His rage at the failure of his plan was deep and bitter. With Leola dead, all his plans would come to naught. Old Bennett would foreclose the mortgage and ruin him. In his old age he must go forth a beggar into the world, friendless, and without a place to lay his head. Through this terrible trick of fate all his plans and aspirations must be wrecked, and science lose, perhaps, the magnificent discoveries to which he had devoted his life. No wonder he was filled with a blind fury against Chester Olyphant, through whose treachery Leola’s death had come to pass, thus thwarting all his plans for future gain. He shut the treatise, whose reading had been so fatefully interrupted, and went out to watch for Chester Olyphant with murder in his heart. But while he had been talking with Jessie, and putting away his precious treatise, time had slipped faster than he knew. Olyphant, who had met the doctor close by in the road, had quickly returned with him, and he had gone up to Leola’s room. The young man, himself a prey to the bitterest anxiety, with hope and fear commingled, was waiting in the wide, sunny hall for news, when he came face to face with the grim master of the house, like a ravening lion seeking for prey. He forced a smile upon his pallid lips, and exclaimed, eagerly: “Ah. Mr. Hermann, I have been wishing to see you, sir. I”-- He got no further, for Wizard Hermann, temporarily mad with baffled hope and bitter resentment, suddenly raised his hand, in whose clenched fingers gleamed a heavy iron instrument, and in an access of fury struck unerringly at the brown, curly head bent courteously before him. It was a blow that might have felled an ox. Chester Olyphant, taken off guard, ignorant of the fact that he was in the presence of one temporarily or morally insane, received the blow full, and went down before it without a struggle, yielding up life in one short, choking gasp, that was like a thunder-clap in the ears of his foe. For, all in a moment, there came over the frenzied murderer a wild realization of his deadly crime, and bending down to peer at the still, white face of the fallen man, he groaned in horror of his sin and its consequences: “Dead! dead! Why, I did not mean to strike so hard! I--I--never thought one blow could kill! What shall I do? No one must find me here. I must fly”-- At this incoherent moment, while he was rising from the body of his victim, there came slouching through the wide, sunny hall the figure of his man of all work, Joslyn, a strange, hideous, taciturn man, yet devoted to his master’s service through many thankless years. Joslyn stopped and stared in bewilderment, glaring at the uncanny scene. Wizard Hermann, peering up at him in consternation, whimpered like a beaten hound: “I didn’t mean to hit so hard. He--he--was too easy to kill! If they find me here they’ll hang me for murder! Save me! save me! Joslyn!”