“Now what I have to propose to you, Jean Lescaut, is this,--to-morrow at noon you are to go to the electric chair where 1800 volts of electricity will be sent through your body. At eleven o’clock to-morrow I will come to your cell and put you into an hypnotic sleep. You will go to the chair, show all the symptoms and effects of a person electrocuted, and you will apparently be dead. In reality, however, you will only be asleep. And, as I can easily obtain your body from the prison doctor on the pretense of using it for dissection purposes, I can then awaken you.” The prisoner leaned over and clutched the doctor’s arm so tightly that he winced. “And what then?” he whispered eagerly. “Then, as I have just said, I will awaken you. I will have proven that a certain theory of mine is correct or false, and you will have obtained your liberty, for I shall not hinder you from going where you will after the experiment is over. But I must first try and see if I can get control of you. You may not be susceptible to my influence.” An hour later the turnkey came to inform Van Horne that his hour had expired, and the preliminary trial must have been a success, for there was a smile of triumph on the doctor’s face as he bade the prisoner good day. Next day an hour previous to the time set for the electrocution of Jean Lescaut, Doctor Van Horne again visited the prisoner in his cell. At twelve o’clock two attendants came and conducted him to the fatal room. The reporters and prison officials present remarked on the calmness of the doomed man. He walked to the chair without assistance, and submitted to the strapping down and adjusting of the sponges and electrodes without a tremor. When all was ready the warden stepped to the side of the chair. “Jean Lescaut,” said he, “I am about to give the signal for you to be sent into eternity. Have you anything to say?” The man in the chair shook his head. The warden stepped back out of sight and made a sign to an assistant behind the screen. A switch was thrown on and the voltmeter registered that nearly 2000 volts of electricity were passing through the hooded figure in the chair. The warden held his watch in his hand, glancing first at it, then at Lescaut. At the end of eight seconds he made another sign, and the man at the switch cut off the current. The prison doctor stepped up from one side and examined the body carefully. “Justice is satisfied. I pronounce Jean Lescaut dead,” he said solemnly, and motioning to two of the attendants, he bade them carry away the body. That night, in a dissecting room in the suburbs of Albany, a crowd of scientific men assembled at the invitation of Doctor Van Horne to witness an important experiment. No one knew what that experiment was to be; but every one had accepted the invitation, for Van Horne had a high reputation among his colleagues.