hat year we were all Romans, and I have to tell you that I look awful in a toga and short sword, but not nearly as awful as the Greek. You go to one of the big schools and naturally you turn out for the Class Reunion. Why not? There's money there, and good fellowship, and money, and the chance of a business contact that will do you some good. And money. Well, I wasn't that fortunate—and you can say that again because it's the story of my life: I wasn't that fortunate. I didn't go to Harvard, Pri

ell, there were business reverses. Due to the reverses, I was forced to miss the next few reunions. But I had a lot of time to think and study, in between times at the farm and the shop where we stamped out license plates for the state. When I got out, I began looking for El Greco. I spent six months at it, and I didn't have any luck at all. El Greco had moved his laboratory and left no forwarding address. But I wanted to find him. I wanted it so badly, I could taste it, because I had begun to h

o I went to work for Theobald Greco—in his laboratory in Southern California, where we replaced some of the things that had been destroyed. And one morning I woke up and found my hair was white. I cried, "Greek!" Minnie came running in. I don't believe I told you about Minnie. She was Greco's idea of the perfect laboratory assistant—stupid, old, worthless to the world and without visible kin. She came in and stared and set up a cackling that would wake the dead. "Mister Hampstead!" she chortled.

he world was topsy-turvy, and in the middle of it Minnie disappeared, talking hysterically about reporting us to the authorities. I don't mind admitting that I was worried. And the experiments were not progressing. The trouble seemed to be that the two varieties of demons—the aging and the youthing—were not compatible; if one took up residence in a given section of an organism, the other moved out. The more numerous destroyed the weaker; there was no balance. We tested it again and again in the