_Furniss._ Just as my cousins have bred those wild beasts of theirs out of such harmless creatures as poor Tommy’s ancestors. _Leopold._ Just so. _Furniss._ And you think that we can contend successfully against such enemies. _Leopold._ Why not? They can only have nature to work upon. And very likely their only advantage over us is that they know more of nature than we do. They cannot go beyond the limits of nature to do less or more. As long as we sought after spells and enchantments and that sort of nonsense we were very much at their mercy. But we are now learning to fight them with their own weapons, which consist of the knowledge of nature. Witness vaccination, and witness also our little victory over the red sickness. _Furniss._ You’re a queer mixture, Leopold, but we must get back to the picnic people. And so they got up and went back together to the dancers, nodding to me as they went. I sat there for awhile, going over and over the conversation in my mind and putting together my own thoughts and Mr. Leopold’s. Then I joined the company and was merry as the merriest for the remainder of the day. But that night I dreamt of strange-looking clouds and of the shadows of invisible cars, and of demons riding in the cars and sowing the seeds of pestilence on the earth and catching away such evil specimens of humanity as James Redpath to reinforce the ranks of their own malignant order. CHAPTER III. AT SEA. It is my purpose to pass briefly over everything in my own history which does not concern the tale that I have to tell, and there is very little therefore for me to say about the seven or eight years which followed upon the events at Penruddock which I have just recorded. I went in due course to Oxford, where I stayed the usual time. I did not make any great failures there, nor did I gain much distinction. I was a diligent reader, but much of my reading was outside the regulation lines. The literature of my own country, the poetry of mediæval Italy, and the philosophy of modern Germany, more than divided my attention with classics and mathematics. Novels, mostly of the sensational type, amused me in vacations and on holidays, but very seldom found their way into my working days.