The night following this discovery, a light appeared in the granary. Edgar, peering from his chamber window, perceived a demoniacal figure, smashing and demolishing everything the little shop contained. Even as he looked, it lifted a small instrument, which represented months of patient labour, and threw it with a crash to the floor. Instantly Edgar was out of the house. He scampered across the yard, his night gear fluttering in the light of the pale moon. Emil at that moment caught up the sea-water device and sent it crashing through the doorway. Being made largely of glass, the instrument shivered into a million minute fragments. Edgar and his wife and children, who had flocked to his side, covered their eyes. When they looked again, through the dust that still hung in the air, they beheld a bent figure, lit up by the gleam of the lantern, still moving in a whirl of rubbish. Edgar in his scant raiment danced up and down. "Thief!" he hissed. For an instant the boy paused in his diabolical work: "Thief!" He burst into terrifying laughter. With one final wrench he brought down the work-bench and flung it across the pile; then kneeling, he applied a match to the mass. Crackling flames leaped upward. He got to his feet and stood with his figure silhouetted against the red glow. In that hour he had destroyed something more precious than his inventions, his books and all his little workmen's kit in which he had taken such pride. That which had gone down in flames hotter than those which raged around him, was the essential quality which is youth. Such searing emotions are the death of adolescence. He was visibly trembling. The hair was matted above the eyes which he lifted. Without a word he darted past them and disappeared into the night. A quarter of a mile from the house he met his mother. She was waiting for him in the darkness. Quivering all over she took him in her long arms. But his anger had already subsided and he felt stealing over him a new and gratifying sense of release. "Don't, Mother," he whispered hoarsely, "it was bound to come,--and you'll see--I'll soon send for you." Her tears distressed him. For this cheated, baffled, frail and suffering mother who asked but one thing, that his ambition be gratified, Emil's feeling was fiercely paternal. It was the solitary oasis in a nature devoid of all other affections. He caressed her with his hands, but presently he held them up before her. "With these," he whispered, "and with this," and he touched his forehead, "I'll do something. You'll see. The world needs me," he cried. The world needed him! At that moment he felt that he could grasp the universe, instinct with unknown laws, and plunging his mind into it could drag forth some hitherto undiscovered force.