I returned to complete consciousness and realized I was lying in Judge Biggert's room, in his bed, exactly as he had been that morning when I was called there. My head was in a sort of cast.

The dreary routine of the chamber had two merciful interruptions each day. In the morning Doc Davis took an X-ray photograph of my brain to send to Doctor Bantling, so that the great surgeon himself could see the progress I was making. In the late afternoon Doc invariably returned to talk to me.

This had happened many times before it occurred to me that I might reply to him or ask him questions. It was a peculiar feeling I experienced when I realized I had the power of speech. It may be compared only to suddenly becoming master of a foreign tongue, if one can imagine picking up an alien language in a minute. I had lain there quietly, thinking of a lawsuit, while Doc told me the village gossip. It was a sultry July after

noon.

Almost every one has gone to the lake," said Doc casually.

"What became of Judge Biggert?" I demanded. My question astonished me, because I had had no will to speak before my lips formed the words. It made Doc jump out of his chair.

Then his face lighted up as I had never seen it before. "Thank God, you can talk, after all."

He called the day nurse. "Phone Doctor Bantling and tell him Mr. Jameson can talk." Then Doc hesitated. "Never mind. The phone is leaky. I'll write him."

"What became of Judge Biggert?" persisted my lips, almost without my own knowledge.

"He died, of course. He died. ing else possible.'

"When?"

Noth

"Before the operation was completed." "Did they give him a big funeral? Who were the bearers? What did Judge Kinney say?" My questions poured out.

Doc answered as fast as he could. "And did I really get Judge Biggert's brain?" I demanded, breaking in upon him.

He looked at me strangely. "Did I?"

"If you hadn't," Doc spoke slowly, "you wouldn't have asked me what became of him. You wouldn't have cared."

"So I have his brain and he's gone." I spoke very slowly, the potentialities of the situation developing as I looked ahead.

Doc seemed to force himself to smile. "Yes. Yes. He's gone." He paused. "Physically he's gone. I saw him buried." Then his tone changed. "You've talked enough for to-day. I'll let you ask questions for half an hour to-morrow, if you'll be quiet until then."

The next afternoon I was almost beside myself with impatience.

"Tell me about the operation," was my first order. The question roused every atom of his professional instinct.

"It was a marvel. And to think I was fortunate enough to see it! He cut open your skull, Peter. Some day, when you're stronger, I'll show you the X-rays of it and explain the details. In the meantime Judge Biggert had died. So they had to work desperately fast. He cut out a portion of the frontal convolutions of your cerebral cortex. The other surgeon, the assistant, had done the same to Judge Biggert. Then Doctor Bantling made the transfer. Before I could believe my eyes Judge Biggert's brain was in place in your skull. Damn it. He's a real surgeon. I wish Doctor Bantling would leave his brain to me."

"If you're renting bust space in the Hall of Fame," I replied easily, "why forget the judge and me? The doctor experimented on us, not on himself. That's the way with you stomach plumbers. You can bury the evidence against you and advertise your good luck. My hat's off to the victims. If I could handle the law on the same basis I'd brag I never lost a case and no one could prove I lied until Resurrection Day."

Doc's expression was a study. His mouth twisted as if he didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

"What's the matter?" I demanded. "Nobody knows a doctor's mistakes until Resurrection Dav." he repeated stupidly.

"Isn't it so?"

"You don't understand. Your mind is working just as his did. That's the very phrase he used the morning before I went

to the court-house to find you. The very same words he used, and I swear that you sneered just as the judge did."

"Why not? I'm his mind. Did you fancy it would behave differently because it had a good-looking face in front of it?"

"Peter"-Doc spoke with genuine concern-"it hurts me because you're not my friend any more. You're not you."

"What of it? You've changed me for a good cash patient. Better than a dozen friends."

"You wouldn't have said that before this happened."

"I wouldn't have known enough." Doc was depressed when he went away. The news that I could talk brought Doctor Bantling for a visit. He wished to see the progress I was making. I enjoyed hours of conversation with him and was delighted when he and Doc decided that I could read as much as I liked. But I found that certain avenues of entertainment were now closed to me.

For instance, I had followed sports, particularly baseball, and always turned to the sporting pages as soon as I seized a morning paper. This was no longer true. On the other hand, I became a keen student of international politics. I asked Doc to subscribe to the London Times for me, and I read the ponderous expositions upon the League of Nations with a very real appreciation of the points involved.

One day I told the nurse to bring me some adventure stories. I had delighted in them. Her choice was a new volume of detective yarns which she had been reading herself. Of their kind, they were very good indeed. In the old days I would have read the book from cover to cover. But I could not interest myself in them, and, without knowing why, for I was scarcely familiar with the title, I asked for Voltaire's "Philosophical Dictionary." I found the page margins fairly covered with pencilled notes and comments in the judge's handwriting. I read it for hours with the keenest enjoyment.

I mentioned this incident to Doctor Bantling and Doc Davis the next day, and they nodded a mutual "I told you so" to each other.

"Your mind is now seventy-odd years old," said Doctor Bantling. "You don't

care for these modern writers because your mind is so much more brilliant than theirs. You see the solution before the premise is stated. I fancy there are not more than six or seven writers you'll care to bother with."

As I have learned since, he was right. Voltaire, Ibsen, Tom Paine, Franklin, Gibbon, Guizot, Thackeray, Balzac, Schopenhauer, Turgenieff hold my attention. Naturally I was familiar with the idea of a changed or dual personality as it has been developed by novelists. The writers are all fools. It is easy to see the thing has never happened to them. No man's imagination is fantastic enough to conjure up the contradictions I found within myself at every turn.

Judge Biggert's reasoning power I certainly inherited or acquired, put it any way you like. But I received no part of his memory. I could infer where a reference should be found and, turning there, would see the passage marked. But I could not recall having marked it or having read it before.

When Doctor Bantling placed so many ounces of brain tissue in my skull, he seemed to have picked the "forwardlooking" portion of the judge's brain and left the memory-cells to perish with the other units of the old man's body. Doctor Bantling admitted that this result was largely accidental and could not have been foreseen.

Adventurers talk of the fascination of the unknown jungles of the Amazon country. I cannot understand their interest. The really absorbing field for exploration lies in the bewildering tangle of nervecells and fibres in the human brain, so many of them that it would take the lifetime of a dozen Methuselahs to count them.

It was while I was talking to the two doctors about this that I suddenly remembered my own tangled affairs.

"How are things at my office?" I asked Doc. "Did the bank extend my note? And that board bill. I don't like to keep the poor woman waiting."

"Oh, that's all taken care of," he replied. "I'm the judge's executor."

"Don't you have to account for it?" "Do you want me to account to you?" Doc laughed. "You're the sole heir."

"His heir?" I was thunderstruck. "So this house, his car, his money, everything, all belongs to me?"

I simply could not believe it. I, Peter Jameson, had fallen into a fortune and had not been conscious of it-I, who had shined my own shoes and smoked cigars only on holidays.

"Certainly," Doctor Bantling spoke. "I supposed you knew. He had no near relatives and everything went to you. The will was offered for probate two weeks after the funeral."

"What made you think I knew? You never told me and I've seen no one else.' Doc looked at Bantling perplexed. "I wonder why we didn't. I suppose it is because he seemed so close to the judge's thoughts in many ways that we took it for granted he sensed it."

Doctor Bantling began to speak. "The judge left the property to you because he didn't want your mind, I mean his mind, occupied with the problem of making a living. He anticipated that you'd achieve a national reputation sooner if you were not bothered with bread-and-butter details. That is really the secret of it all. He knew he had the ability to become an international figure, but his earlier years were spoiled by the drudgery of making a living. When he had a comfortable income assured he was physically too old to chase fame. His idea was that you were to continue where he left off. Since you have his fortune you can afford to take cases that won't pay but which will bring you reputation."

"So all I have to worry about is yellow cabs on crosswalks," I returned. "There must be a catch to this somewhere, but I don't see it."

"Peter," said Doc earnestly, "it's your salvation that you don't see it now and never will."

Except the doctors, my first caller was Doris Eastman. I had forgotten all about her until one evening Doc Davis arranged to have her admitted without warning me in advance. The sentimental old fool knew how I had urged her to use me for dog meat in the past and he supposed he was doing me a real favor in bringing us. together again.

With an indecent lack of preamble she began to discuss my new possessions.

"You've inherited everything?" she asked. "House, collections, and all?" "Yes."

"Tell me about it."

"What you want is an inventory of my effects." Without another word I reached for pad and pencil and paid no further attention to her until I had listed all the judge's possessions that I could remember. Then I passed the sheet to her.

"This may give you a rough idea, but you'll have to see the appraisers to get an accurate valuation. Sorry I can't give you a list of the stocks, bonds, and securities. I don't know anything about them myself yet. Suppose I drop a line to the executor and ask him to furnish you a certified copy of the list."

She gasped. "Why, Peter. Surely you don't think that I . what makes you talk so strangely?" Her face was a study.

"I just wanted to assure you that I have enough to keep a wife in any kind of pernicious leisure she chooses to be maintained in.”

"Peter, what do you mean?"

If I had wanted a decorative mistress as a wife I would have bought her then. She so obviously expected me to bid for her.

I admire a woman who goes after the man she wants with intelligence and finesse; but Doris was bungling her own job and making herself ludicrous.

"Not only can I afford to keep a wife, but I can afford to divorce her and pay. alimony."

That made her start again. "You're thinking about a divorce before you're even married?"

"Those are the only terms I would think of a wife in."

"I don't like to hear you talk that way." Her tone was grieved and angry. Having no more sense of humor than an owl, satire and sarcasm were beyond her. Since she could not understand them, she resented them.

After a few minutes she made another attack.

"With all this property to care for I can understand how you'll need some one to help you, especially at first, before you're strong again. Although I admit you've improved as a business man."

"As a business proposition is what you mean."

"Peter, I believe you're clever, although I never used to think so."

"I seem to recall that you expressed your opinion on that subject once before." I laughed to myself as I realized that she was patronizing Judge Biggert's intelligence. She continued to talk about my future, but I did not bother to listen. She is a pretty animal, clear-skinned, bright-eyed, and clever with her clothes. Outside she is crisp and exquisite enough, but it is only outside. Her mind is dowdy. At last she looked at her wrist-watch and rose to go. "The doctor said I must not stay too long and tire you," she said with a great air of solicitude. Then she waited to have me assure her that I I wished her to stay.

I remained silent. "I'll come again soon; that is, of course, if you want me to." Her tone was a nice combination of eagerness, hope, entreaty,

concern, with just a touch of her old air of assurance which I once admired and envied. It was the best bit of work she had done that evening.

"You're quite right when you suggest I need another person to help me," I began.

"Another person?" she blushed. The little fool thought I was working up to a proposal, as I had so often worked up to them before.

"Yes."

"What kind of a person?"

"Any kind. Man or woman, who's intelligent and interesting to talk to." "I wonder if I know any one," said she to encourage me.

"I doubt it," I replied, "because you bore me. Good night."

There is not even any sport in tormenting as second-rate an intelligence as hers. She might be good enough for Peter Jameson, but Judge Biggert's mind considered her subnormal.

HE difficult thing for us, here in Merivale, has always been to look at Margaret and Martin Jessup together, and to try to figure what it was that got them into the state of matrimony. It must be one of those matters governed by the moon or the stars, the marriages of bluff, kindly fellows like Martin. You'll see them wedded to little, acid lemon wives, or big, wholesome apple wives, or slender fragrant-flower wives, or unprepossessing dried-fruit wives, without their seeming to have any uniformity of type sense at all. One thing only they have in common. Invariably they christen her, whether lush, citrous, or dried fruit-invariably they christen her Baby Girl and set out to wait on her.

Martin Jessup must always have been the perfect pattern of the type. He probably treated Margaret before marriage like a three-months-old baby, cuddling her, trying to make her smile, and keeping an alert eye for bumps and draughts. At marriage-twenty years ago!-he doubtless promoted her into the six-months-old class, and there she is to this day. He still waits on her, still shields her from bumps and draughts, still laughs hugely when he can coax her to smile. He may be said now and then to set her up, figuratively speaking, in her carriage or high chair and say to her playfully, "Look here, young lady, isn't it about time you learned to sit up alone?" He may go this far, in the privacy of their own dwelling, but the likelihood is that he merely laughs hugely when his baby plumps immediately over again with a frightened baby stare which says plainer than words can speak that she cannot, no, she really cannot learn to sit up alone. She threatens to cry. He

cuddles her. She's his Baby Girl, and he's abused her!

Trust the Women's Club to know all about it. We've pooled our observations, and we know. Margaret Jessup was twenty-seven when Martin married her, and she's forty-seven now. They've lived in our town twelve years and she hasn't changed a bit in that time, except for fading out a little. She came to us a Baby Girl and a Baby Girl she is to this day.

It took our breath away at first, the discovery. I remember how we all sat in Lydia Chatman's living-room on the day of the reception tea for Margaret Jessup. Some of us had called on her and tongues were discreetly busy. It was considerate of her to be a little late! We decided among ourselves that Margaret was going to be a big asset to the club.

"You can tell she's an executive by that forehead," Lydia Chatman said placidly. Lydia is of all our members the one least inclined to be an executive.

"Her very hands look capable," said Peg Effingham, looking at her own small, white, plump hands ruefully, if a little fondly.

"She's imposing. She has presence, put in Agnes Wright curtly. "One can just see her paralyzing the school board into giving us the hall for half price, or even nothing. She's that type of woman, and that's the type we need." Agnes looked around rather accusingly.

"Oh, any one can see she'll be useful." Anne Miller voiced the general opinion. "You can't mistake that look of intelligence. She has fine eyes."

It was at this point that a taxi appeared down at the end of the Chatman walk. A taxi! The discussion of Margaret Jessup was dropped and we looked at Lydia inquiringly. That meant some one from out of town. When our town women went to the city they used taxis, of