“No--no more talk. You just get ready for your last sprint. This farce is played out. The last act is over. The curtain’s rung down. Alonzo Leffingwell, the wise man of Kankakee flats is no more. Bring on the--flowers--your ‘Gates Ajar’ and the other pin-wheels. The pallbearers are without. The baked meats are on the sideboard--mourners in line, and hark you to the funeral march,-- “Fare-well for-ev-er to old Kan-ka-kee, Fare-well, my Lonnie-Bird, don’t wait for me.” As the hand of the avenger had touched the lever he had burst forth into impassioned song. And there was more truth than either poetry or music in his improvisation. For the cruel energy of this modern executioner was beginning to tell upon its ethereal victim. Never in his varied career had that polished and elegant gentleman been so completely “in the whirl.” There were now subtle but certain changes and transformations taking place in his attenuated substance. The gay, gallant and fascinating sojourner from the Orient was slowly but surely undergoing some character of transmutation. “Now, once for all, and finally,”--resumed Bill, bending forward to readjust some part of the machinery,--“Once again and for the last time I say to you, that you must make up your mind,--no, rather your everlasting substance--to your fearful and final experiences as an individual, as an astral man, as a NEE--go. You have proclaimed that all is spirit. I contend that--ALL--IS--MATTER, and HERE SHE GOES.” But she didn’t go. As these last fierce words of Bill Vanderhook cut the air like whip strokes, the unhappy prisoner trembled with fear. With one mighty effort of will he gathered his forces into one last effort to break his bonds. But in vain. He writhed, struggled, twisted and swayed in the unequal contest. But he was bound, as securely bound by the invisible chain of electricity, as was ever the manacled criminal in the strong, barred dungeon. He was rooted to the rim of that fearful aura of his mechanical captor. Lifting his eyes and his hands toward the ceiling, the despairing captive raised all that remained of his voice in one last wild, weird cry of supplication:-- “Master, Master, why hast thou forsaken me?” And what had stayed the avenger’s hand as it reached again to press the fatal button? Was it that wild cry, or the wild _words_ that stayed the bloodless executioner in that torture chamber? Or,--was it the sudden infusion of another element, of another force, of another individuality superior to the little learning and the little arts of both the modern mystic and the modern scientist? For, at that instant, in a flash of time, occurred a curious thing. The echoes of the Mystic’s wail were still resounding among the jars and jugs when Mr. Vanderhook might have been seen to stagger, to relax, to waver as he stood, to reach blindly for a chair, and then, to crumple up and drop gently upon the floor, to close his eyes, to sleep.