"This is my engagement ring," she said. "It's a very precious
symbol, for Quimbleton explained to me that the amethyst is a
talisman against drunkenness. I looked it up in the dictionary,
and found that he was right. As long as I wear this ring the
departed spirits have no ill effect upon me. But I sometimes
wonder," she added with a sigh, "whether Virgil really loves me
for myself, or only as a kind of swinging door into the spirit
world."

The car was now approaching an open belt of country. Behind them
lay the dark line of pine woods; far off, across a wide shimmer of
sun and sandy fields sweetened by purple clover; and flowering
grasses, was a blue ribbon of sea. But even in this remote shelf
of New Jersey the implacable hand of Chuff was at work. From a
meadow near by they saw an observation balloon going up and the
windlass unwinding its cable. A huge paraboloid breath-detector
(or breathoscope) was stationed on a low ridge. This terribly
ingenious machine, which had just been invented by the pan-antis,
records the vibrations of any alcoholic breath within five miles,
and indicates on a sensitive dial the exact direction and distance
of the breath. It was only too evident that the search for
Quimbleton was going forward with fierce system. In the shelter of
an old barn they heard a cork-popping machine-gun going off
rapidly. This was one of the most atrocious ruses employed by the
chuffs in their search for conscientious drinkers. The gun fires
no projectile, but produces a pleasant detonation like the swift
and repeated drawing of corks. Set up in the neighborhood of any
bottle-habited man, it will invariably lure him into an approach.
Near it was an ice-tinkling device, used for the same purposes of