"Madame, and sir," said the judge, "as Mr. Amidon's friend and legal adviser, I am here to protect his interests." "So! Goot!" said the professor. "Bud te matter under gonsideration is psychical, nod beguniary. Howefer, if you are interested in te realm of te supliminal, if you care for mental science----" "Sir," said the judge, "I may almost claim to be a specialist (so far as a country practitioner is permitted to specialize) in senile and paretic dementia, since I had the honor to represent the proponents in the will case of Snoke versus Snoke. But it's only fair to say that I regard hypnotism as humbug--only fair." "Goot, goot!" said the professor delightedly. "To temonstrate to an honest ant indellichent skeptic, is te rarest of brifileches. Ve vill now broceed to temonstrate. Here is our friendt Herr Amidon avokened in a car after fife years of lostness; he has anodder man's dotes, anodder man's dicket, letters--unt all. He gomes to Madame le Claire ant Blatherwick. He is hypnotized out of te Amidon blane of being, ant into anodder. He is mate to gife himself avay. Now ve vill broceed to dell aboudt his life since he vas lost--is it a dest, no?" "Huh!" snorted the judge. "Go on," cried Amidon; "tell me the story!" "Vell," said the professor, "for four veeks after you left Elm Springs Chunction, you vandered--not, Clara?" "Wandered," said Clara, "and to so many places that I can't remember them. Then you found oil, or traces of it--I can't get that very plainly--on a farm at Bunn's Ferry, Pennsylvania; and bought an option on the farm. Then you opened an office in Bellevale, and have been there in the oil business ever since. "How's he been doin' financially?" interjected the judge. "He has made a fortune," said Clara. "I believe him to be one of the principal men of the town, socially and in a business way. He didn't tell me this, but we think the circumstances seem to indicate it." "Te saircumstances," said the professor, filling a pause, "show it." "How is it," said the judge, "that no one has ever heard of his Bellevale career out in Hazelhurst, if he's so prominent? We read, out there, and once in a while one of us goes outside the corporation." "His name," said Madame le Claire, "in Bellevale is not Florian Amidon." "What is it?" cried Amidon. "Tell it to me!" Madame le Claire restrained him with a calm glance. "It is Eugene Brassfield," said she. "It is your own dotes," cried the professor gleefully, "your own dicket, your own gorrespondence!" Amidon was feeling in his breast-pocket for something. He withdrew his hand, holding in it a letter, and looked from it to Madame le Claire questioningly. "Oh, yes!" said she, not quite in her usual manner, "it's yours. It's from Miss Elizabeth Waldron, of Bellevale, your affianced wife." "Aha!" said the judge. "Now will you get mad when I speak of a double life? Engaged, hey?"