Arnbush looked on, astonished. The temperature of the night had changed. A faint premonition of the morning was on the way. There was a suggestion of chill entering through the window. And there was silence. The dim flame of the gas jet overhead and the candle on the table threw a flickering arc of light about the pale hand, the clay pipe with its bowl of seed sitting in the flame, and the big, nearly naked, head extended toward them. And while the distiller watched, there appeared, at the mouth end of the pipe stem, a drop of green. It lengthened and widened slowly until it hung there like a pear-shaped emerald. The chemist removed the pipe from the flame of the candle. “That is circine,” he said. “It is present in all vegetable life, especially in the seed. Any of the plants of the Ambrosia family are rich in it. I have used here the common green seed of the ragweed and a little heat. “But I bid you mark that in this form the circine is not free. It is locked up in the molecule. If you tasted this drop of green, it would be bitter and have no effect. The circine is, as I have said, cased off in the molecule. It must be freed to have any virtue.” He rose, got a broken-handled cup and from a plate beside it a pinch of substance that looked like a gray mold, pulverized it between his fingers, placed it in the cup, and added the drop of green liquid on the pipe stem. He warmed the cup above the candle, and presently, when he had finished, handed it to Arnbush. Within lay a globule of the golden fluid! “Here,” he said, “we have the circine free. Taste it.” He took the cup and added a little water. The distiller touched it to his lips, and with a great effort of the will replaced it on the table. In his mouth was, again, the taste of that rich, heavenly liquor, seasoned, an age long, in some hidden cask. The chemist went back to his stool. “The substance I have added to the drop of green is a fungus culture. Among the innumerable varieties of fungi there is, alone, one culture which has the power to destroy the shell about the molecule and set the incased circine free. And as it happens, this fungus is of almost universal distribution; is as available as bread mold.” He paused, and added: “As I have said, circine is the very commonest of all elements, and the simplest to obtain. A workman can make it with his pipe, adding a pinch of this fungus—as I have shown you with these humble implements.” The chemist paused and resumed his posture, his chin gathered into his hand; his eyes, diminished by the thick lenses, on Arnbush, in that reflective watching as of one looking from a window. And the distiller saw, in a vast sweep of vision, the effect of this discovery.