The chemist was undisturbed. “Drink it,” he said. Arnbush leaned over and drank off the fluid, And at once every sensation in his body changed: a warm glow extended to his fingers; there was soft, insidious stimulation, and the fatigue of his exertions vanished. And there was more than this. The ego in the man was elevated. It took on dominance and majesty; bothered and hectored, heretofore, it was now a king. And the spirit of the man, rising as though newly born in some womb of the sun, realized that this was the thing that every human creature tasting of liquors eternally longed for. It was the thing for which the world had been going to alcohol to seek—the supreme, moving motive of all drunkenness! It released, and strengthened, and ennobled that thing within the human body which every man thinks of as himself. Or at least it seemed like that to Arnbush. And there was with this heavenly taste of liquor the alluring enchantment of a drug. The world softened and became a place of pleasure, but it was the pleasure of a mental dominance, and it was the softness of a plastic kingdom. The individuality in the man was glorified. What alcohol promised, this amazing fluid gave! Arnbush put down the empty glass, and regarded the chemist, across the table, with a growing wonder. “You have found it!” he said. It was the comment of one who finds a treasure; the comment of one who, after a doubtful search, looks down on a heap of gold-pieces gleaming under the broken lid-boards of a chest. “You have found it!” It was the supreme expression of a victory immense and final. He had now within his hand the ruin of his enemies. And the stimulated ego in the man exulted. He would destroy their victory over him beyond the wildest conceptions of disaster. They were now trapped and huddled, and the weapon was in his hand. His revenge stood out a shining figure before his face! No need now for the trust fund in a death testament. He should live to see it. And he put the eager query, foremost in his mind. “Is it difficult to manufacture?” The chemist had been sitting with his elbow on the table, his jaw bedded in the fork of his hand, his pale eyes behind the myopic lenses on Arnbush. It was a strange reflective watching, as of one who was beyond the common motives of a normal life; as of one who sat at a window, before a world that it no longer interested him to enter, or out of which he had been ejected—and who, being thus, had found a medium for vicarious influence. He replied without a change in his peculiar posture. “It is the widest distributed of all known elements,” he said, “and the easiest to isolate.... Anybody can make it and the material is before every door. I bid you observe how simple the process is.” He removed his hand, drew forth a drawer in the table and took out a candle, an ordinary clay pipe and some green, little seed. He packed the seed into the pipe bowl with his thumb and set it above the flame.