“Aha!--your Astral Mate got a move on him that time. Go ask him if he has any fresh data on affinities. Ask him how he likes this newest _attraction_.” “Brute!”--and, dashing past her husband, the distracted lady rushed to the rescue of her primordial mate. She flung herself wildly into the workshop from which she had been so long excluded. The picture presented to her gaze as she crossed the threshold struck terror to her soul. All at once Mrs. Vanderhook felt weak as boiled water. She clasped her hands in frantic protest. “Get onto his curves” bawled Bill. “What d’ye think of your Lonnie Bird now? He’s off his perch, ain’t he? Never miss a Mystic when he moults. And here’s your Lonnie Lammie--at shearing time. Here’s your little piggy-wiggy on a hook. Here’s your-r-r-r”--and the angry husband wound himself up in a knot of words and spluttered off into monosyllabic ravings. Angry and frightened and bewildered by the very unusual scene, Mrs. Vanderhook staggered, moaned a couple of times, and crumpled up over against a big empty packing case. It would have been a braver woman who could look unmoved upon the revenge of the Kankakee druggist. In the center of a long, narrow room strewn with jugs, jars, bottles and chemical apparatus, whirled a small and curious cylinder, a little black machine that gave off a trail of glittering sparks upon the brilliant atmosphere, a tiny monster that sang and purred and whizzed in its dizzy revolutions. It was not, however, this curious machine that attracted the attention of Mrs. Vanderhook. It was neither the brightness, nor energy, nor speed, nor the whizziness of the things in the room that spellbound her. It was the novel attachment of that satanic cylinder which riveted her gaze and temporarily paralyzed her vocal organs. The ethereal despoiler of the Vanderhook home had, indeed, gotten a move on himself. He was “in the air,” and no mistake. At a distance of perhaps ten feet from the revolving cylinder swung the gay Gnani of Gingalee. He was suspended in the air without visible sign of support, and was following the rotary motion of the machine; which meant that he was appearing and disappearing through the floor and ceiling of the room with a rate of motion akin to that Bill Vanderhook was giving the machine. Even the woman, though unfamiliar with theories of electro-dynamics, realized at once that this whirling cylinder possessed electro-magnetic attraction for astral substance. All at once she realized that the Mystic had been captured by the Mayor; that the wise man was in the toils of the druggist. Alas, and alas, the mystical lover was in the clutches of the scientific husband. “You nasty thing!” sobbed Mrs. Vanderhook wildly. And as the awfulness of the situation grew upon her, love lent her courage. She darted past her husband’s outstretched hand and flung herself forward to the rescue of her Mate.