Jode's mad is one of those steaming ones which one word let out will result in an explosion. There is hardly a word exchanged until we get to the next town and I have pulled up at its swankiest hotel. Then I get out of the car and I say: "Well, so-long, Jode!" "No, you don't!" pants Jode, grabbing me. "We got to settle this! You got to do something about it! You come along!" We register, getting rooms next to each other. Jode comes in my room, boiling, and sits down grim. The seat ain't comfortable. Then I blink. Jode is removing large, thick packages of banknotes--folding money--from the hip pockets of the sailor pants. They go on the table. They are impressive. "Where'd that come from?" I ask, trying to postpone things. "Mr. Vachti," says Jode, grim, "was all set to pay fifty grand just to see proof that the elixir of youth worked. He told the Prof that. He taunted him with it. He waved the cash in front of his face and repeated, sneering, that he was ready to pay it just to see proof. Well--I'm proof, of a sort. He saw me. So when I went in the house to put on these clothes I stopped by where he'd locked it up. I'm entitled to it. But--you Buck! How did this happen to me?" * * * * * I feel very much embarrassed but I have got it figured out more or less. I say, uncomfortable: "Well-l-l, Jode," I says, "I guess it was because there ain't any real mandrake in America. Ashes of mandrake was called for, and I couldn't get any, so I hunted up a weed that is right much like mandrake. May-apple is what they call it. I used that. It's a close cousin, but it musta lacked one of those catalysts or anticatalysts real mandrake woulda had--" Jode grabs me and shakes hard. "What happened! And how is it gonna be fixed?" Reluctant, I haul a notebook outa my pocket. I open up to where I copied old Hermes Trismigestus' formula for making the elixir of youth. "Look," I say. "The formula is headed, _To Make an Olde Manne a Youthe Againe_. It gives the directions I tried to follow. I--uh--I guess the answer is in this here last paragraph I come close to not copying at all. Uh--it says at the end, _To Make an Aged Crone into a Younge Damsel: the formula is ye same, excepte ye ashe of mandrake is to bee lefte oute_."