The Yeah. Welcome back everyone to 1001 classic short stories and tales. This is your host, John Hagadorn. We're getting back to

Robert Barr, one of my favorite short story authors. This story is called Transformation. Hope you enjoy it. If you grind caster sugar with an equal

quantity of chlorate of potash, the result is an innocent-looking white compound, sweet to the taste,

and sometimes beneficial in the case of a sore throat. But if you dip a glass rod

into a small quantity of sulfuric acid and merely touch the harmless appearing mixture with the wet end of the rod, the dish which contains it becomes instantly a roaring furnace of fire, vomiting forth a fountain of burning balls, and filling the room with a dense black suffocating cloud of smoke.

So a stranger combination is that mystery which we term human nature that a touch of adverse circumstance may transform a quiet, peaceable, law-abiding citizen into a malefactor whose heart is filled with a desire for vengeance stopping it

nothing to accomplish it. In a little narrow street off the broad Rue de Ren

near the great terminus of Montpernas, stood the clock-making

shop of the Brothers Delors.

The window was filled with cheap clocks, and hanging from a steel spring attached to the top of the door was a bell which rang when anyone entered.

For the brothers were working clockmakers, continually busy in the room at the back of the shop,

and trade in the neighborhood was not brisk enough to allow them to keep an assistant.

The brothers had worked amicably in this small room for 20 years and were reported by the denizens of that quarter of Paris to be enormously rich.

They were certainly contented enough

and had plenty of money for their prugal wants,

as well as for their occasional exceedingly mild dissipations

at the neighboring cafe.

They had always a little money for the church and a little money for charity, and no one

had ever heard either of them speak a harsh word to any living soul and least of all to each other.

When the sensitively adjusted Bell at the door announced the arrival of a possible customer, Adolf left his work and attended to the shop

while Alfons continued his task without interruption. The former Adolf was supposed to be

the better businessman of the two, while the latter was

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