"
"So you are going to try a little alchemy yourself, are you?"
"Perhaps; who knows? At any rate, my good friend, I am forever
indebted to you for your assistance, and even more for your
discretion, and if I succeed you shall be the first person in the
world to hear the news."
XII
BETTER THAN ALCHEMY
I come now to a part of my narrative which would have been deemed
altogether incredible in those closing years of the nineteenth century
that witnessed the first steps towards the solution of the deepest
mysteries of the ether, although men even then held in their hands,
without knowing it, powers which, after they had been mastered and
before use had made them familiar, seemed no less than godlike.
For six months after Hall's departure for San Francisco I heard
nothing from him. Notwithstanding my intense desire to know what he
was doing, I did not seek to disturb him in his retirement. In the
meantime things ran on as usual in the world, only a ripple being
caused by renewed discoveries of small nuggets of artemisium on the
Tetons, a fact which recalled to my mind the remark of my friend when
he dislodged a flake of the metal from a crevice during our ascent of
the peak.
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