When he stood up again Phadrig went on in the same quiet impersonal voice: "Now, ladies and gentlemen, you know that this rose is of a pale cream colour slightly tinted with red.

It shall now grow into a tree bearing both red and white roses.

It will not be necessary for me to touch it." This somehow appealed more closely to such imagination as the majority of the spectators possessed.

They had regarded the other marvels they had seen merely as bewilderingly clever examples of legerdemain: but for a man to make a single sprig of rose grow into a tree bearing both red and white roses without even touching it meant something quite unbelievable--until they had seen it.

Instinctively the circle narrowed, and Phadrig noting this, said: "Pray, come as close as you like, ladies and gentlemen, as long as you do not pass my guardians, for they have undertaken that you shall not be deceived." The result was that a smaller circle was formed round the square, at the angles of which stood Merrill and the three men of science.