension to which the small quantity obtained by aid of the machine may be raised, and the enormous quantity (107, 112) in which that of comparatively low tension, supplied by the voltaic battery, may be procured; but as their actions, whether magnetical, chemical, or of any other nature, are essentially the same (96), it appeared evident that we might reason from the former as to the manner of action of the latter; and it was, to me, a probable consequence, that the use of electricity of such intensity as that afforded by the machine, would, when applied to effect and elucidate electro-chemical decomposition, show some new conditions of that action, evolve new views of the internal arrangements and changes of the substances under decomposition, and perhaps give efficient powers over matter as yet undecomposed.

88. For the purpose of rendering the bearings of the different parts of this series of researches more distinct, I shall divide it into several heads.

¶ i. New conditions of Electro-chemical Decomposition

189. The tension of machine electricity causes it, however small in quantity, to pass through any length of water, solutions, or other substances classing with these as conductors, as fast as it can be produced, and therefore, in relation to quantity, as fast as it could have passed through much shorter portions of the same conducting substance. With the voltaic battery the case is very different, and the passing current of electricity supplied by it suffers serious diminution in any substance, by considerable extension of its length, but especially in such bodies as those mentioned above.

190. I endeavoured to apply this facility of transmitting the current of electricity through any length of a conductor, to an investigation of the transfer of the elements in a decomposing body, in contrary directions, towards the poles. The general form of apparatus used in these experiments has been already described (48, 52); and also a particular experiment (55), in which, when a piece of litmus paper and a piece of turmeric paper were combined and moistened in solution of sulphate of soda, the point of the wire from the machine (representing the positive pole) put upon the litmus paper, and the receiving point from the discharging train (28, 52), representing the negative pole, upon the turmeric paper, a very few turns of the machine sufficed to show the evolution of acid at the former, and alkali at the latter, exactly in the manner effected by a volta-electric current.

191. The pieces of litmus and turmeric paper were now placed each upon a separate plate of glass, and connected by an insulated string four feet long, moistened in the same solution of sulphate of soda: the terminal decomposing wire points were placed upon the papers as before. On working the machine, the same evolution of acid and alkali appeared as in the former instance, and with equal readiness, notwithstanding that the places of their appearance were four feet apart from each other. Finally, a piece of string, seventy feet long, was used. It was

swords and gold-chased corselets. All the noble-born fighting-men of Ayodhya were gathered in the great palace or about it, and at each broad-arched gate and door fifty archers stood on guard, with bows in their hands. But Death stalked through the royal palace and none could stay his ghostly tread.

On the dais under the golden dome the king cried out again, racked by awful paroxysms. Again his voice came faintly and far away, and again the Devi bent to him, trembling with a fear that was darker than the terror of death.

"Yasmina!" Again that far, weirdly dreeing cry, from realms immeasurable. "Aid me! I am far from my mortal house! Wizards have drawn my soul through the wind-blown darkness. They seek to sap the silver cord that binds me to my dying body. They cluster around me; their hands are taloned, their eyes are red like flame burning in darkness. Aie, save me, my sister! Their fingers sear me like fire! They would slay my body and damn my soul! What is this they bring before me?—Aie!"

At the terror in his hopeless cry Yasmina screamed uncontrollably and threw herself bodily upon him in the abandon of her anguish. He was torn by a terrible convulsion; foam flew from his contorted lips and his writhing fingers left their marks on the girl's shoulders. But the glassy blankness passed from his eyes like smoke blown from a fire, and he looked up at his sister with recognition.

"Brother!" she sobbed. "Brother——"

"Swift!" he gasped, and his weakening voice was rational. "I know now what brings me to the pyre. I have been on a far journey and I understand. I have been ensorceled by the wizards of the Himelians. They drew my soul out of my body and far away, into a stone room. There they strove to break the silver cord of life, and thrust my soul into the body of a foul night-weird their sorcery summoned up from hell. Ah! I feel their pull upon me now! Your cry and the grip of your fingers brought me back, but I am going fast. My soul clings to my body, but its hold weakens. Quick—kill me, before they can trap my soul for ever!

"I can not!" she wailed, smiting her naked breasts.

"Swiftly, I command you!" There was the old imperious note in his failing whisper. "You have never disobeyed me—obey my last command! Send my soul clean to Asura! Haste, lest you damn me to spend eternity as a filthy gaunt of darkness. Strike, I command you! Strike!"

Sobbing wildly, Yasmina plucked a jeweled dagger from her girdle and plunged it to the hilt in his breast. He stiffened and then went limp, a grim smile curving his dead lips. Yasmina hurled herself face-down on the rush-covered floor, beating the reeds with her clenched hands. Outside, the gongs and conchs brayed and thundered and the priests gashed themselves with copper knives.

2. A Barbarian from the Hills

Chunder shan, governor of Peshkhauri, laid down his golden pen and carefully scanned that which he had written on parchment that bore his official seal. He had ruled Peshkhauri so long only because he weighed his every word, spoken or written. Danger breeds caution, and only a wary man lives long in that wild country where the hot Vendhyan plains meet the crags of the Himelians. An hour's ride westward or northward and one crossed the border and was among the Hills where men lived by the law of the knife.

The governor was alone in his chamber, seated at his ornately-carven table of inlaid ebony. Through the wide window, open for the coolness, he could see a square of the blue Himelian night, dotted with great white stars. An adjacent parapet was a shadowy line, and further crenelles and embrasures were barely hinted at in the dim starlight. The governor's fortress was strong, and situated outside the walls of the city it guarded. The breeze that stirred the tapestries on the wall brought faint noises from the streets of Peshkhauri—occasional snatches of wailing song, or the thrum of a cithern.

The governor read what he had written, slowly, with his open hand shading his eyes from the bronze butter-lamp, his lips moving. Absently, as he read, he heard the drum of horses' hoofs outside the barbican, the sharp staccato of the guards' challenge. He did not heed, intent upon his letter. It was addressed to the wazam of Vendhya, at the royal court of Ayodhya, and it stated, after the customary salutations:

"Let it be known to your excellency that. I have faithfully carried out your excellency's instructions. The seven tribesmen are well guarded in their prison, and I have repeatedly sent word into the hills that their chief come in person to bargain for their release. But he has made no move, except to send word that unless they are freed he will burn Peshkhauri and cover his saddle with my hide, begging your excellency's indulgence. This he is quite capable of attempting, and I have tripled the numbers of the lance guards. The man is not a native of Ghulistan. I can not with certainty predict his next move. But since it is the wish of the Devi——"

He was out of his ivory chair and on his feet facing the arched door, all in one instant. He snatched at the curved sword lying in its ornate scabbard on the table, and then checked the movement.

It was a woman who had entered unannounced, a woman whose gossamer robes did not conceal the rich garments beneath any more than they concealed the suppleness and beauty of her tall, slender figure. A filmy veil fell below her breasts, supported by a flowing head-dress bound about with a triple gold braid and adorned with a golden crescent. Her dark eyes regarded the astonished governor over the veil, and then with an imperious gesture of her white hand, she uncovered her face.

"Devi!" The governor dropped to his knee before her, his surprize and confusion somewhat spoiling the stateliness of his obeisance. With a gesture she motioned him to rise, and he hastened to lead her to the ivory chair, all the while bowing level with his girdle. But his first words were of reproof.

"Your Majesty! This was most unwise! The border is unsettled. Raids from the hills are incessant. You came with a large attendance?"

"An ample retinue followed me to Peshkhauri," she answered. "I lodged my people there and came on to the fort with my maid, Gitara."

Chunder Shan groaned in horror.

"Devi! You do not understand the peril. An hour's ride from this spot the hills swarm with barbarians who make a profession of murder and rapine. Women have been stolen and men stabbed between the fort and the city. Peshkhauri is not like your southern provinces——"

"But I am here, and unharmed," she interrupted with a trace of impatience. "I showed my signet ring to the guard at the gate, and to the one outside your door, and they admitted me unannounced, not knowing me, but supposing me to be a secret courier from Ayodhya. Let us not now waste time.

"You have received no word from the chief of the barbarians?"

"None save threats and curses, Devi. He is wary and suspicious. He deems it a trap, and perhaps he is not to be blamed. The Kshatriyas have not always kept their promises to the hill people."

"He must be brought to terms!" broke in Yasmina, the knuckles of her clenched hands showing white.

"I do not understand." The governor shook his head. "When I chanced to capture these seven hillmen, I reported their capture to the wazam, as is the custom, and then, before I could hang them, there came an order to hold them and communicate with their chief. This I did, but the man holds aloof, as I have said. These men are of the tribe of Afghulis, but he is a foreigner from the west, and he is called Conan. I have threatened to hang them tomorrow at dawn, if he does not come."

"Good!" exclaimed the Devi. "You have done well. And I will tell you why I have given these orders. My brother——" she faltered, choking, and the governor bowed his head, with the customary gesture of respect for a departed sovereign.

"The king of Vendhya was destroyed by magic," she said at last. "I have devoted my life to the destruction of his murderers. As he died he gave me a clue, and I have followed it. I have read the Book of Skalos, and talked with nameless hermits in the caves below Jhelai. I learned how, and by whom, he was destroyed. His enemies were the Black Seers of Mount Yimsha."

"Asura!" whispered Chunder Shan, paling.

Her eyes knifed him through. "Do you fear them?"

"Who does not, your Majesty?" he replied. "They are black devils, haunting the uninhabited hills beyond the Zhaibar. But the sages say that they seldom interfere in the lives of mortal men."

"Why they slew my brother I do not know," she answered. "But I have sworn on the altar of Asura to destroy them! And I need the aid of a man beyond the border. A Kshatriya army, unaided, would never reach Yimsha."

"Aye," muttered Chunder Shan. "You speak the truth there. It would be fight every step of the way, with hairy hillmen hurling down boulders from every height, and rushing us with their long knives in every valley. The Turanians fought their way through the Himelians once, but how many returned to Khurusun? Few of those who escaped the swords of the Kshatriyas, after the king, your brother, defeated their host on the Jhumda River, ever saw Secunderam again."

"And so I must control men across the border," she said, "men who know the way to Mount Yimsha——"

"But the tribes fear the Black Seers and shun the unholy mountain," broke in the governor.

"Does the chief, Conan, fear them?" she asked.

"Well, as to that," muttered the governor, "I doubt if there is anything that devil fears."

"So I have been told. Therefore he is the man I must deal with. He wishes the release of his seven men. Very well; their ransom shall be the heads of the Black Seers!" Her voice thrummed with hate as she uttered the last words, and her hands clenched at her sides. She looked an image of incarnate passion as she stood there with her head thrown high and her bosom heaving.

Again the governor knelt, for part of his wisdom was the knowledge that a woman in such an emotional tempest is as perilous as a blind cobra to any about her.

"It shall be as you wish, your Majesty." Then as she presented a calmer aspect, he rose and ventured to drop a word of warning. "I can not predict what the chief Conan's action will be. The tribesmen are always turbulent, and I have reason to believe that emissaries from the Turanians are stirring them up to raid our borders. As your majesty knows, the Turanians have established themselves in Secunderam and other northern cities, though the hill tribes remain unconquered. King Yezdigerd has long looked southward with greedy lust and perhaps is seeking to gain by treachery what he could not win by force of arms. I have thought that Conan might well be one of his spies."

"We shall see," she answered. "If he loves his followers, he will be at the gates at dawn, to parley. I shall spend the night in the fortress. I came in disguise to Peshkhauri, and lodged my retinue at an inn instead of the palace. Besides my people, only yourself knows of my presence here."

"I shall escort you to your quarters, your Majesty," said the governor, and as they emerged from the doorway, he beckoned the warrior on guard there, and the man fell in behind them, spear held at salute.

The maid waited, veiled like her mistress, outside the door, and the group traversed a wide, winding corridor, lighted by smoky torches, and reached the quarters reserved for visiting notables—generals and viceroys, mostly; none of the royal family had ever honored the fortress before. Chunder Shan had a perturbed feeling that the suite was not suitable to such an exalted personage as the Devi, and though she sought to make him feel at ease in her presence, he was glad when she dismissed him and he bowed himself out. All the menials of the fort had been summoned to serve his royal guest—though he did not divulge her identity—and he stationed a squad of spearmen- before her doors, among them the warrior who had guarded his own chamber. In his preoccupation he forgot to replace the man.

The governor had not been gone long from her when Yasmina suddenly remembered something else which she had wished to discuss with him, but had forgotten until that moment. It concerned the past actions of one Kerim Shah, a nobleman from Iranistan, who had dwelt for a while in Peshkhauri before coming on to the court at Ayodhya. A vague suspicion concerning the man had been stirred by a glimpse of him in Peshkhauri that night. She wondered if he had followed her from Ayodhya. Being a truly remarkable Devi, she did not summon the governor to her again, but hurried out into the corridor alone, and hastened toward his chamber.

Chunder Shan, entering his chamber, closed the door and went to his table. There he took the letter he had been writing and tore it to bits. Scarcely had he finished when he heard something drop softly onto the parapet adjacent to the window. He looked up to see a figure loom briefly against the stars, and then a man dropped lightly into the room. The light glinted on a long sheen of steel in his hand.

"Shhhh!" he warned. "Don't make a noise, or I'll send the devil a henchman!"

The governor checked his motion toward the sword on the table. He was within reach of the yard-long Zhaibar knife that glittered in the intruder's fist, and he knew the desperate quickness of a hillman.

The invader was a tall man, at once strong and supple. He was dressed like a hillman, but his dark features and blazing blue eyes did not match his garb. Chunder Shan had never seen a man like him; he was not an Easterner, but some barbarian from the West. But his aspect was as untamed and formidable as any of the hairy tribesmen who haunt the hills of Ghulistan.

"You come like a thief in the night," commented the governor, recovering some of his composure, although he remembered that there was no guard within call. Still, the hillman could not know that.

"I climbed a bastion," snarled the intruder. "A guard thrust his head over the battlement in time for me to rap it with my knife-hilt."

"You are Conan?"

"Who else? You sent word into the hills that you wished for me to come and parley with you. Well, by Crom, I've come! Keep away from that table or I'll gut you."

"I merely wish to seat myself," answered the governor, carefully sinking into the ivory chair, which he wheeled away from the table. Conan moved restlessly before him, glancing suspiciously at the door, thumbing the razor edge of his three-foot knife. He did not walk like an Afghuli, and was bluntly direct where the East is subtle.

"You have seven of my men," he said abruptly. "You refused the ransom I offered. What the devil do you want?"

"Let us discuss terms," answered Chunder Shan cautiously.

"Terms?" There was a timbre of dangerous anger in his voice. "What do you mean? Haven't I offered you gold?"

Chunder Shan laughed.

"Gold? There is more gold in Peshkhauri than you ever saw."

"You're a liar," retorted Conan. "I've seen the suk of the goldsmiths in Khurusun."

"Well, more than any Afghuli ever saw," amended Chunder Shan. "And it is but a drop of all the treasure of Vendhya. Why should we desire gold? It would be more to our advantage to hang these seven thieves."

Conan ripped out a sulfurous oath and the long blade quivered in his grip as the muscles rose in ridges on his brown arm.

"I'll split your head like a ripe melon!"

A wild blue flame flickered in the hillman's eyes, but Chunder Shan shrugged his shoulders, though keeping an eye on the keen steel.

"You can kill me easily, and probably escape over the wall afterward. But that would not save the seven tribesmen. My men would surely hang them. And these men are headmen among the Afghulis."

"I know it," snarled Conan. "The tribe is baying like wolves at my heels because I have not procured their release. Tell me in plain words what you want, because, by Crom! if there's no other way, I'll raise a horde and lead it to the very gates of Peshkhauri!"

Looking at the man as he stood squarely, knife in fist and eyes glaring, Chunder Shan did not doubt that he was capable of it. The governor did not believe any hill-horde could take Peshkhauri, but he did not wish a devastated countryside.

"There is a mission you must perform," he said, choosing his words with as much care as if they had been razors. "There——"

Conan had sprung back, wheeling to face the door at the same instant, lips asnarl. His barbarian ears had caught the quick tread of soft slippers outside the door. The next instant the door was thrown open and a slim, silk-robed form entered hastily, pulling the door shut—then stopping short at sight of the hillman.

Chunder Shan sprang up, his heart jumping into his mouth.

"Devi!" he cried involuntarily, losing his head momentarily in his fright.

"Devi!" It was like an explosive echo from the hillman's lips. Chunder Shan saw recognition and intent flame up in the fierce blue eyes.

The governor shouted desperately and caught at his sword, but the hillman moved with the devastating speed of a hurricane. He sprang, knocked the governor sprawling with a savage blow of his knife-hilt, swept up the astounded Devi in one brawny arm and leaped for the window. Chunder Shan, struggling frantically to his feet, saw the man poise an instant on the sill in a flutter of silken skirts and white limbs that was his royal captive, and heard his fierce, exultant snarl: "Now dare to hang my men!" and then Conan leaped to the parapet and was gone. A wild scream floated back to the governor's ears.

"Guard! Guard!" screamed the governor, struggling up and running drunkenly to the door. He tore it open and reeled into the hall. His shouts re-echoed along the corridors, and warriors came running, gaping to see the governor holding his broken head, from which the blood streamed.

"Turn out the lancers!" he roared. "There has been an abduction!" Even in his frenzy he had enough sense left to withhold the full truth. He stopped short as he heard a sudden drum of hoofs outside, a frantic scream and a wild yell of barbaric exultation.

Followed by the bewildered guardsmen, the governor raced for the stair. In the courtyard of the fort a force of lancers always stood by saddled steeds, ready to ride at an instant's notice. Chunder Shan led his squadron flying after the fugitive, though his head swam so he had to hold with both hands to the saddle. He did not divulge the identity of the victim, but said merely that the noblewoman who had borne the royal signet-ring had been carried away by the chief of the Afghulis. The abductor was out of sight and hearing, but they knew the path he would strike—the road that runs straight to the mouth of the Zhaibar. There was no moon; peasant huts rose dimly in the starlight. Behind them fell away the grim bastion of the fort, and the towers of Peshkhauri. Ahead of them loomed the black walls of the Himelians.

3. Khemsa Uses Magic

In the confusion that reigned in the fortress while the guard was being turned out, no one noticed that the girl who had accompanied the Devi slipped out the great arched gate and vanished in the darkness. She ran straight for the city, her garments tucked high. She did not follow the open road, but cut straight through fields and over slopes, avoiding fences and leaping irrigation ditches as surely as if it were broad daylight, and as easily as if she were a trained masculine runner. The hoof-drum of the guardsmen had faded away up the hill road before she reached the city wall. She did not go to the great gate, beneath whose arch men leaned on spears and craned their necks into the darkness, discussing the unwonted activity about the fortress. She skirted the wall until she reached a certain point where the spire of a tower was visible above the battlements. Then she placed her hands to her mouth and voiced a low weird call that carried strangely.

Almost instantly a head appeared at an embrasure and a rope came wriggling down the wall. She seized it, placed a foot in the loop at the end, and waved her arm. Then quickly and smoothly she was drawn up the sheer stone curtain. An instant later she scrambled over the merlons and stood up on a flat roof which covered a house that was built against the wall. There was an open trap there, and a man in a camel-hair robe who silently coiled the rope, not showing in any way the strain of hauling a full-grown woman up a forty-foot wall.

"Where is Kerim Shah?" she gasped, panting after her long run.

"Asleep in the house below. You have news?"

"Conan has stolen the Devi out of the fortress and carried her away into the hills!" She blurted out her news in a rush, the words stumbling over one another.

Khemsa showed no emotion, but merely nodded his turbaned head. "Kerim Shah will be glad to hear that," he said.

"Wait!" The girl threw her supple arms about his neck. She was panting hard, but not only from exertion. Her eyes blazed like black jewels in the starlight. Her upturned face was close to Khemsa's, but though he submitted to her embrace, he did not return it.

"Do not tell the Hyrkanian!" she panted. "Let us use this knowledge ourselves! The governor has gone into the hills with his riders, but he might as well chase a ghost. He has not told anyone that it was the Devi who was kidnapped. None in Peshkhauri or the fort knows it except us."

"But what good does it do us?" the man expostulated. "My masters sent me with Kerim Shah to aid him in every way——"

"Aid yourself!" she cried fiercely. "Shake off your yoke!"

"You mean—disobey my masters?" he gasped, and she felt his whole body turn cold under her arms.

"Aye!" she shook him in the fury of her emotion. "You too are a magician!. Why will you be a slave, using your powers only to elevate others? Use your arts for yourself!"

"That is forbidden!" He was shaking as if with an ague. "I am not one of the Black Circle. Only by the command of the masters do I dare to use the knowledge they have taught me."

"But you can use it!" she argued passionately. "Do as I beg you! Of course Conan has taken the Devi to hold as hostage against the seven tribesmen in the governor's prison. Destroy them, so Chunder Shan can not use them to buy back the Devi. Then let us go into the mountains and take her from the Afghulis. They can not stand against your sorcery with their knives. The treasure of the Vendhyan kings will be ours as ransom—and then when we have it in our hands, we can trick them, and sell her to the king of Turan. We shall have wealth beyond our maddest dreams. With it we can buy warriors. We will take Khorbhul, oust the Turanians from the hills, and send our hosts southward; become king and queen of an empire!"

Khemsa too was panting, shaking like a leaf in her grasp; his face showed gray in the starlight, beaded with great drops of perspiration.

"I love you!" she cried fiercely, writhing her body against his, almost strangling him in her wild embrace, shaking him in her abandon. "I will make a king of you! For love of you I betrayed my mistress; for love of me betray your masters! Why fear the Black Seers? By your love for me you have broken one of their laws already! Break the rest! You are as strong as they!"

A man of ice could not have withstood the searing heat of her passion and fury. With an inarticulate cry he crushed her to him, bending her backward and showering gasping kisses on her eyes, face and lips.

"I'll do it!" His voice was thick with laboring emotions. He staggered like a drunken man. "The arts they have taught me shall work for me, not for my masters. We shall be rulers of the world—of the world——"

"Come then!" Twisting lithely out of his embrace, she seized his hand and led him toward the trap-door. "First we must make sure that the governor does not exchange those seven Afghulis for the Devi."

He moved like a man in a daze, until they had descended a ladder and she paused in the chamber below. Kerim Shah lay on a couch motionless, an arm across his face as though to shield his sleeping eyes from the soft light of a brass lamp. She plucked Khemsa's arm and made a quick gesture across her own throat. Khemsa lifted his hand; then his expression changed and he drew away.

"I have eaten his salt," he muttered. "Besides, he can not interfere with us."

He led the girl through a door that opened on a winding stair. After their soft tread had faded into silence, the man on the couch sat up. Kerim Shah wiped the sweat from his face. A knife-thrust he did not dread, but he feared Khemsa as a man fears a poisonous reptile.

"People who plot on roofs should remember to lower their voices," he muttered. "But as Khemsa has turned against his masters, and as he was my only contact between them, I can count on their aid no longer. From now on I play the game in my own way."

Rising to his feet he went quickly to a table, drew pen and parchment from his girdle and scribbled a few succinct lines.

"To Khosru Khan, governor of Secunderam: the Cimmerian Conan has carried the Devi Yasmina to the villages of the Afghulis. It is an opportunity to get the Devi into our hands, as the king has so long desired. Send three thousand horsemen at once. I will meet them in the valley of Gurashah with native guides."

And he signed it with a name that was not in the least like Kerim Shah.

Then from a golden cage he drew forth a carrier pigeon, to whose leg he made fast the parchment, rolled into a tiny cylinder and secured with gold wire. Then he went quickly to a casement and tossed the bird into the night. It wavered on fluttering wings, balanced, and was gone like a flitting shadow. Catching up helmet, sword and cloak, Kerim Shah hurried out of the chamber and down the winding stair.

The prison quarters of Peshkhauri were separated from the rest of the city by a massive wall, in which was set a single iron-bound door under an arch. Over the arch burned a lurid red cresset, and beside the door squatted a warrior with spear and shield.

This warrior, leaning on his spear, and yawning from time to time, started suddenly to his feet. He had not thought he had dozed, but a man was standing before him, a man he had not heard approach. The man wore a camel-hair robe and a green turban. In the flickering light of the cresset his features were shadowy, but a pair of lambent eyes shone surprizingly in the lurid glow.

"Who comes?" demanded the warrior, presenting his spear. "Who are you?"

The stranger did not seem perturbed, though the spear-point touched his bosom. His eyes held the warrior's with strange intensity.

"What are you obliged to do?" he asked, strangely.

"To guard the gate!" The warrior spoke thickly and mechanically; he stood rigid as a statue, his eyes slowly glazing.

"You lie! You are obliged to obey me! You have looked into my eyes, and your soul is no longer your own. Open that door!"

Stiffly, with the wooden features of an image, the guard wheeled about, drew a great key from his girdle, turned it in the massive lock and swung open the door. Then he stood at attention, his unseeing stare straight ahead of him.

A woman glided from the shadows and laid an eager hand on the mesmerist's arm.

"Bid him fetch us horses, Khemsa," she whispered.

"No need of that," answered the Rakhsha. Lifting his voice slightly he spoke to the guardsman. "I have no more use for you. Kill yourself!"

Like a man in a trance the warrior thrust the butt of his spear against the base of the wall, and placed the keen head against his body, just below the ribs. Then slowly, stolidly, he leaned against it with all his weight, so that it transfixed his body and came out between his shoulders. Sliding down the shaft he lay still, the spear jutting above him its full length, like a horrible stalk growing out of his back.

The girl stared down at him in morbid fascination, until Khemsa took her arm and led her through the gate. Torches lighted a narrow space between the outer wall and a lower inner one, in which were arched doors at regular intervals. A warrior paced this enclosure, and when the gate opened he came sauntering up, so secure in his knowledge of the prison's strength that he was not suspicious until Khemsa and the girl emerged from the archway. Then it was too late. The Rahksha did not waste time in hypnotism, though his action savored of magic to the girl. The guard lowered his spear threateningly, opening his mouth to shout an alarm that would bring spearmen swarming out of the guardrooms at either end of the alleyway. Khemsa flicked the spear aside with his left hand, as a man might flick a straw, and his right flashed out and back, seeming gently to caress the warrior's neck in passing. And the guard pitched on his face without a sound, his head lolling on a broken neck.

Khemsa did not glance at him, but went straight to one of the arched doors and placed his open hand against the heavy bronze lock. With a rending shudder the portal buckled inward. As the girl followed him through, she saw that the thick teakwood hung in splinters, the bronze bolts were bent and twisted from their sockets, and the great hinges broken and disjointed. A thousand-pound battering-ram with forty men to swing it could have shattered the barrier no more completely. Khemsa was drunk with freedom and the exercise of his power, glorying in his might and flinging his strength about as a young giant exercises his thews with unnecessary vigor in the exultant pride of his prowess.

The broken door let them into a small courtyard, lit by a cresset. Opposite the door was a wide grille of iron bars. A hairy hand was visible, gripping one of these bars, and in the darkness behind them glimmered the whites of eyes.

Khemsa stood silent for a space, gazing into the shadows from which those glimmering eyes gave back his stare with burning intensity. Then his hand went into his robe and came out again, and from his opening fingers a shimmering feather of sparkling dust sifted to the flags. Instantly a flare of green fire lighted the enclosure. In the brief glare the forms of seven men, standing motionless behind the bars, were limned in vivid detail; tall, hairy men in ragged hillmen's garments. They did not speak, but in their eyes blazed the fear of death, and their hairy fingers gripped the bars.

The fire died out but the glow remained, a quivering ball of lambent green that pulsed and shimmered on the flags before Khemsa's feet. The wide gaze of the tribesmen was fixed upon it. It wavered, elongated; it turned into a luminous green smoke spiraling upward. It twisted and writhed like a great shadowy serpent, then broadened and billowed out in shining folds and whirls. It grew to a cloud moving silently over the flags—straight toward the grille. The men watched its coming with dilated eyes; the bars quivered with the grip of their desperate fingers. Bearded lips parted but no sound came forth. The green cloud rolled on the bars and blotted them from sight; like a fog it oozed through the grille and hid the men within. From the enveloping folds came a strangled gasp, as of a man plunged suddenly under the surface of water. That was all.

Khemsa touched the girl's arm, as she stood with parted lips and dilated eyes. Mechanically she turned away with him, looking back over her shoulder. Already the mist was thinning; close to the bars she saw a pair of sandaled feet, the toes turned upward—she glimpsed the indistinct outlines of seven still, prostrate shapes.

"And now for a steed swifter than the fastest horse ever bred in a mortal stable," Khemsa was saying. "We will be in Afghulistan before dawn."

4. An Encounter in the Pass

Yasmina Devi could never clearly remember the details of her abduction. The unexpectedness and violence stunned her; she had only a confused impression of a whirl of happenings—the terrifying grip of a mighty arm, the blazing eyes of her abductor, and his hot breath burning on her flesh. The leap through the window to the parapet, the mad race across battlements and roofs when the fear of falling froze her, the reckless descent of a rope bound to a merlon—he went down almost at a run, his captive folded limply over his brawny shoulder—all this was a befuddled tangle in the Devi's mind. She retained a more vivid memory of him running fleetly into the shadows of the trees, carrying her like a child, and vaulting into the saddle of a fierce Bhalkhana stallion which reared and snorted. Then there was a sensation of flying, and the racing hoofs were striking sparks of fire from the flinty road as the stallion swept up the slopes.

As the girl's mind cleared, her first sensations were furious rage and shame. She was appalled. The rulers of the golden kingdoms south of the Himelians were considered little short of divine; and she was the Devi of Vendhya! Fright was submerged in regal wrath. She cried out furiously and began struggling. She, Yasmina, to be carried on the saddle-bow of a hill chief, like a common wench of the market-place! He merely hardened his massive thews slightly against her writhings, and for the first time in her life she experienced the coercion of superior physical strength. His arms felt like iron about her slender limbs. He glanced down at her and grinned hugely. His teeth glimmered whitely in the starlight. The reins lay loose on the stallion's flowing mane, and every thew and fiber of the great beast strained as he hurtled along the boulder-strewn trail. But Conan sat easily, almost carelessly, in the saddle, riding like a centaur.

"You hill-bred dog!" she panted, quivering with the impact of shame, anger, and the realization of helplessness. "You dare—you dare! Your life shall pay for this! Where are you taking me?"

"To the villages of Afghulistan," he answered, casting a glance over his shoulder.

Behind them, beyond the slopes they had traversed, torches were tossing on the walls of the fortress, and he glimpsed a flare of light that meant the great gate had been opened. And he laughed, a deep-throated boom gusty as the hill wind.

"The governor has sent his riders after us," he laughed. "By Crom, we will lead him a merry chase! What do you think, Devi—will they pay seven lives for a Kshatriya princess?"

"They will send an army to hang you and your spawn of devils," she promised him with conviction.

He laughed gustily and shifted her to a more comfortable position in his arms. But she took this as a fresh outrage, and renewed her vain struggles, until she saw that her efforts were only amusing him. Besides, her light silken garments, floating on the wind, were being outrageously disarranged by her struggles. She concluded that a scornful submission was the better part of dignity, and lapsed into a smoldering quiescence.

She felt even her anger being submerged by awe as they entered the mouth of the Pass, lowering like a black well mouth in the blacker walls that rose like colossal ramparts to bar their way. It was as if a gigantic knife had cut the Zhaibar out of walls of solid rock. On either hand sheer slopes pitched up for thousands of feet, and the mouth of the Pass was dark as hate. Even Conan could not see with any accuracy, but he knew the road, even by night. And knowing that armed men were racing through the starlight after him, he did not check the stallion's speed. The great brute was not yet showing fatigue. He thundered along the road that followed the valley bed, labored up a slope, swept along a low ridge where treacherous shale on either hand lurked for the unwary, and came upon a trail that followed the lap of the left-hand wall.

Not even Conan could spy, in that darkness, an ambush set by Zhaibar tribesmen. As they swept past the black mouth of a gorge that opened into the Pass, a javelin swished through the air and thudded home behind the stallion's straining shoulder. The great beast let out his life in a shuddering sob and stumbled, going headlong in midstride. But Conan had recognized the flight and stroke of the javelin, and he acted with spring-steel quickness.

As the horse fell he leaped clear, holding the girl aloft to guard her from striking boulders. He lit on his feet like a cat, thrust her into a cleft of rock, and wheeled toward the outer darkness, drawing his knife.

Yasmina, confused by the rapidity of events, not quite sure just what had happened, saw a vague shape rush out of the darkness, bare feet slapping softly on the rock, ragged garments whipping on the wind of his haste. She glimpsed the flicker of steel, heard the lightning crack of stroke, parry and counter-stroke, and the crunch of bone as Conan's long knife split the other's skull.

Conan sprang back, crouching in the shelter of the rocks. Out in the night men were moving and a stentorian voice roared: "What, you dogs! Do you flinch? In, curse you, and take them!"

Conan started, peered into the darkness and lifted his voice.

"Yar Afzal! Is it you?"

There sounded a startled imprecation, and the voice called warily.

"Conan? Is it you, Conan?"

'Aye!" The Cimmerian laughed. "Come forth, you old war-dog. I've slain one of your men."

There was movement among the rocks, a light flared dimly, and then a flame appeared and came bobbing toward him, and as it approached, a fierce bearded countenance grew out of the darkness. The man who carried it held it high, thrust forward, and craned his neck to peer among the boulders it lighted; the other hand gripped a great curved tulwar. Conan stepped forward, sheathing his knife, and the other roared a greeting.

"Aye, it is Conan! Come out of your rocks, dogs! It is Conan!"

Others pressed into the wavering circle of light—wild, ragged, bearded men, with eyes like wolves, and long blades in their fists. They did not see Yasmina, for she was hidden by Conan's massive body. But peeping from her covert, she knew icy fear for the first time that night. These men were more like wolves than human beings.

"What are you hunting in the Zhaibar by night, Yar Afzal?" Conan demanded of the burly chief, who grinned like a bearded ghoul.

"Who knows what might come up the Pass after dark? We Wazulis are nighthawks. But what of you, Conan?"

"I have a prisoner," answered the Cimmerian. And moving aside he disclosed the cowering girl. Reaching a long arm into the crevice he drew her trembling forth.

Her imperious bearing was gone. She stared timidly at the ring of bearded faces that hemmed her in, and was grateful for the strong arm that clasped her possessively. The torch was thrust close to her, and there was a sucking intake of breath about the ring.

"She is my captive," Conan warned, glancing pointedly at the feet of the man he had slain, just visible within the ring of light. "I was taking her to Afghulistan, but now you have slain my horse, and the Kshatriyas are close behind me."

"Come with us to my village," suggested Yar Afzal. "We have horses hidden in the gorge. They can never follow us in the darkness. They are close behind you, you say?"

"So close that I hear now the clink of their hoofs on the flint," answered Conan grimly.

Instantly there was movement; the torch was dashed out and the ragged shapes melted like phantoms into the darkness. Conan swept up the Devi in his arms, and she did not resist. The rocky ground hurt her slim feet in their soft slippers and she felt very small and helpless in that brutish, primordial blackness among those colossal, nighted crags. Feeling her shiver in the wind that moaned down the defiles, Conan jerked a ragged cloak from its owner's shoulders and wrapped it about her. He also hissed a warning in her ear, ordering her to make no sound. She did not hear the distant clink of shod hoofs on rock that warned the keen-eared hillmen; but she was far too frightened to disobey, in any event.

She could see nothing but a few faint stars far above, but she knew by the deepening darkness when they entered the gorge mouth. There was a stir about them, the uneasy movement of horses. A few muttered words, and Conan mounted the horse of the man he had killed, lifting the girl up in front of him. Like phantoms except for the click of their hoofs, the band swept away up the shadowy gorge. Behind them on the trail they left the dead horse and the dead man, which were found less than half an hour later by the riders from the fortress, who recognized the man as a Wazuli and drew their own conclusions accordingly.

Yasmina, snuggled warmly in her captor's arms, grew drowsy in spite of herself. The motion of the horse, though it was uneven, uphill and down, yet possessed a certain rhythm which combined with weariness and emotional exhaustion to force sleep upon her. She had lost all sense of time or direction. They moved in soft thick darkness, in which she sometimes glimpsed vaguely gigantic walls sweeping up like black ramparts, or great crags shouldering the stars; at times she sensed echoing depths beneath them, or felt the wind of dizzy heights blowing cold about her. Gradually these things faded into a dreamy unwakefulness in which the clink of hoofs and the creak of saddles were like the irrelevant sounds in a dream.

She was vaguely aware when the motion ceased and she was lifted down and carried a few steps. Then she was laid down on something soft and rustling, and something—a folded coat perhaps—was thrust under her head, and the cloak in which she was wrapped was carefully tucked about her. She heard Yar Afzal laugh.

"A rare prize, Conan; fit mate for a chief of the Afghulis."

"Not for me," came Conan's answering rumble. "This wench will buy the lives of my seven headmen, blast their souls."

That was the last she heard as she sank into dreamless slumber.

She slept while armed men rode through the dark hills, and the fate of kingdoms hung in the balance. Through the shadowy gorges and defiles that night there rang the hoofs of galloping horses, and the starlight glimmered on helmets and curved blades, until the ghoulish shapes that haunt the crags stared into the darkness from ravine and boulder and wondered what things were afoot.

A band of these sat gaunt horses in the black pit-mouth of a gorge as the hurrying hoofs swept past. Their leader, a well-built man in a helmet and gilt-braided cloak, held up his hand warningly, until the riders had sped on. Then he laughed softly.

"They must have lost the trail! Or else they have found that Conan has already reached the Afghuli villages. It will take many riders to smoke out that hive. There will be squadrons riding up the Zhaibar by dawn."

"If there is fighting in the hills there will be looting," muttered a voice behind him, in the dialect of the Irakzai.

"There will be looting," answered the man with the helmet. "But first it is our business to reach the valley of Gurashah and await the riders that will be galloping southward from Secunderam before daylight."

He lifted his reins and rode out of the defile, his men falling in behind him—thirty ragged phantoms in the starlight.

5. The Black Stallion

The sun was well up when Yasmina awoke. She did not start and stare blankly, wondering where she was. She awoke with full knowledge of all that had occurred. Her supple limbs were stiff from her long ride, and her firm flesh still seemed to feel the contact of the muscular arm that had borne her so far.

She was lying on a sheepskin covering a pallet of leaves on a hard-beaten dirt floor. A folded sheepskin coat was under her head, and she was wrapped in a ragged cloak. She was in a large room, the walls of which were crudely but strongly built of uncut rocks, plastered with sun-baked mud. Heavy beams supported a roof of the same kind, in which showed a trap-door up to which led a ladder. There were no windows in the thick walls, only loop-holes. There was one door, a sturdy bronze affair that must have been looted from some Vendhyan border tower. Opposite it was a wide opening in the wall, with no door, but several strong wooden bars in place. Beyond them Yasmina saw a magnificent black stallion munching a pile of dried grass. The building was fort, dwelling-place and stable in one.

At the other end of the room a girl in the vest and baggy trousers of a hillwoman squatted beside a small fire, cooking strips of meat on an iron grid laid over blocks of stone. There was a sooty cleft in the wall a few feet from the floor, and some of the smoke found its way out there. The rest floated in blue wisps about the room.

The hill-girl glanced at Yasmina over her shoulder, displaying a bold, handsome face, and then continued her cooking. Voices boomed outside; then the door was kicked open, and Conan strode in. He looked more enormous than ever with the morning sunlight behind him, and Yasmina noted some details that had escaped her the night before. His garments were clean and not ragged. The broad Bakhariot girdle that supported his knife in its ornamented scabbard would have matched the robes of a prince, and there was a glint of fine Turanian mail under his shirt.

"Your captive is awake, Conan," said the Wazuli girl, and he grunted, strode up to the fire and swept the strips of mutton off into a stone dish.

The squatting girl laughed up at him, with some spicy jest, and he grinned wolfishly, and hooking a toe under her haunches, tumbled her sprawling onto the floor. She seemed to derive considerable amusement from this bit of rough horse-play, but Conan paid no more heed to her. Producing a great hunk of bread from somewhere, with a copper jug of wine, he carried the lot to Yasmina, who had risen from her pallet and was regarding him doubtfully.

"Rough fare for a Devi, girl, but our best," he grunted. "It will fill your belly, at least."

He set the platter on the floor, and she was suddenly aware of a ravenous hunger. Making no comment, she seated herself cross-legged on the floor, and taking the dish in her lap, she began to eat, using her fingers, which were all she had in the way of table utensils. After all, adaptability is one of the tests of true aristocracy. Conan stood looking down at her, his thumbs hooked in his girdle. He never sat cross-legged, after the Eastern fashion.

"Where am I?" she asked abruptly.

"In the hut of Yar Afzal, the chief of the Khurum Wazulis," he answered. "Afghulistan lies a good many miles farther on to the west. We'll hide here awhile. The Kshatriyas are beating up the hills for you—several of their squads have been cut up by die tribes already."

"What are "you going to do?" she asked.

"Keep you until Chundar Shan is willing to trade back my seven cow-thieves," he grunted. "Women of the Wazulis are crushing ink out of shoki leaves, and after a while you can write a letter to the governor."

A touch of her old imperious wrath shook her, as she thought how maddeningly her plans had gone awry, leaving her captive of the very man she had plotted to get into her power. She flung down the dish, with the remnants of her meal, and sprang to her feet, tense with anger.

"I will not write a letter! If you do not take me back, they will hang your seven men, and a thousand more besides!"

The Wazuli girl laughed mockingly, Conan scowled, and then the door opened and Yar Afzal came swaggering in. The Wazuli chief was as tall as Conan, and of greater girth, but he looked fat and slow beside the hard compactness of the Cimmerian. He plucked his red-stained beard and stared meaningly at the Wazuli girl, and that wench rose and scurried out without delay. Then Yar Afzal turned to his guest.

"The damnable people murmur, Conan," quoth he. "They wish me to murder you and take the girl to hold for ransom. They say that anyone can tell by her garments that she is a noble lady. They say why should the Afghuli dogs profit by her, when it is the people who take the risk of guarding her?"

"Lend me your horse," said Conan. "I'll take her and go."

"Pish!" boomed Yar Afzal. "Do you think I can't handle my own people? I'll have them dancing in their shirts if they cross me! They don't love you—or any other outlander—but you saved my life once, and I will not forget. Come out, though, Conan; a scout has returned."

Conan hitched at his girdle and followed the chief outside. They closed the door after them, and Yasmina peeped through a loop-hole. She looked out on a level space before the hut. At the farther end of that space there was a cluster of mud and stone huts, and she saw naked children playing among the boulders, and the slim erect women of the hills going about their tasks.

Directly before the chief's hut a circle of hairy, ragged men squatted, facing the door. Conan and Yar Afzal stood a few paces before the door, and between them and the ring of warriors another man sat cross-legged. This one was addressing his chief in the harsh accents of the Wazuli which Yasmina could scarcely understand, though as part of her royal education she had been taught the languages of Iranistan and the kindred tongues of Ghulistan.

"I talked with a Dagozai who saw the riders last night," said the scout. "He was lurking near when they came to the spot where we ambushed the lord Conan. He overheard their speech. Chunder Shan was with them. They found the dead horse, and one of the men recognized it as Conan's. Then they found the man Conan slew, and knew him for a Wazuli. It seemed to them that Conan had been slain and the girl taken by the Wazuli; so they turned aside from their purpose of following to Afghulistan. But they did not know from which village the dead man was come, and we had left no trail a Kshatriya could follow.

"So they rode to the nearest Wazuli village, which was the village of Jugra, and burnt it and slew many of the people. But the men of Khojur came upon them in darkness and slew some of them, and wounded the governor. So the survivors retired down the Zhaibar in the darkness before dawn, but they returned with reinforcements before sunrise, and there has been skirmishing and fighting in the hills all morning. It is said that a great army is being raised to sweep the hills about the Zhaibar. The tribes are whetting their knives and laying ambushes in every pass from here to Gurashah valley. Moreover, Kerim Shah has returned to the hills."

A grunt went around the circle, and Yasmina leaned closer to the loop-hole at the name she had begun to mistrust.

"Where went he?" demanded Yar Afzal.

"The Dagozai did not know; with him were thirty Irakzai of the lower villages. They rode into the hills and diappeared."

"These Irakzai are jackals that follow a lion for crumbs," growled Yar Afzal. "They have been lapping up the coins Kerim Shah scatters among the border tribes to buy men like horses. I like him not, for all he is our kinsman from Iranistan."

"He's not even that," said Conan. "I know him of old. He's an Hyrkanian, a spy of Yezdigerd's. If I catch him I'll hang his hide to a tamarisk."

"But the Kshatriyas!" clamored the men in the semicircle. "Are we to squat on our haunches until they smoke us out? They will learn at last in which Wazuli village the wench is held. We are not loved by the Zhaibari; they will help the Kshatriyas hunt us out."

"Let them come," grunted Yar Afzal. "We can hold the defiles against a host."

One of the men leaped up and shook his fist at Conan.

"Are we to take all the risks while he reaps the rewards?" he howled. "Are we to fight his battles for him?"

With a stride Conan reached him and bent slightly to stare full into his hairy face. The Cimmerian had not drawn his long knife, but his left hand grasped the scabbard, jutting the hilt suggestively forward.

"I ask no man to fight my battles," he said softly. "Draw your blade if you dare, you yapping dog!"

The Wazuli started back, snarling like a cat.

"Dare to touch me and here are fifty men to rend you apart!" he screeched.

"What!" roared Yar Afzal, his face purpling with wrath. His whiskers bristled, his belly swelled with his rage. "Are you chief of Khurum? Do the Wazulis take orders from Yar Afzal, or from a low-bred cur?"

The man cringed before his invincible chief, and Yar Afzal, striding up to him, seized him by the throat and choked him until his face was turning black. Then he hurled the man savagely against the ground and stood over him with his tulwar in his hand.

"Is there any who questions my authority?" he roared, and his warriors looked down sullenly as his bellicose glare swept their semicircle. Yar Afzal grunted scornfully and sheathed his weapon with a gesture that was the apex of insult. Then he kicked the fallen agitator with a concentrated vindictiveness that brought howls from his victim.

"Get down the valley to the watchers; on the heights and bring word if they have seen anything," commanded Yar Afzal, and the man went, shaking with fear and grinding his teeth with fury.

Yar Afzal then seated himself ponderously on a stone, growling in his beard. Conan stood near him, legs braced apart, thumbs hooked in his girdle, narrowly watching the assembled warriors. They stared at him sullenly, not daring to brave Yar Afzal's fury, but hating the foreigner as only a hillman can hate.

"Now listen to me, you sons of nameless dogs, while I tell you what the lord Conan and I have planned to fool the Kshatriyas"—the boom of Yar Afzal's bull-like voice followed the discomfited warrior as he slunk away from the assembly.

The man passed by the cluster of huts, where women who had seen his defeat laughed at him and called stinging comments, and hastened on along the trail that wound among spurs and rocks toward the valley head.

Just as he rounded the first turn that took him out of sight of the village, he stopped short, gaping stupidly. He had not believed it possible for a stranger to enter the valley of Khurum without being detected by the hawk-eyed watchers along the heights; yet a man sat cross-legged on a low ledge beside the path—a man in a camel-hair robe and a green turban.

The Wazuli's mouth gaped for a yell, and his hand leaped to his knife-hilt. But at that instant his eyes met those of the stranger and the cry died in his throat, his fingers went limp. He stood like a statue, his own eyes glazed and vacant.

For minutes the scene held motionless; then the man on the ledge drew a cryptic symbol in the dust on the rock with his forefinger. The Wazuli did not see him place anything within the compass of that emblem, but presently something gleamed there—a round, shiny black ball that looked like polished jade. The man in the green turban took this up and tossed it to the Wazuli, who mechanically caught it.

"Carry this to Yar Afzal," he said, and the Wazuli turned like an automaton and went back along the path, holding the black jade ball in his outstretched hand. He did not even turn his head to the renewed jeers of the women as he passed the huts. He did not seem to hear.

The man on the ledge gazed after him with a cryptic smile. A girl's head rose above the rim of the ledge and she looked at him with admiration and a touch of fear that had not been present the night before.

"Why did you do that?" she asked.

He ran his fingers through her dark locks caressingly.

"Are you still dizzy from your flight on the horse-of-air, that you doubt my wisdom?" he laughed. "As long as Yar Afzal lives, Conan will bide safe among the Wazuli fighting-men. Their knives are sharp, and there are many of them. What I plot will be safer, even for me, than to seek to slay him and take her from among them. It takes no wizard to predict what the Wazulis will do, and what Conan will do, when my victim hands the globe of Yezud to the chief of Khurum."

Back before the hut, Yar Afzal halted in the midst of some tirade, surprized and displeased to see the man he had sent up the valley, pushing his way through the throng.

"I bade you go to the watchers!" the chief bellowed. "You have not had time to come from them."

The other did not reply; he stood woodenly, staring vacantly into the chief's face, his palm outstretched holding the jade ball. Conan, looking over Yar Afzal's shoulder, murmured something and reached to touch the chief's arm, but as he did so, Yar Afzal, in a paroxysm of anger, struck the man with his clenched fist and felled him like an ox. As he fell, the jade sphere rolled to Yar Afzal's foot, and the chief, seeming to see it for the first time, bent and picked it up. The men, staring perplexedly at their senseless comrade, saw their chief bend, but they did not see what he picked up from the ground.

Yar Afzal straightened, glanced at the jade, and made a motion to thrust it into his girdle.

"Carry that fool to his hut," he growled. "He has the look of a lotus-eater. He returned me a blank stare. I—aie!"

In his right hand, moving toward his girdle, he had suddenly felt movement where movement should not be. His voice died away as he stood and glared at nothing; and inside his clenched right hand he felt the quivering of change, of motion, of life. He no longer held a smooth shining sphere in his fingers. And he dared not look; his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, and he could not open his hand. His astonished warriors saw Yar Afzal's eyes distend, the color ebb from his face. Then suddenly a bellow of agony burst from his bearded lips; he swayed and fell as if struck by lightning, his right arm tossed out in front of him. Face down he lay, and from between his opening fingers crawled a spider—a hideous, black, hairy-legged monster whose body shone like black jade. The men yelled and gave back suddenly, and the creature scuttled into a crevice of the rocks and disappeared.

The warriors started up, glaring wildly, and a voice rose above their clamor, a far-carrying voice of command which came from none knew where. Afterward each man there—who still lived—denied that he had shouted, but all there heard it.

"Yar Afzal is dead! Kill the outlander!"

That shout focused their whirling minds as one. Doubt, bewilderment and fear vanished in the uproaring surge of the blood-lust. A furious yell rent the skies as the tribesmen responded instantly to the suggestion. They came headlong across the open space, cloaks flapping, eyes blazing, knives lifted.

Conan's action was as quick as theirs. As the voice shouted he sprang for the hut door. But they were closer to him than he was to the door, and with one foot on the sill he had to wheel and parry the swipe of a yard-long blade. He split the man's skull—ducked another swinging knife and gutted the wielder—felled a man with his left fist and stabbed another in the belly—and heaved back mightily against the closed door with his shoulders. Hacking blades were nicking chips out of the jambs about his ears, but the door flew open under the impact of his shoulders, and he went stumbling backward into the room. A bearded tribesman, thrusting with all his fury as Conan sprang back, over-reached and pitched head-first through the doorway. Conan stooped, grasped the slack of his garments and hauled him clear, and slammed the door in the faces of the men who came surging into it. Bones snapped under the impact, and the next instant Conan slammed the bolts into place and whirled with desperate haste to meet the man who sprang from the floor and tore into action like a madman.

Yasmina cowered in a corner, staring in horror as the two men fought back and forth across the room, almost trampling her at times; the flash and clangor of their blades filled the room, and outside the mob clamored like a wolf-pack, hacking deafeningly at the bronze door with their long knives, and dashing huge rocks against it. Somebody fetched a tree trunk, and the door began to stagger under the thunderous assault. Yasmina clasped her ears, staring wildly. Violence and fury within, cataclysmic madness without. The stallion in his stall neighed and reared, thundering with his heels against the walls. He wheeled and launched his hoofs through the bars just as the tribesman, backing away from Conan's murderous swipes, stumbled against them. His spine cracked in three places like a rotten branch and he was hurled headlong against the Cimmerian, bearing him backward so that they both crashed to the beaten floor.

Yasmina cried out and ran forward; to her dazed sight it seemed that both were slain. She reached them just as Conan threw aside the corpse and rose. She caught his arm, trembling from head to foot.

"Oh, you live! I thought—I thought you were dead!"

He glanced down at her quickly, into the pale, upturned face and the wide staring dark eyes.

"Why are you trembling?" he demanded. "Why should you care if I live or die?"

A vestige of her poise returned to her, and she drew away, making a rather pitiful attempt at playing the Devi.

"You are preferable to those wolves howling without," she answered, gesturing toward the door, the stone sill of which was beginning to splinter away.

"That won't hold long," he muttered, then turned and went swiftly to the stall of the stallion.

Yasmina clenched her hands and caught her breath as she saw him tear aside the splintered bars and go into the stall with the maddened beast. The stallion reared above him, neighing terribly, hoofs lifted, eyes and teeth flashing and ears laid back, but Conan leaped and caught his mane with a display of sheer strength that seemed impossible, and dragged the beast down on his forelegs. The steed snorted and quivered, but stood still while the man bridled him and clapped on the gold-worked saddle, with the wide silver stirrups.

Wheeling the beast around in the stall, Conan called quickly to Yasmina, and the girl came, sidling nervously past the stallion's heels. Conan was working at the stone wall, talking swiftly as he worked.

"A secret door in the wall here, that not even the Wazuli know about. Yar Afzal showed it to me once when he was drunk. It opens out into the mouth of the ravine behind the hut. Ha!"

As he tugged at a projection that seemed casual, a whole section of the wall slid back on oiled iron runners. Looking through, the girl saw a narrow defile opening in a sheer stone cliff within a few feet of the hut's back wall. Then Conan sprang into the saddle and hauled her up before him. Behind them the great door groaned like a living thing and crashed in, and a yell rang to the roof as the entrance was instantly flooded with hairy faces and knives in hairy fists. And then the great stallion went through the wall like a javelin from a catapult, and thundered into the defile, running low, foam flying from the bit-rings.

That move came as an absolute surprize to the Wazulis. It was a surprize, too, to those stealing down the ravine. It happened so quickly—the hurricane-like charge of the great horse—that a man in a green turban was unable to get out of the way. He went down under the frantic hoofs, and a girl screamed. Conan got one glimpse of her as they thundered by—a slim, dark girl in silk trousers and a jeweled breast-band, flattening herself against the ravine wall. Then the black horse and his riders were gone up the gorge like the spume blown before a storm, and the men who came tumbling through the wall into the defile after them met that which changed their yells of blood-lust to shrill screams of fear and death.

You will not want to miss the powerful chapters in next month's WEIRD TALES that tell of the strange happenings on the Mountain of the Black Seers

The	Jest of Warburg Tantavul

By SEABURY QUINN

A standing woman recoils at a face in the window. A man in a suit stands in the stands in the background.

"You've kept me out thus far, but some day I'll get in, and——"

A tale about an evil old man who reached back from the grave to work his will—a story of Jules de Grandin

Warburg Tantavul was dying. Little more than skin and bones, his face like a mask of parchment drawn drum-tight across his skull, crisscrossed with myriad wrinkles so small and fine and near together that they made shadows instead of lines, he lay propped up with pillows in the big sleigh bed and smiled as though he found the thought of dissolution faintly humorous.

Even in comparatively good health the man was never prepossessing. Now, wasted with disease, that smile of self-sufficient satisfaction mingled with malignant glee upon his face, he was nothing less than hideous. The eyes, which nature gave him, were small, deep-set, and an oddly terrifying shade of yellow; calculating, cruel and ruthless as the yellow orbs of a crafty and ill-natured cat. The mouth, which his own thoughts had fashioned through the years, was wide

One day back in 1925, Seabury Quinn wrote a story called "The Horror on the Links," which was published in WEIRD TALES for October of that year. The story told of a weird and uncanny mystery that was solved by a mercurial, egotistical yet altogether human and likable French scientist named Jules de Grandin. This strange figure—occultist, phantom-lighter and ghost-breaker, defective and physician, vain yet lovable—at once captured the sympathies of our readers, and also fired the imagination of Mr. Quinn, whose literary creation the little Frenchman is. Since "The Horror on the Links" appeared, this magazine has printed more than fifty stories about the weird exploits of the indomitable little Frenchman, and hopes to print as many more in the future. Month after month, year after year, Jules de Grandin has grown in the affections of the reading public, and his appearance in a new story is welcomed by many thousands of de Grandin fans as occasion for rejoicing. If you have not yet made the acquaintance of this strangest and most astonishing defective of fiction, you now have the opportunity to meet him in this story: "The Jest of Warburg Tantavul."

and thin-lipped, almost colorless, and even in repose was always tightly drawn against his small and queerly perfect teeth. Now, as he smiled, a flickering light, lambent as the quick reflection of an unseen flame, flared in his yellow eyes, and a hard white line of teeth showed on his lower lip, as though he bit it to hold back a chuckle.

"And you're still determined that you'll marry Arabella?" he asked his son, fixing his sardonic, mocking smile upon the young man's face.

"Yes, Father, but——"

"No buts, my boy"—this time his chuckle came, low and muted, but at the same time sharp and glassy-hard—"no buts. I've told you I'm against the match, and that you'll rue it to your dying day if you should marry her; but"—he paused, and the breath rasped in his wizened throat—"go ahead and marry her, if you will. I've said my say and warned you—heh, heh, my boy, never say your father didn't warn you!"

He lay back on his piled-up pillows for a moment, swallowing convulsively, as though to force the fleeting life-breath back; then, abruptly: "Get out," he ordered. "Get out and stay out, you poor fool; but remember what I've said."

"Father," young Tantavul began, taking a quick step toward the head of the bed, but the look of concentrated fury mixed with hatred which flashed up in the old man's tawny eyes halted him in midstride.

"Get—out—I—said!" his father snarled; then, as the door closed softly on his son:

"Nurse—hand—me—that—picture." His breath was coming slowly, now, in shallow, labored gasps, but the claw-like fingers of his withered hand writhed in a gesture of command, pointing to the silver-framed photograph of a woman which stood upon a little table in the bedroom window-bay.

He clutched the portrait which she handed him as though it were some precious relic, and for a minute let his yellow eyes rove over it. "Lucy," he whispered hoarsely, and now his words were thick and indistinct, "Lucy, they'll be married, 'spite of all that I have said—they'll be married, Lucy—d'ye hear?" Thin and high-pitched as a child's, his voice rose to a shrill and piping treble as he grasped the picture's heavy silver frame and held it level with his face. "They'll be married, Lucy, my dear, and they'll have——"

Abruptly as a penny whistle's note is stilled when no more air is blown in it, old Tantavul's cry was hushed. The picture, still grasped in his hands, fell to the tufted coverlet with a soft and muffled thud, the man's lean jaw relaxed, and he slumped back on his pile of pillows with a shadow of the mocking smile still showing in his glazing eyes.

Etiquette requires that the nurse await the doctor's confirmation at such times; so, obedient to professional dictates, Miss Williamson stood beside the bed until I felt the dead man's pulse and nodded; then, with the skill of years of practise, she began her offices, bandaging the wrists and jaw and ankles, that the body might be ready when the representative of Martin's Funeral Home came to convey it to the operating-room.

2

My friend de Grandin was annoyed. Arms akimbo, knuckles on hips, forcing back his black-silk kimono till it resembled the outspread wings of an angry bat, he took his stance in the center of the study and voiced his plaint in no uncertain terms. In fifteen little so small minutes he must leave for the theater, and that son and grandson of a pig who was the florist delayed delivery of the gardenia which must grace the left lapel of his evening coat. And was it not indisputably a fact that he could not go forth without a fresh gardenia? But certainly. What was it that the sale chameau was thinking of that he thus procrastinated in delivering that unmentionable flower till this unspeakable time of night? He was Jules de Grandin, he, and not to be oppressed by any species of a goat who called himself a florist. But no. It must not be. It should not be, by blue! He, personally, would seek out the vile one and tweak his ears, pull his nose, thump his head most soundly. He would——

"Axin' yer pardon, sor," Nora McGinnis broke in from the study door, "there's a Miss an' Misther Tantavul to see ye, an'——"

"Bid them be gone. Request that they will fill their pockets full of rocks and jump into the bay, say that we will not see——

"Grand Dieu"—he cut his oratory short—"les enfants dans le bois!"

Truly, there was something reminiscent of the Babes in the Wood about the couple who had followed Nora to the study. Dennis Tantavul looked even younger and more boyish than I remembered him, and the girl beside him was so childish in appearance that I felt a quick, instinctive pity for her. Plainly they were frightened, too, for they clung together, hand to hand, like frightened children going past a graveyard, and in their eyes was that look of helpless, heartsick terror I had seen so often when blood test and X-ray confirmed preliminary diagnosis of carcinoma.

"Monsieur, Mademoiselle," the little Frenchman gathered his kimono and his dignity about him in a single sweeping gesture as he struck his heels together and bowed stiffly from the hips, "I apologize for my unseemly words. Were it not that I have been subjected to a terrible, calamitous misfortune, I should not so far have forgotten myself as to——"

The girl's quick smile cut through his words. "We understand," she reassured; "we, too, have been through trouble, and have come to see Doctor Trowbridge——"

"Ah? Then I have permission to withdraw?" He bowed again and turned upon his heel, but I called him back.

"Perhaps you can assist us," I remarked as I introduced the callers.

"The honor is entirely mine, Mademoiselle," de Grandin told her as he raised her fingers to his lips. "You and Monsieur your brother——"

"But he's not my brother," said the girl. "We're cousins. That's why we called on Doctor Trowbridge."

De Grandin tweaked the already needle-sharp points of his little, blond mustache as he looked at her. "Pardonnez-moi, Mademoiselle," he begged; "I have resided in your country but five little years, and perhaps I do not understand the English fluently. It is because you and Monsieur are cousins that you come to see the doctor? Me, I am dull and stupid like a pig; I fear I do not comprehend."

Dennis Tantavul replied: "It's not because of the relationship, Doctor—not entirely, at any rate, but because——"

He turned to me, a look of mingled fear and wonder in his eyes. "You were at my father's bedside when he died; you remember what he said about my marrying Arabella?"

I nodded.

"There was something—some ghastly, hidden threat—concealed in his warning," he continued. "It seemed as though he were jeering at me—daring me to marry her, yet——"

"Was there some provision in his will?" I asked, and:

"Yes, sir, there was," the young man answered. "Here it is."

From his pocket he produced a sheet of folded parchment, opened it and indicated a paragraph:

To my son, Dennis Tantavul, I give, devise and bequeath all my property of every kind and sort, real, personal and mixed, of which I may die seized and possessed, or to which I may be entitled, in the event of his marrying Arabella Tantavul, but, should he not marry the said Arabella Tantavul, then it is my will that he receive only one-half of my estate, the residue thereof to go to the said Arabella Tantavul, who has made her home with me since childhood and occupied the relationship of daughter to me.

"H'm," I replied, "that looks as if he really wanted you to marry your cousin, even though——"

"And see here, sir," Dennis interrupted, "here's an envelope we found in Father's papers."

Sealed with red wax, the packet of heavy, opaque parchment was addressed:

To my children, Dennis and Arabella Tantavul, to be opened by them upon the occasion of the birth of their first child.

De Grandin's small blue eyes were snapping with that flickering light they showed when he was interested. "Monsieur Dennis," he said, turning the thick envelope over and over between his small, white hands, "Doctor Trowbridge has told me something of your father's death-bed scene. There is a mystery about this business. My suggestion is you read this message now——"

"No, sir, I won't do that," the young man interrupted. "My father didn't love me—sometimes I think he hated me—but I never disobeyed a wish that he expressed, and I don't feel at liberty to do so now. It would be like breaking faith with the dead. But"—he smiled a trifle shamefacedly—"Father's lawyer, Mr. Bainbridge, is out of town on business, and it will be his duty to probate the will. In the meantime, I'd feel better if the will and envelope were in other hands than mine. So we came to Doctor Trowbridge to ask him to take charge of them till Mr. Bainbridge comes from Washington, and meanwhile—"

"Yes, Monsieur, meanwhile?" de Grandin prompted as the young man paused.

"You know human nature, Doctor," Dennis turned to me; "no one can see farther into hidden meanings than the man who sees humanity with its mask off, the way a doctor does. Do you think Father might have been delirious when he warned me not to marry Arabella, or——" His voice trailed off to silence, but his troubled eyes were eloquent.

"H'm," I moved uncomfortably in my chair, "I can't see any reason for your hesitation, Dennis. That bequest of all your father's property in the event you married Arabella would seem to indicate his true feelings." I tried to make my words convincing, but the memory of Warburg Tantavul's dying words dinned in my ears. There had been something gloating in his voice as he told the picture that his son and niece would marry.

De grandin caught the hint of hesitation in my tone. "Monsieur," he asked, "will you not tell us of the antecedents of your father's warning? Doctor Trowbridge is perhaps too near to see the situation clearly. Me, I have no knowledge of your father or your family. You and Mademoiselle are strangely like. The will describes her as having lived with you since childhood. Will you kindly tell us how it came about?"

The Tantavuls were, as he said, strangely similar in appearance. Anyone might easily have taken them for twins. Like as two plaster portraits from the same mold were the delicate features of their faces, the small, straight noses, the delicately curved lips, the curling, pale-gold hair. Arabella wore hers in a close-cut bob; Dennis' hair was slightly longer than the average man's. Strip off his dinner clothes and put them on his cousin, encase him in the simple dinner frock she wore, and not one person in a thousand could tell you which was man and which was woman.

Now, once more hand in hand, they sat before us on the sofa, and, as Dennis began speaking, I saw that frightened, haunted look shine once again in their light eyes.

"Do you remember us as children, sir?" he asked me.

"Yes," I answered. "It must have been some twenty years ago they called me out to see you youngsters. You'd just moved into the old Stephens House, and there was a deal of gossip about the strange gentleman from the West with his two little children and his Chinese cook, who greeted all the neighbors' overtures with churlish rebuffs and never spoke to anyone."

"And what did you think of us, sir?"

"Well, I thought you and your sister—as I thought her then —had as fine a case of measles as I'd ever seen."

"How old were we then, do you remember?"

"Oh, you were something like two years; the little girl was half your age, I'd guess."

"And do you remember the next time you saw us?"

"Yes. You were somewhat older then; eight or ten, I'd say. That time it was the mumps. Queer, quiet little shavers you were. I remember I asked you if you thought you'd like a pickle, and you answered: 'No, it hurts.'"

"It did, too, sir. Every day Father made us eat one; stood over us with a whip till we'd chewed and swallowed the last morsel."

"What!"

The young folks nodded solemnly as Dennis answered. "Yes, sir; every day. He said he wanted to check up the progress we were making."

For a moment he was silent; then: "Doctor Trowbridge, if anyone treated you with studied cruelty all your life—if you'd never had a kind word or gracious act from that person in all your memory, then suddenly that person offered you a favor—made it possible for you to gratify your dearest wish, and threatened to penalize you if you failed to do so, wouldn't you be suspicious? Wouldn't you suspect some sort of dreadful practical joke?"

"I don't think that I quite understand," I answered.

"Very well, then, listen:

"In all my life I can't remember ever having seen my father smile. Not really smile with friendliness, humor or affection, I mean. My life—Arabella's, too—was one long persecution at his hands. I was eighteen months old when we came to Harrisonville, I believe, but I still have vague recollections of our Western home, of a house set high on a hill, overlooking the ocean, and a wall with climbing vines and purple flowers on it, and a pretty lady who would take me in her arms and cuddle me against her breast, and feed me ice-cream from a spoon, sometimes. I have a sort of recollection of a little baby sister in that house, too, but these things are so far back in babyhood that possibly they never really were more than some childish fancy which I built up for myself and which I loved so dearly and so secretly that they finally came to have a kind of reality for me.

"My real memories, the things I can recall with certainty, began with a hurried train trip through hot, dry, uncomfortable country with my father and a strangely silent Chinese servant and a little girl they told me was my cousin Arabella. Little things make big impressions on child-minds, you know, and of all that trip the thing which I remember most is seeing some Indians standing on the platform of a station with pottery and blankets to sell. My father had descended from the car and walked beside the train, and I climbed down after him and tried to run and take his hand. I stumbled over something on the platform and fell and cut my forehead. I called to him for help, but he didn't even turn around, and one of the Indian women lifted me to my feet and wiped the blood from my face with her handkerchief. Then, when the bleeding didn't stop, she tore the handkerchief in half and used it for a bandage. It was the only act of kindness that had been shown me for many a year, and I still have that memento of a savage woman's tenderness somewhere among my childhood's treasures, Doctor.

"Father treated Arabella and me with impartial harshness. We were beaten for the slightest fault; and we had faults a-plenty. If we sat quietly we were accused of sulking and asked why we didn't go and play. If we played and shouted, we were whipped for being noisy little nuisances.

"As we weren't allowed to associate with any of the children in the neighborhood, we made up our own games. I'd be Geraint and Arabella would be Enid of the dove-white feet, or perhaps we'd play that I was Arthur in the Castle Perilous, while she was the kindly Lady of the Lake who gave him back his magic sword. And though we never mentioned it, both of us knew that whatever the adventure was, the false knight I contended with was really my father. But when actual trouble came I wasn't an heroic figure.

"I must have been thirteen years old when I had my last thrashing. A little brook ran through the lower part of our land, and the former owners had widened it into a lily-pond. The flowers had died out years before, but the outlines of the pool remained, and it was our favorite summer play place. We taught ourselves to swim—not very well, of course, but well enough—and as we had no bathing-suits, we used to go in in our underwear. When we'd finished swimming we'd lie out in the sun until our under-things were dry, then don our outer clothing. One afternoon we were splashing in the water, happy as a pair of baby beavers sporting in the woods, and nearer to shouting with laughter than we'd ever been before, I think, when my father suddenly appeared upon the bank.

"'Come out o' there!' he ordered me, and there was a kind of sharp, hard dryness in his voice I'd never heard before. 'So that's the shameless way you spend your time behind my back?' he asked as I climbed up the bank. 'In spite of all I've done to keep you decent, you dared to do a thing like this?'

"'Why, Father, we were only swimming,' I began, but he struck me on the mouth.

"'Be quiet, you young rake!' he roared. 'I'll teach you.'

"Before I realized his intention he'd cut a willow switch, seized me by the neck and thrust my head between his knees; then, while he held me tight as in a vise, he flogged me with the willow lash until the blood came through the skin and stained my soaking cotton singlet. Then he released me and kicked me back into the pool as a heartless master might abuse a dog.

"As I said, I wasn't an heroic figure. It was Arabella who came to my rescue, helped me up the slippery bank, and took my head upon her shoulder. 'Poor Dennie,' she said. 'Poor, poor Dennie. It was my fault, Dennie dear; I never should have let you take me in the water.' Then she kissed me—it was the first time anyone had kissed me since the pretty lady; of my half-remembered dreams—and told me: 'We'll be married, dear, the very day that Uncle Warburg dies, and I'll be so sweet and good to you and you will love me so that we shan't remember any of these cruel things that we have to go through now.'

"We thought my father'd gone away, but he must have stayed to see what we would say; for as Arabella finished speaking he stepped out from behind a clump of rhododendron and then, for the first time, I heard him laugh. 'You'll be married, will you?' he asked jeeringly. 'Well, you'd better not. You'll both wish that the earth had opened and swallowed you if you ever dare to marry.'

"That was the last time he actually struck me, but from that time on he seemed to go out of his way to invent mental torments for us both. We weren't allowed to go to public school, but he had a private tutor, a little rat-faced man named Erickson, come in and give us lessons, and in the evening he would take the book and make us stand before him and recite. If either of us failed to answer promptly when he gave a problem in arithmetic or demanded that we spell a word or conjugate a French or Latin verb, he'd wither us with sarcasm, and always as a finish of his diatribe he'd bring the subject of our marriage up, jeering at us, and hinting at some awful consequence if we went through with what we'd set our hearts upon.

"So, Doctor, you can see," he finished, "why I can't help but suspect that this provision of my father's will is really some sort of horrible practical joke he's planned on us—almost as though he'd planned to force us into a situation which would make it possible for him to laugh at us from the grave."

"I can understand your feelings, boy," I answered, "but——"

"'But' be baked and roasted in the hottest oven hell possesses!" interrupted Jules de Grandin. "The wicked dead one's funeral is at two tomorrow afternoon, n'est-ce-pas?

"Très bien. At eight tomorrow evening—or earlier, if it will be convenient—you shall be married. I shall esteem it a favor if you permit that I shall be best man. Doctor Trowbridge will be there to give the bride away, and we shall have a merry time, by blue! You shall go upon a gorgeous honeymoon and learn how sweet the joys of love can be—sweeter for having been so long denied, pardieu! And in the meantime we shall keep those papers safe for you, and when your lawyer has returned, I shall see that he receives them in due course.

"You fear the so unpleasant joke? Mais non, I think the joke is on the other foot, my friends, and the laugh upon the wicked old one who had thought himself so clever!"

3

Warburg tantavul was neither widely known nor popular, but the solitude in which he had lived had invested him with mystery; now the bars of reticence were down and the walls of isolation broken, upward of a hundred neighbors, mostly women, gathered in the Martin funeral chapel as the services began. The afternoon sun beat softly through the stained glass windows and glinted upon the polished mahogany of the pews. Here and there it touched upon bright spots of color that marked a flower, a woman's hat or a man's tie. The solemn hush was unbroken save for occasional soft sibilations: "What'd he die of? Did he leave much? Were the two young folks his only heirs?"

Then the burial office: "Lord, Thou hast been our refuge from one generation to another . . . for a thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday, seeing it is as a watch in the night. . . . Oh teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom . . ."

As the final Amen sounded, one of Mr. Martin's young men glided forward, paused beside the casket for a moment, and made the stereotyped announcement: "Those who wish to say good-bye to Mr. Tantavul may do so at this time."

The grisly rite of passing by the bier dragged on. I would have left the place, for I had no wish to look upon the man's dead face and folded hands; but de Grandin took me firmly by the elbow, held me back until the final curiosity-impelled female had filed past the body, then steered me quickly to the casket.

The little Frenchman paused beside the bier, and it seemed to me there was a hint of irony in the smile that touched the corners of his mouth as he leant forward. "Eh bien, my old one; we know a secret, thou and I, n'est-ce-pas?" he asked the silent form before us.

I swallowed back an exclamation of dismay. Perhaps it was a trick of the uncertain light, possibly it was one of those ghastly, inexplicable things which every doctor and embalmer meets with sometime in his practise—the effect of desiccation from formaldehyde, the pressure of some tissue gas within the body, or something of the sort—at any rate, as Jules de Grandin spoke the corpse's upper lids drew back the fraction of an inch, revealing slits of yellow eyes, which seemed to glare at us with mingled hate and fury.

"Good heavens; come away!" I begged. "It seemed as if he looked at us, de Grandin!"

"Et puis—and if he did?" he asked me as we left the chapel. "Me, I damn think that I can trade him look for look, my friend. He was clever, that one, I admit it; but do not be mistaken, Jules de Grandin is no one's imbecile."

4

The wedding took place in the rectory of St. Chrysostom's. Robed in stole and surplice, Doctor Bentley glanced benignly from Dennis to Arabella, then to de Grandin and me as he began: "Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God and in the face of this company to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony. . . ." His round and ruddy face grew slightly stern as he continued: "If any man can show just cause why they should not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak or else hereafter for ever hold his peace."

He paused the customary short, dramatic moment, and I thought I saw a hard, grim look spread on Jules de Grandin's face. Very faint and far-off seeming, so faint that we could scarcely hear it, but gaining steadily in strength, there came a high, thin, screaming sound. Curiously, it seemed to me to resemble the long-drawn, wailing shriek of a freight train's whistle heard from miles away upon a still and sultry summer night, weird, wavering and ghastly. Now it seemed to grow in shrillness, though its volume was no greater. High, so high the human ear could scarcely register it, it beat upon our consciousness with a frightful, piercing sharpness. It was like a sick, shrill scream of hellish torment that set the tortured air to quivering till we could not say if we were really hearing it, or if it were but a subjective ringing in our heads.

I saw a look of haunted fright leap into Arabella's eyes, saw Dennis' pale face go paler as the strident whistle sounded shriller and more shrill; then, as it seemed I could endure the stabbing of that needle-sound no longer, it ceased abruptly, giving way to blessed, comforting silence. And through the silence came a peal of chuckling laughter, half breathless, half hysterical, wholly devilish: Huh—hu-u-uh—hu-u-u-u-uh! the final syllable drawn out until it seemed almost a groan.

"The wind, Monsieur le Curé, it is the wind," said Jules de Grandin sharply. "Proceed to marry them, if you will be so kind."

"The wind?" Doctor Bentley echoed incredulously. "Why, I could have sworn I heard somebody laugh, but——"

"It is the wind, Monsieur; it plays strange tricks at times," the little Frenchman answered, his small, blue eyes as hard as frozen iron. "Proceed, if you will be so kind; we wait on you."

"Forasmuch as Dennis and Arabella have consented to be joined together in holy wedlock ... I pronounce them man and wife," concluded Doctor Bentley, and de Grandin, ever gallant, kissed the bride upon the lips, and, before we could restrain him, planted kisses upon both of Dennis' cheeks.

"Parbleu, I thought that we might have the trouble, for a time," he told me as we left the rectory.

"What was that awful, shrieking noise we heard?" I asked.

"It was the wind, my friend," he answered in a hard, fiat, toneless voice. "The ten times damned, but wholly ineffectual wind."

5

So, then, little sinner, weep and wail for the burden of mortality that has befallen thee; weep, wail, cry and breathe, my little wrinkled one. Ha, you will not? Pardieu, I say you shall!"

Gently, but smartly, Jules de Grandin spanked the small red infant's small red posterior with the end of a towel wrung out in hot water, and as the smacking impact sounded, the tiny, toothless mouth opened to its fullest compass, and a thin, high, piping squall of protest sounded.

"Ah, that is better, mon petit ami," the little Frenchman chuckled. "One can not learn too soon that one must do as one is told, not as one wishes, in this world which you have entered. Look to him, Mademoiselle." He passed the wriggling, bawling morsel of humanity to the nurse and turned to me as I bent above the table where Arabella Tantavul lay. "How does the mother, good Friend Trowbridge?" he asked.

"U'm'mp," I answered noncommittally, working furiously. "Poor youngster," I added as Arabella, swathed in blankets, was trundled to her room, "she had a pretty tough time of it, but——"

"But in the morning she will have forgotten!" de Grandin cut in with a laugh. "Ha, have I not seen it? She will gaze upon the little monkey-thing which I just caused to breathe the breath of life, and vow it is the loveliest of all God's lovely creatures. Cordieu, she will hold it at her tender breast and smile on it—she will——

"Sacré nom d'un rat, what is that?"

From the nursery where, ensconced in wire trays twenty new-born fragments of humanity slept or squalled, there came a sudden frightened scream—a woman's cry of terror.

We raced along the corridor, reached the glass-walled room and thrust the door back, taking care to open it no wider than was necessary, lest a draft disturb the carefully conditioned air within the place.

Backed against the farther wall, her face gone gray with fright, the nurse in charge was staring at the skylight with horror-widened eyes, and even as we entered she opened her lips to emit another shriek.

"Stop it, Mademoiselle, you are disturbing your small charges!" De Grandin seized the horrified girl's shoulder and administered a shake. Then:

"What is it that you saw, Mademoiselle," he asked her in a whisper. "Do not be afraid to speak; we shall respect your confidence—but speak softly."

"It—it was up there!" she pointed with a shaking finger toward the black square of the skylight. "They'd just brought Baby Tantavul in and I'd laid him in his crib when I thought I heard somebody laughing. Oh"—she shuddered at the recollection—"it was awful! Not really a laugh, but something more like a long-drawn-out hysterical groan. Did you ever hear a child tickled to exhaustion—how he moans and gasps for breath and laughs, all at once? I think the fiends in hell must laugh like that!"

"Yes, yes, we understand," de Grandin nodded shortly, "but tell us, if you please, what happened next?"

"I looked around the nursery, but I was all alone here with the babies. Then it came again, louder, this time, and seemingly right above me. I looked up at the skylight, and—there it was!

"It was a face, sir—just a face, with no body to it, and it seemed to float in mid-air, just above the glass, then to dip down against it, like a child's balloon drifting in the wind, and it looked right past me down at Baby Tantavul and laughed again."

"A face, Mademoiselle, did you say——"

"Yes, sir, a face — the most awful face I've ever seen. It was thin and wrinkled, and shriveled like a mummy, and its long, gray hair hung down across its forehead, and its eyes were yellow—like a cat's!—and as they looked at Baby Tantavul they seemed to stretch and open till the white of the balls glared all round the yellow irises, and the mouth opened, not widely, but as though it were chewing something that it relished—and it gave that dreadful, cackling, jubilating laugh again. That's it! I couldn't think before, but it seemed as if that bodiless head were laughing with a sort of evil triumph, Doctor de Grandin!"

"H'm," the little Frenchman tweaked his tightly waxed mustache. "I should not wonder if it did, Mademoiselle."

He turned to me, and: "Stay with her, if you please, my friend," he ordered. "I shall see the supervisor and have her send another nurse to keep her company. I shall request a special watch for the small Tantavul. I do not think that there is any danger, but—mice do not play where cats are wakeful."

"Isn't he just lovely?" Arabella Tantavul looked up from the small knob of hairless flesh which rested on her breast, and ecstasy was in her eyes. "I don't believe I ever saw so beautiful a baby!"

"Tiens, Madame, his voice is excellent, at any rate," de Grandin answered with a grin, "and from what one may observe, his appetite is excellent, as well."

Arabella smiled and patted the small creature's back. "You know, I never had a doll in all my life," she told us. "Now I've got this dear little mite, and I'm going to be so happy with him. Oh, I wish Uncle Warburg were alive; I know this darling baby would soften even his hard heart.

"But I mustn't say such things about him, must I? He really wanted Dennis and me to marry, didn't he? His will proved that. You think he wanted us to marry, Doctor?"

"I am persuaded that he did, Madame. Your marriage was his dearest wish, his fondest hope," de Grandin answered solemnly.

"I felt that way, too. He was harsh and cruel to us while we were growing up, and preserved his stony-hearted attitude to the end, but underneath it all there must have been some hidden streak of kindness, some lingering affection for Dennis and me, or he'd never have put that clause into his will——"

"Nor have left this memorandum for you," de Grandin interrupted, drawing from an inner pocket the parchment envelope which Dennis had given him the day before his father's funeral.

The youthful mother started back as though he menaced her with a live scorpion, and instinctively her arms closed protectively about the baby at her breast.

"The—that—letter?" she faltered, her breath coming in short, smothered gasps. "I'd forgotten it. Oh, Doctor de Grandin, burn it. Don't let me see what's in it. I'm afraid!"

It was a bright May morning, without sufficient breeze to stir the budding leaflets on the maple trees outside, but as de Grandin held the letter out I thought I heard the sudden rustle of a wind beyond the window, not loud, but shrewd and keen, like wind among the graveyard evergreens in autumn, and, curiously, there was a note of soft, malicious laughter mingled with it.

The little Frenchman heard it too, and for an instant he looked toward the window, and I thought I saw the flicker of an ugly sneer take form beneath the ends of his mustache.

"Open it, Madame" he bade. "It is for you and Monsieur Dennis, and little Monsieur Bébé here."

"No-o; I daren't——"

"Très bien, then Jules de Grandin does!" Drawing out his penknife he slit the heavy envelope, pressed suddenly against its ends, so that its sides bulged out, and dumped its contents on the counterpane. Ten twenty-dollar bills dropped on the coverlet. And nothing else.

"Two hundred dollars!" Arabella gasped. "Why——"

"As a birthday gift for petit Monsieur Dennis, one surmises," de Grandin smiled, "Eh bien, the old one had a sense of humor underneath his ugly outward shell, it seems. He kept you on the tenterhooks lest the message in this envelope were one of evil import, while all the time it was a present of congratulation."

"But such a gift from Uncle Warburg—I can't understand it!" Arabella murmured wonderingly.

"Perhaps it is as well, Madame," he answered as we rose to go. "Be happy with the gift, and give your ancient uncle credit for at least one act of kindliness. Au 'voir."

"Hanged if I can understand it either," I told him as we left the hospital. "If that old curmudgeon had left a message berating them for fools for having offspring, it would have been more in character, but such a gift—well, I'm surprized."

Amazingly, de Grandin halted in mid-stride and laughed until the tears rolled down his face. "Parbleu, my friend," he told me when he managed to regain his breath, "I do not think that your surprize is half so great as that of Monsieur Warburg Tantavul!"

6

Dennis tantavul regarded me with misery-haunted eyes. "I just can't understand it," he admitted. "It's all so sudden, so utterly——"

"Pardonnez-moi," de Giandin interrupted from the door of the consulting-room, "I could not help but hear your last remark, and if it is not an intrusion——"

"Not at all," the young man answered. "I'd like the benefit of your advice. It's Arabella, and I'm dreadfully afraid that she——"

"Non, do not try it, mon ami," de Grandin warned. "Do you give us the symptoms, let us make the diagnosis. He who acts as his own doctor has a fool for a patient, you know."

"Well, then, here are the facts: This morning Arabella woke me up, crying as though her heart would break. I asked her what the trouble was, and she looked at me as if I were a stranger—no, not exactly that, rather as if I were some dreadful thing she'd suddenly discovered lying by her side. Her eyes were positively round with horror, and when I tried to take her in my arms and comfort her she shrank away as though I were infected with the plague.

"'Oh, Dennie, don't!' she begged, and positively cringed away from me. Then she sprang out of bed, and drew her kimono about her as though she were ashamed to have me see her in pajamas, and ran sobbing from the room.

"Presently I heard her crying in the nursery, and went down there to try and comfort her——" He paused, and tears started to his eyes. "She was standing by the crib where little Dennis lay, looking at him with tears streaming down her cheeks, and in her hand she held a long, sharp steel letter-opener. 'Poor little mite; poor little flower of unpardonable sin,' she said. 'We've got to go, Baby darling; you to limbo, I to hell—oh, God wouldn't, couldn't be so cruel as to damn you for your parents' sin!—but we'll all three suffer torment endlessly, because we didn't know!'

"She raised the knife to plunge it in the little fellow's heart, and he stretched his baby hands out and laughed and cooed as the sunlight glinted on the deadly steel.

"I was on her in an instant, wrenching the knife from her with one hand, holding her against me with the other, but she fought me off.

"'Don't touch me, Dennie, please, please don't!' she begged. 'I know it's deadly sin, but I love you so, my dear, that I can't resist you if I let you put your arms around me.'

"I tried to kiss her, but she hid her face against my shoulder and moaned as if in pain when she felt my lips against her neck. Then she went suddenly limp in my arms, and I carried her, unconscious but moaning pitifully, into her sitting-room and laid her on the couch. I left Sarah, the nurse maid, with her, giving strict orders not to let her leave the room till I returned. Can't you come over right away?"

De Grandin's cigarette had burned down till it threatened his mustache, and in his small, blue eyes was such a look of murderous rage as I had not seen for years. "Bête!" he murmured savagely. "Sale chameau; species of stinking goat! This is his doing, or Jules de Grandin is a lop-eared fool! Come, my friends, let us rush, hasten, fly; I would talk with Madame Arabella!"

"Naw, suh, she's gone," the colored nurse-maid told us when we asked for Arabella. "Master Dennie started ter squeal sumpin awful right after Mistu Dennis lef, an' Ah knowed it wuz time fo' 'is breakfas', so Mis' Arabella wuz lying' nice an' still on th' sofa, an' Ah says to her, Ah says, 'Yuh lay still, dere, now honey, whilst Ah goes an' sees after yo baby; so Ah goes down ter th' nussery an' fixes 'im all up, an' carries 'im back ter th' settin'-room where Miss' Arabella wuz, an' she ain't dere no mo'. Naw, suh."

"I thought I told you——" Dennis began furiously, but de Grandin laid a hand upon his arm.

"Softly, if you please, Monsieur," he soothed. "La bonne did wisely, though she knew it not; she was with the small one all the while, so no harm could come to him. Was it not better so, after what you witnessed in the morning?"

"Ye-es," the other grudgingly admitted. "I suppose so. But Arabella——"

"Let us see if we can find a trace of her," the Frenchman interrupted. "Look, do you miss her clothing?"

Dennis looked about the pretty, chintz-hung room. "Yes," he decided as he finished his inspection; "her dress was on that lounge, and her shoes and stockings on the floor beneath it. They're all gone."

"So," de Grandin nodded. "Distrait as she appeared to be, it is unlikely she would have stopped to dress had she not planned on going out.

"Friend Trowbridge, will you kindly call Police Headquarters, inform them of the situation, and ask to have all exits to the city watched?"

As I picked up the telephone he and Dennis started on a room-by-room inspection of the house.

"Find anything?" I asked as I hung up the 'phone after notifying headquarters.

"Cordieu, I should damn say yes!" de Grandin answered as I joined them in the upstairs living-room. "Look yonder, if you please, my friend."

The room was obviously the intimate apartment of the house. Electric lamps under painted shades were placed beside the big leather-upholstered chairs, ivory-enameled bookshelves lined the walls to a height of four feet or so, upon their tops was a litter of gay, unconsidered little trifles—cinnabar cigarette boxes, bits of hammered brass. Old china, blue and red and purple, glowed mellowly in cabinets of mahogany, its colors catching up and accentuating the muted blues and reds of an antique Hamadan carpet. A Paisley shawl was draped scarfwise across the baby grand piano in the corner.

Directly opposite the door a carven crucifix was standing on the bookcase top. It was an exquisite bit of Italian work, the cross of ebony, the corpus of old ivory, and so perfectly executed that, though it was a scant four inches high, one could note the tense, tortured muscles, the straining throat which overfilled with groans of agony, the brow all knotted and bedewed with the cold sweat of torment. Upon the statue's thorn-crowned head, where it made a bright, iridescent halo, was a band of gem-encrusted platinum, a woman's diamond-studded wedding ring.

"Hélas, it is love's crucifixion!" whispered Jules de Grandin.

Three months went by, and though we kept the search up unremittingly, no trace of Arabella could be found. Dennis Tantavul installed a full-time, highly trained and recommended nurse in his desolate house, and spent his time haunting police stations and newspaper offices. He aged a decade in the ninety days since Arabella left; his shoulders stooped, his footsteps lagged, and a look of never-ending misery dwelt within his eyes as he trod his daily Via Dolorosa, a prematurely old and broken man.

"It's the most uncanny thing I ever saw," I said to Jules de Grandin as we walked through Forty-second Street toward the West Shore Ferry. We had gone over to New York for some surgical supplies, and I do not drive my car in the metropolis. Truck chauffeurs there are far too careless and repair bills for wrecked mudguards far too high. "How a full-grown woman could evaporate that way is something I can't understand," I added as we stepped briskly through the bracing autumn air. "If it had happened twenty years ago there might be some excuse for it, but today, with our radio police-call systems and all the other modern——"

"S-s-st," his sibilated admonition cut me short. "That woman there, my friend, observe her, if you please." He nodded toward a female figure twenty feet ahead of us.

I looked, and wondered at his sudden interest in the draggled hussy.

She was dressed in tawdry finery much the worse for wear. Sleazy silken skirt was much too tight, cheap fur jaquette far too short and snug; high heels of her satin slippers shockingly run over, make-up plastered on her cheeks and lips and eyes, and her short black hair fairly bristled with untidiness beneath the rim of her abbreviated hat. Written unmistakably upon her was the nature of her calling, the oldest and least honorable profession known to womanhood.

"Well?" I answered tartly. "What possible interest can you have in a——"

"Do not walk so fast," he whispered as his fingers closed upon my arm, "and do not raise your voice. I would that we should follow her, but I do not wish that she should know."

The neighborhood was far from savory, and I felt uncommonly conspicuous as we turned from Forty-second Street into Eleventh Avenue in the wake of the young strumpet, followed her provocatively swaying hips down two malodorous blocks, finally paused as she went in the doorway of a filthy, unkempt "rooming-house."

With de Grandin in the lead, stepping softly as a pair of cats, we trailed the woman through the dimly lighted, barren hall and up a flight of shadowy, uncarpeted stairs. We climbed two further flights, the last one letting into a sort of little oblong foyer bounded on one end by the stair-well, on the farther extremity by a barred and very dirty window, and on each side by two sets of sagging, paint-blistered doors. On each of these was pinned a card, handwritten with the many flourishes dear to the chirography of the professional card-writer who still does business in the poorer quarters of our great cities. The air was heavy with the odor of cheap whisky, stale bacon and fried onions.

We made a hasty circuit of the hall, studying the cardboard labels. On the farthest door the notice read Miss Sieglinde.

"Mon Dieu," exclaimed de Grandin, "le mot propre!"

"Eh?" I answered, puzzled.

"Sieglinde, do you not recall her?"

"No-o, I can not say I do. The only Sieglinde I remember is the character in Wagner's Die Walkure who unwittingly became her brother's mistress and——"

"Précisément. Let us enter, if you please." Without pausing to knock, he turned the handle of the door and stepped across the threshold of the squalid room.

The woman sat upon the bed, her hat pushed backward from her brow, a cracked and dirty tumbler in one hand, a whisky bottle poised above it. "Get out!" she ordered thickly. "Get out o' here—I don't want——" A gasp cut short her utterance, and she turned her head away. Then:

"Get t’ell out o' here, you lousy rummies!" she half screamed. "Who d'ye think you are, breakin' into a lady's room like this? Get out, or——"

De Grandin eyed her steadily, and, as her strident order wavered:

"Madame Arabella, we have come to take you home," he told her softly.

"Good Lord, man, you're crazy!" I exclaimed. "Arabella? This——"

"Precisely, my good friend; this is Madame Arabella Tantavul, whom we have sought these many months in vain."

Crossing the room in two quick strides he seized the cringing woman by the shoulders and turned her face up to the window. I looked, and felt a sudden swift attack of nausea.

He was right. Thin to emaciation, her face already lined with the deep-bitten scars of dissipation, the woman on the bed was Arabella Tantavul, though the shocking change wrought in her features and the black dye in her hair had disguised her so I never would have recognized her.

"We have come to take you home, ma pauvre," he repeated. "Your husband——"

"My husband?" Her reply was half a scream. "Oh, dear God, as if I had a husband——"

"And a little one who needs you," the Frenchman interrupted. "You can not leave him so, Madame——"

"I can't? Ah, that's where you're mistaken, Doctor. I can never see him again, in this world or the next. Please, please, go away and forget you found me, or I'll have to drown myself—I've tried it twice already, but my courage failed. But if you try to take me back, or tell Dennis that you saw me——"

"Tell me, Madame," he broke in, "was not your flight caused by a visitation from the dead?"

Her faded brown eyes widened. "How did you know?" she asked.

"Tiens, one may make surmises," he replied. "Will you not tell us just what happened? I think there is a way out of your difficulties."

"There isn't any way," she muttered dully, and her head sank listlessly upon her chest. "He planned his work too well; all that's left for me is death—and damnation afterward."

"But if there were a way—if I could show it to you?"

"Can you repeal the laws of God?"

"I am a very clever person; perhaps I can discover an evasion, if not an absolute repeal. Now, tell me: how and when did Monsieur your late but not lamented uncle, come to you?"

"The night before—before I went away. I woke up about midnight, thinking I heard a cry from Dennie's nursery. I rose to go to him, and when I reached the room where he was sleeping I saw my uncle's face glaring at me through the window. It seemed to be illuminated by a sort of inward, hellish light, for it stood out against the darkness like a jack-o'-lantern, and it smiled an awful smile at me. 'Arabella,' it said, and I could see its thin, dead lips writhe back as though its teeth were burning-hot, 'I've come to tell you that your marriage is a mockery and a lie. The man you married is your brother, and the child you bore is doubly illegitimate. You can't continue living with them, Arabella. That would be an even greater sin than the one you have committed. You must leave them; leave them right away, or'—once more his lips crept back until his teeth were bare—'or I shall come to visit you each night, and when the baby has grown old enough to understand, I'll tell him of his parents' sin. Take your choice, my dear. Leave them and let me go back to my grave in peace, or stay and see me every night, and know that I will tell your son when he is old enough to understand. And if I do it he'll loathe and hate you for the things you are, and curse the day you bore him.'

"’And you'll promise never to come near Dennis or the baby if I go?' I asked.

"He promised, and I staggered back to bed, where I fell fainting.

"Next morning when I wakened I was sure that it had been a dream, but when I looked at Dennis and my own reflection in the glass, I knew it was no dream, but a dreadful visitation from the dead.

"It was then that I went mad. I tried to kill my baby, and when Dennis stopped me I watched my chance to run away, came over to New York and took to this." She looked significantly around the miserably furnished room. "I knew they'd never look for Arabella Tantavul among the sisters of the pavement; I was safer from pursuit right here than if I'd been in Europe or in China."

"But Madame"—de Grandin's voice was vibrant with shocked reproof—"that which you saw was nothing but a dream; a most unpleasant dream, I grant, but still a dream. Look in my eyes, Madame!"

She raised her eyes to his, and I saw his pupils widen, as a cat's do in the dark, saw a line of white outline the cornea, and, responsive to his piercing gaze, beheld her brown eyes set in a fixed stare, first as though in fright, then with a glaze-almost like that of death.

"Attend me, Madame Arabella," he commanded softly. "You are tired—grand Dieu, how tired you are! You have suffered greatly, but you are about to rest. Your memory of that night is gone; so is all memory of all things which have occurred since. You will move and eat and sleep as you are bidden, but of what takes place until I bid you wake you will retain no recollection. Do you hear me, Madame Arabella?"

"I hear," she answered softly, in a small, tired voice.

"Bien. Lie down, my little poor one. Lie down, rest and dream; dream happy dreams of love. Sleep, rest; dream and forget.

"Will you be good enough to 'phone to Doctor Wyckoff?" he asked me. "We shall place her in his sanitarium, wash this sacré dye out of her hair and nurse her back to health; then, when all is ready, we can bear her home and have her take up life—and love—where she left off. None shall be the wiser. This chapter in her life is closed and sealed for ever.

"Each day I'll call upon her and renew hypnotic treatments that she may simulate the mild but curable mental case which we shall tell the good Wyckoff she is. When finally I release her from hypnosis, her mind will be entirely cleared of that bad dream which nearly wrecked her happiness."

7

Arabella Tantavul lay upon the sofa in her charming upstairs living-room, an orchid negligée trimmed in white marabou about her slender shoulders, an eiderdown rug tucked around her feet and knees. Her wedding ring was once more on her finger. Pale with a pallor not to be disguised by the most skilfully applied cosmetics, and with deep violet circles underneath her amber eyes, she lay back listlessly, drinking in the cheerful warmth which emanated from the fire of apple-logs that snapped and crackled on the hearth. Two months of rest in Doctor Wyckoff's sanitarium had erased the marks of dissipation from her face; even as the skilled ministrations of beauticians had restored the yellow luster to her pale-gold hair, but the listlessness which followed her complete breakdown was still upon her like the weakness from a fever.

"I can't remember anything about my illness, Doctor Trowbridge," she told me with a weary little smile, "but vaguely I connect it with some dreadful dream I had. And"—she wrinkled her smooth forehead in an effort at remembrance—"I think I had a rather dreadful dream last night, but——"

"Ah-ha?" de Grandin leant abruptly forward in his chair, his little mustache twitching like the whiskers of an irritated tom-cat. "What was it that you dreamed?"

"I—don't—know," she answered slowly. "Odd, isn't it, how you can remember that a dream was so unpleasant, but can't recall its details? Somehow, I connect Uncle Warburg with it, but——"

"Parbleu, your uncle? Again? Ah bah, he makes me to be so mad, that one!"

"It is time we went, my friend," de Grandin told me as the tall clock in the hall beat out its tenth deliberate stroke; "we have important duties to perform."

"For goodness' sake," I protested, "where are you going at this time of night?"

"Where but to Monsieur Tantavul's?" he answered with a smile that had small humor in it. "I am expectant of a visitor tonight and—we must be ready for him."

When he was in a mood like this I knew that questioning would be a waste of breath; accordingly I drove him to the Tantavuls' in silence, knowing he would have an explanation when he deemed the time had come.

"Is Madame Arabella sleeping?" he asked as Dennis met us in the hall.

"Yes, like a baby," answered the young husband. "I've been sitting by her all evening, and I don't believe she's even turned in bed."

"And did you keep the window closed, as I requested?"

"Yes, sir; closed and latched."

"Bien. Await us here, mon brave; we shall rejoin you presently."

He led the way to Arabella's bedroom, removed the wrappings from a bulky parcel, and displayed the object thus disclosed with the air of a magician about to do a trick. "You see him?" he demanded proudly. "Is he not a beauty?"

"Why—what the deuce?—it's nothing but a window-screen," I answered.

"Ah, but it is made of copper," he informed me, as though explaining something of inordinate importance.

"Well——"

"Well? Pardieu, I shall say it is well; it is very exceedingly well, my friend. Observe him, how he works."

From his kit bag he produced a reel of insulated wire, an electrical transformer and a set of tools. Working quickly, he passe-partouted the screen's wooden frame with electrician's tape, then plugged a wire into a near-by lamp socket, connected it with the transformer, and from the latter led a double strand of cotton-wrapped wire to the screen. This he clipped firmly to the copper meshes and led a third wire to the metal grille of the heat register. Last of all, he filled a bulb-syringe with water and sprayed the screen from it, repeating the dousings till the woven copper sparkled like a cobweb in the morning sun. "Now, Monsieur le Revenant, I damn think we are ready for you," he announced, surveying his handiwork with every sign of satisfaction.

We waited quietly for something like an hour; then de Grandin rose and bent above the bed where Arabella slept.

"Madame!"

The girl stirred faintly, murmuring some half-audible response, and:

"In half an hour you will rise," he told her in a low, insistent voice. "You will put on your robe and stand before the window, but on no account will you go near it or lay hands on it. Should anyone address you from outside, you will reply, but you will not remember what you say or what is said to you."

He motioned me to follow him, and we left the room, taking station in the hallway just outside.

How long we waited I have no idea. Perhaps it was an hour, perhaps less; at any rate, the silent vigil seemed unending, and I raised my hand to stifle a tremendous yawn, when:

"Yes, Uncle Warburg, I can hear you," we heard Arabella saying softly in the room beyond the door.

We tiptoed to the entry: Arabella Tantavul stood before the window, looking fixedly at its darkened square, and beyond her, framed in the window-casing as a masterpiece of horror might be framed for exhibition, glared the face of Warburg Tantavul.

It was dead, there was no doubt about it. In the sunken cheeks, the pinched-in nose and the yellowish-gray skin there showed the evidence of death and early putrefaction, but dead though it was, it was also animated with a dreadful sort of life. The eyes were glaring horribly, as though illuminated with some inward phosphorescence, and they bulged forward in their sunken sockets as though a throttling hand were clutching at the dead thing's throat. The lips were red—red as rouge—but they were not red with life; they were dead, and painted with fresh blood.

"You hear me, do ye?" he demanded, and the ruddy, foam-flecked lips writhed across his yellow teeth. "Then listen, girl; you broke your bargain with me, now I'm come to keep my threat: Every time you kiss your husband"—a shriek of bitter laughter cut his words, and his staring, starting eyes half closed with hellish merriment—"or the child you love so well, my shadow will be on you. You've kept me out thus far, but some day I'll get in, and——"

Once more the foam-dyed lips writhed across the gleaming teeth, and the lean, dead jaw dropped downward, then snapped up, as though it champed on living flesh; then, suddenly, the whole expression of the corpse-face changed. Surprize, incredulous delight, anticipation, as before a feast, were pictured on it. "Why"—its cachinnating laughter sent a chill down my spine—"why, you're window's open now! You've changed the screen, and I can enter!"

Slowly, like a child's balloon stirred by a vagrant wind, the dreadful face moved closer to the window, and I noted with a nauseated start that it was bodiless. Closer, closer to the screen it came, and Arabella Tantavul gave ground before it, shuddering with nameless dread, putting up her hands to shield her eyes from the laughing thing which menaced her.

"Sapristi," swore de Grandin softly, his fingers clenched about my elbow till they numbed my arm. "Come on, my old and evil one; come a little nearer; only one so little tiny step, and——"

The dead thing floated closer. Now its mocking mouth and shriveled, pointed nose were pressing against the screen; now they seemed to filter through the copper meshes like a wisp of fog——

There came a blinding flash of blue-white flame, the cracking, sputtering gush of fusing metal, a wild, despairing shriek which ended ere it fairly started in a sob of mortal torment, and the sharp and acrid odor of burned flesh!

"Arabella—darling—is she all right?" Dennis Tantavul came charging up the stairs. "I thought I heard a scream——"

"You did, Monsieur," de Grandin answered, "but I do not think that you will ever hear its repetition, unless you are so unfortunate as to go to hell when your earthly pilgrimage is ended."

"What was it?" began Dennis, but de Grandin stopped him with a smile.

"One who thought himself a clever jester pressed his jest a bit too far," he answered enigmatically. "Meantime, look to Madame your wife. See how peacefully she lies upon her bed. Her time for evil dreams is past, my friend. Be kind to her, do not forget that a woman loves to have a lover, even though he is her husband." He bent and kissed the sleeping girl upon the brow, and:

"Au 'voir, my little lovely one," he murmured. Then, to me:

"Come, Trowbrdige, my good friend. Our work is finished here; let us leave them to their happiness."

8

Jules de Grandin poured an ounce or so of Couvoisier into a lotus-bud shaped brandy sniffer and passed the goblet back and forth beneath his nose, inhaling the rich fragrance of the brandy. "Morbleu, old Omar had it right," he told me with a grin; "what is it that the distillers buy one-half so precious as the stuff they sell?"

"And when you get through misquoting poetry, perhaps you'll deign to tell me what it's all about?" I countered.

"Perhaps I shall," he answered. "Attend me, if you please: You will recall that this annoying Monsieur Who Was Dead Yet Not Dead appeared several times and grinned most horribly through the window? Through the window, please remember. At the hospital, where he

1. Minutes of the Bowdoinham Association, held at the Baptist Meeting House, in Livermore, September 26th, and 27th, 1810. Portland: Printed by J. McKown, 1810. Page 5.
2. The same, page 7.
3. Minutes of the Bowdoinham Association, held in Readfield, September 25 and 26, 1811. Hallowell: Printed by N. Cheever, 1811. Page 5.
4. Minutes of the Lincoln Association, holden at Woolwich, September 18 and 19, 1811. Buckstown (Penobscot River). Printed by Anthony H. Holland, 1811. Page 5.
5. Minutes of the Cumberland Association, holden at the Baptist Meeting-house in North Yarmouth, October 2 and 3, 1811. Portland Printed by J. McKown, 1811. Page 6.
6. Words in brackets scratched out in petition.
7. Words in brackets scratched.
8. Words in brackets scratched.
9. Words in brackets scratched.
10. See below, Amendments.
11. Scratched out.
12. Scratched out.
13. Scratched out.
14. Enoch Mudge, of Orrington.
15. Ezekiel G. Dodge, of Thomaston.
16. Words in brackets crossed out.
17. Words in brackets crossed out.
18. The report of the committee to which was submitted the petition of 1819 for further aid makes this quite clear.
19. Word in brackets crossed out in original.
20. Words in brackets were crossed off in original. Portions printed in italics were amended out of the charter. Letters in parentheses refer to list of amendments given later.
21. History of the Baptists in Maine, p. 168.
22. The charter in its final form has been so often re-printed that it is unnecessary to give it here.
23. In his "History of Higher Education in Maine," p. 99.
24. See file "Senate 4713" in Massachusetts Archives.
25. See file "House 7574" in Massachusetts Archives.
26. Third Series, original edition, vol. i. p. 76.
27. Phil. Trans. 1776, p. 196.
28. Ibid. 1801, p. 434.
29. Annales de Chimie, 1826, p. 62, etc.
30. Phil. Trans. 1832, p. 282, note.
31. Phil. Trans. 1829, p. 17. "Common electricity is excited upon nonconductors, and is readily carried off by conductors and imperfect conductors. Voltaic electricity is excited upon combinations of perfect and imperfect conductors, and is only transmitted by perfect conductors or imperfect conductors of the best kind. Magnetism, if it be a form of electricity, belongs only to perfect conductors; and, in its modifications, to a peculiar class of them." (Dr. Ritchie has shown this is not the case, Phil. Trans. 1832, p. 294.) "Animal electricity resides only in the imperfect conductors forming the organs of living animals, etc."
32. Phil. Trans. 1832, p. 259. Dr. Davy, in making experiments on the torpedo, obtains effects the same as those produced by common and voltaic electricity, and says that in its magnetic and chemical power it does not seem to be essentially peculiar,—p. 274; but he then says, p. 275, there are other points of difference: and after referring to them, adds, "How are these differences to be explained? Do they admit of explanation similar to that advanced by Mr. Cavendish in his theory of the torpedo; or may we suppose, according to the analogy of the solar ray, that the electrical power, whether excited by the common machine, or by the voltaic battery, or by the torpedo, is not a simple power, but a combination of powers, which may occur variously associated, and produce all the varieties of electricity with which we are acquainted?"

    At p. 279 of the same volume of Transactions is Dr. Ritchie's paper, from which the following are extracts: "Common electricity is diffused over the surface of the metal;—voltaic electricity exists within the metal. Free electricity is conducted over the surface of the thinnest gold leaf as effectually as over a mass of metal having the same surface;—voltaic electricity requires thickness of metal for its conduction," p. 280: and again, "The supposed analogy between common and voltaic electricity, which was so eagerly traced after the invention of the pile, completely fails in this case, which was thought to afford the most striking resemblance," p. 291.

33. Elements of Chemical Philosophy.
34. Ibid. p. 154.
35. Philosophical Transactions, 1827, p. 18. Edinburgh Transactions, 1831. Harris on a New Electrometer, etc., etc.
36. Demonferrand's Manuel d' Electricité dynamique, p. 121.
37. Annales de Chimie, xxxiii. p. 62.
38. The galvanometer was roughly made, yet sufficiently delicate in its indications. The wire was of copper covered with silk, and made sixteen or eighteen convolutions. Two sewing-needles were magnetised and fixed on to a stem of dried grass parallel to each other, but in opposite directions, and about half an inch apart; this system was suspended by a fibre of unspun silk, so that the lower needle should be between the convolutions of the multiplier, and the upper above them. The latter was by much the most powerful magnet, and gave terrestrial direction to the whole; fig. 3 represents the direction of the wire and of the needles when the instrument was placed in the magnetic meridian: the ends of the wires are marked A and B. The letters S and N designate the south and north ends of the needle when affected merely by terrestrial magnetism; the end N is therefore the marked pole. The whole instrument was protected by a glass jar, and stood about eight feet from, and about sixteen or seventeen degrees on one side of, the large magnet (which was composed of about 450 bar magnets, fifteen inches long, one inch wide, and half an inch thick, arranged in a box so as to present at one of its extremities two external poles).
39. Philosophical Transactions, 1801, pp. 427, 434.
40. Ibid. 1801, p. 429.
41. Nicholson's Journal, 410, vol. i. pp. 241, 299, 349.
42. Or even from thirty to forty.
43. Bibliothèque Universelle, 1830, tome xlv. p. 213.
44. Philosophical Transactions, 1831, p. 165.
45. Annales de Chimie, 1. p. 322.
46. Ibid. li. p. 77.
47. A combination of helices was constructed upon a hollow cylinder of pasteboard: there were eight lengths of copper wire, containing altogether 220 feet; four of these helices were connected end to end, and then with the galvanometer; the other intervening four were also connected end to end, and the battery of one hundred pairs discharged through them.
48. Phil. Mag. and Annals, 1832, vol. xi. p. 405.
49. Land, and Edinb. Phil. Mag. and Journ. 1832, vol. i. p. 161.
50. Ibid. 1832, vol. i. p. 441.
51. Annales de Chimie, li. p. 77.
52. Ibid. li. p. 72.
53. Bibliothèque Universelle, xxxvii. 15.
54. Philosophical Transactions, 1773, p. 461.
55. Ibid. 1775, p. 1.
56. Ibid. 1776, p. 196.
57. Ibid. 1829, p. 15.
58. Ibid. 1832, p. 259.
59. Philosophical Transactions, 1832, p. 260.
60. Edinburgh Phil. Journal, ii. p. 249.
61. Mr. Brayley, who referred me to these statements, and has extensive knowledge of recorded facts, is unacquainted with any further account relating to them.
62. The term quantity in electricity is perhaps sufficiently definite as to sense; the term intensity is more difficult to define strictly. I am using the terms in their ordinary and accepted meaning.
63. Many of the spaces in this table originally left blank may now be filled. Thus with thermo-electricity, Botto made magnets and obtained polar chemical decomposition: Antinori produced the spark; and if it has not been done before, Mr. Watkins has recently heated a wire in Harris's thermo-electrometer. In respect to animal electricity, Matteucci and Linari have obtained the spark from the torpedo, and I have recently procured it from the gymnotus: Dr. Davy has observed the heating power of the current from the torpedo. I have therefore filled up these spaces with crosses, in a different position to the others originally in the table. There remain but five spaces unmarked, two under attraction and repulsion, and three under discharge by hot air; and though these effects have not yet been obtained, it is a necessary conclusion that they must be possible, since the spark corresponding to them has been procured. For when a discharge across cold air can occur, that intensity which is the only essential additional requisite for the other effects must be. present.—December 13, 1838.
64. In further illustration of this subject, see 590-608 in Part V.—December 1838.
65. The great and general value of the galvanometer, as an actual measure of the electricity passing through it, either continuously or interruptedly, must be evident from a consideration of these two conclusions. As constructed by Professor Ritchie with glass threads (see Philosophical Transactions, 1830, p. 218, and Quarterly Journal of Science, New Series, vol. i. p. 29), it apparently seems to leave nothing unsupplied in its own department.
66. Quarterly Journal of Science, New Series, vol. i. p. 33.
67. Plymouth Transactions, p. 22.
68. Of course the heightened power of the voltaic battery was necessary to compensate for the bad conductor now interposed.
69. Fourth Series, original edition, vol. i. p. no.
70. In 1801, Sir H. Davy knew that "dry nitre, caustic potash, and soda are conductors of galvanism when rendered fluid by a high degree of heat" (Journals of the Royal Institution, 1802, p. 53), but was not aware of the general law which I have been engaged in developing. It is remarkable, that eleven years after that, he should say, "There are no fluids known except such as contain water, which are capable of being made the medium of connection between the metal or metals of the voltaic apparatus."—Elements of Chemical Philosophy, p. 169.
71. See 414, etc., etc.—December 1838.
72. In reference to this § refer to paragraph 718, and the results connected with it.—December 1838.
73. Philosophical Transactions, 1821, p. 431.
74. Annales de Chimie, xxi. pp. 127, 178.
75. See the next part of these Experimental Researches.
76. It is just possible that this case may, by more delicate experiment, hereafter disappear.
77. Fifth Series, original edition, vol. i. p. 127.
78. Refer to the note after paragraph 783. December 1838.