“It is strange--mighty strange. Now and then I get a faint glimmering of something that took place before I was eight years of age, but it’s so hazy that it seems like it happened to some one else instead of me. And it seemed that, when I gradually regained my memory, I was being born all over again. I had the mind of a child of two or three, though I was over twelve years old. I remembered nothing of what had been taught me in the private school that they told me I had once attended. I had to begin my schooling at the very bottom again. Lord, how they made me cram! I studied night and day, and seemed eager enough to learn. They tell me that I have caught up because of my perpetual digging--that I now have the mentality of a normal man of my age. And so for the past year I have studied very little, and have been catching up on the physical end. I have lived in the open months at a time, and frequently Doctor Shonto has been with me. He likes it himself, and he likes to be with me. And I can tell you right here and now that I think Doctor Inman Shonto the greatest man alive!” “I’ll bet you do,” said Charmian warmly. “But it strikes me as rather strange that you should never call him Doc, since you two are so close.” “I guess I’d never think of calling him that,” said Andy reflectively. “No, that wouldn’t seem the proper thing to do.” “What do you do when you’re at home, Mr. Jerome?” “Why, I hope to become a lawyer some day,” he replied. “You see, I’m still a student. I’ve studied law a little and mean to take up a regular course next year. But for the present my parents and Doctor Shonto think it best for me to loaf around outdoors.” “I suppose your folks are wealthy,” said Charmian in her frank way. “Yes, they’re accounted so. Pop has retired. He was a candy and cracker manufacturer. I’d like to have you meet my mother. She’s a peach. You’d like her. She’d like you, too.” “And so your hero is Doctor Inman Shonto,” mused Charmian. “I wonder if it would be proper for me to ask you about his work, after he himself has refused to tell me anything?” “Precious little I can tell you,” laughed Andy. “But I’ll do my best. If Doctor Shonto has any secrets, they’re safe with me because I couldn’t explain them if I wanted to. Fire ahead. Doctor Shonto doesn’t like to talk about himself. He’s entirely too modest.” “I wanted to ask you,” said the girl, “if Doctor Shonto is in any way responsible for the horrible things I have read about in the papers lately. Rich men hiring thugs to waylay strong, healthy men, knock them out, and take them to doctors, who operate on them and steal their glands, which are substituted for the worn-out glands of the rich men?” “Nothing doing!” loyally cried Andy. “Doctor Shonto says the most of that news is nothing but hot air. No, he never uses human glands in his work. He uses sheep glands exclusively. And the animals are killed before he cuts the glands out of them.” “Are you positive?”