"All right," said Cyrus, keeping on with his work and not turning his head. To avoid all risk of hitting the sides of the skylight--for he must rise with apparently unexpected suddenness--he stepped outside the building. With a smile and a nod he said to Dr. Alton: "If you never saw a real angel, Doctor, here's your chance." As he put his fingers to the button Cyrus came running out. "Stop! Hold on Luther! Let go! That's not adjusted!" But Luther was not to be thwarted at the high tide of victory--with riches within reach. He put his fingers to the button and said, with a smile: "Oh, I know how it----" The sentence was never finished. He had given the slightest turn, having a sensible fear of the unknown force within. In his haste he must have turned it a fraction more than he intended. For then happened the unprecedented thing--the thing without parallel in human life; so awful, so solemn, so unearthly, that the two men who saw it stood dumb in horror. As he was speaking, with the smile on his lips, he was lifted from the earth by the straps beneath his arms with a violence that stopped his speech--and his breathing. Up he shot, more like a cannon ball than a rocket. So fast he went, gaining speed with every second, growing smaller and fainter to the two spectators, until--and it all happened in the shortest minute--he disappeared, a tiny speck in the blue sky above. He had no chance to change his speed. His straw hat, with its crimson band,--like a frivolous friend too light of heart for sudden tragedy--came tumbling earthward, then floated off to the west in playful, easy spirals. A gay farewell to a lifeless body. For death had been instantaneous. [Illustration: "--AND GLIDE FOREVER, A HOMELESS VAGRANT THROUGH THE DUSKY VOID"--_Page 171_] Dr. Alton and Cyrus stood looking upward--at the spot in the heavens where Luther had disappeared from earthly vision. It was hard to believe what their eyes had seen. And when, in silent horror, they looked into each other's faces, both knew that this sudden traveler had started on a darker and a longer voyage than any previous explorer; that he was moving at a speed unknown to other mortals, and that his journey would never end. Both knew that within the hour he would be beyond the orbit of the earth; that the power propelling him felt no exhaustion. Unless colliding with other celestial derelicts, or drawn into the path of some distant planet--Neptune or Uranus--he would push further out into the Infinite. Then, would he join some starry host, off toward the Milky Way, the Southern Cross or Orion's Belt, and glide forever, a homeless vagrant through the dusky void?