And he, Virdow, what a dreamer! For in that German brain of subtleties lived, with the clearness of an incandescent light in the depths of a coal mine, one mighty purpose; one so vast, so potent in its possibilities, as to shake the throne of reason, a resolution to follow upon the path of mind and wake a memory never touched in the history of science. It was not an ambition; it was a leap toward the gates of heaven! For what cared he that his name might shine forever in the annals of history if he could claim of his own mind the record of its wanderings? The future was not his thought. What he sought was the memory of the past! He went in now, secure of the possibility of disturbing the sleeper, and stood looking down into the room's appointments; there were the two profiles on either side of the mirror; upon the floor the shivered fragments of the hand-glass. Virdow returned to his room, but before leaving he took from the little box one of the pellets and swallowed it. If he was to know that mind, he must acquaint himself with its conditions. He had never before swallowed the drug; he took this as the Frenchman received the attenuated virus of hydrophobia from the hands of Pasteur--in the interest of science and the human race. As he lay upon his bed he felt a languor steal upon him, saw in far dreams cool meadows and flowery slopes, felt the solace of perfect repose envelop him. And then he stood beside a stream of running water under the shade of the trees, with the familiar hills of youth along the horizon. A young woman came and stood above the stream and looked intently upon its glassy surface. Her feature were indistinct. Drawing near he, too, looked into the water, and there at his feet was the sad, sweet face of--Marion Evan. He turned and then looked closer at the woman; he saw in her arms the figure of an infant, over whose face she had drawn a fold of her gown. She shook her head as he extended his hand to remove this and pointed behind her. There the grass ran out and only white sand appeared, with no break to the horizon. Toiling on through this, with a bowed head, was a female figure. He knew her; she was Rita, and the burden she, too, carried in her arms was the form of a child. The figures disappeared and a leaf floated down the stream; twenty-six in succession followed, and then he saw a man descending the mountains and coming forward, his eyes fixed on something beyond him. It was Edward. He looked in the same direction; there was a frail man toiling toward him through the deep sands in the hot sunlight. It was Gerald. And then the figures faded away. There memory ceased to record. Whatever else was the experience of that eager mind as it wandered on through the mystery, and phantasmagoria has no place in science. He remembered in the morning up to one point only. It was his last experience with the drug. CHAPTER XXVI. GATHERING THE CLEWS.