RADIO BOYS CRONIES

or

Bill Brown's Radio

by

Wayne Whipple

Author of "Radio Boys Loyalty"

and

S. F. Aaron

Co-author of "Radio Boys Loyalty"

[Illustration: MADE IN U. S. A. ]

CHAPTER I

THE CRONIES

"Come along, Bill; we'll have to get there, or we won't hear the firstof it. Mr. Gray said it would begin promptly at three. "

"I'm doing my best, Gus. This crutch----"

"I know. Climb aboard, old scout, and we'll go along faster. " The firstspeaker, a lad of fifteen, large for his age, fair-haired, though asbrown as a berry and athletic in all his easy, deliberate yet energeticmovements, turned to the one he had called Bill, a boy of about his ownage, or a little older, but altogether opposite in appearance, for hewas undersized, dark-haired, black-eyed, and though a life-long cripplewith a twisted knee, as quick and nervous in action as the limitationsof his physical strength and his ever-present crutch permitted. 

In another moment, despite the protests of generous consideration forhis chum's strenuous offer, William Brown was heaved up on the broadback of Augustus Grier and the two cronies thus progressed quite rapidlyfor a full quarter of a mile through the residential section ofFairview. Not until the pair arrived at the entrance of one of theoutlying cottages did husky Gus cease to be the beast of burden, thoughhe was greatly tempted to turn into a charging war horse when one of agroup of urchins on a street corner shouted:

"Look at the monkey on a mule!"

Gus cared nothing for taunts and slurs against himself, but he deeplyresented any suggestion of insult aimed at his crippled friend. However, although Bill could not defend his reputation with his fists, a methodwhich most appealed to Gus, the lame boy had often proved that he had anative wit and a tongue that could give as good as was ever given him. 

"Here we are, Gus, and how can I ever get square with you?" Bill said, his crutch and loot thumping the steps as the boys gained the doorway. 

In answer to the bell, a sweet-faced lady opened the door, greeted theboys by name and ushered them into a book-lined study where alreadyseveral other boys and girls of about the same age were gathered abouttheir school teacher. 

Professor James B. Gray, although this was vacation time, was the sortof man who got real and continued pleasure out of instruction, especially concerning his hobbies. Thus his advanced classes, hererepresented, had come into much additional knowledge regarding themicroscope and the stereopticon and had also greatly enjoyed theProfessor's moving-picture apparatus devoted to serious subjects. Thelatest wonder, and one worthy of intense interest, was a newly installedradio receiver. 

"Come in, come in, David and Jonathan, --I mean William and Augustus!"greeted Professor Gray. "Find chairs, boys. I'm glad you've come. Now, then, exactly in nine minutes the lecture starts and it will interestyou. The announcement, as sent out yesterday, makes the subject the lifeand labors of the great scientist and inventor, Thomas Alva Edison, andit begins with his boyhood. Don't you think that a fitting subject uponan occasion where electricity is the chief factor? But before the timeis up, let me say a few words concerning our little boxed instrumenthere, out of which will come the words we hope to hear. Some of you, Ithink, have become pretty familiar with this subject, but for those whohave not given much attention to radio, I will briefly outline theprinciples upon which these sounds we shall hear are made possible. 

"It would seem that our earth and atmosphere, " continued the Professor, "and all of the universe, probably, is surcharged with electrical energythat may be readily set in motion through the mechanical vibrations of asensitive diaphragm much as when one speaks into a telephone. Thismotion is transmitted in waves of varying intensity and frequency whichare sent into space by the mechanism of the broadcasting station, whichconsists of a sound conducting apparatus induced by strong electricalcurrents from generators or batteries and extensive a๋rial or antennaswires high in the air. Thus sound is converted into waves, and thereceiving station, as you see here, with its a๋rial on the roof, itsdetector, its 'phone and its tuner, gets these waves and turns themagain into sound. That is the outline of the thing, which you willunderstand better 'after' than 'before using. '

"The technical construction of the radio receiving set is neitherdifficult nor expensive; it is described fully in several books on thesubject and I shall be glad to give any of you hints on the making andthe operation of a receiving set. The 'phone receivers and the crystaldetector will have to be purchased as well as some of the accessories, such as the copper wire, pulleys, battery, switches, binding posts, thebuzzer tester and so forth. With proper tools and much ingenuity some ofthese appliances may be home-made. 

"The making of the tuner, the wiring, the a๋rial and the assembling areall technicalities that may be mastered by a careful study of thesubject and the result will be a simple and inexpensive set having alimited range. With more highly perfected appliances, as a vacuum, oraudion tube, and an a๋rial elevated from sixty to over a hundred feet, you may receive radio energy thousands of miles away. 

"Now, this talk we are about to hear comes to us from the broadcastingstation WUK at Wilmerding, a distance of three hundred miles, and thisoutfit of mine is such as to get the words loudly and clearly enough tobe audible through a horn. The talks are in series; there have beenthree on modern poets, two on the history of great railroad systems andnow this will be the first of several on great inventors, beginning withEdison, in four parts. The next will be on Friday and I want you all tobe here. Time is up; there will be a preliminary-ah, there it is: acornet solo by Drake. "

CHAPTER II

AN UNUSUAL LAD

Professor Gray turned to the box and began moving the metal switch armsback and forth, thus tuning in more perfectly as indicated by theincreased and clearer sound and the absence of interference from otherbroadcasting stations, noticed at first by a low buzzing. In a momentthe music came clear and sweet, the stirring tune of "America. " When thesound of the cornet ceased, there followed this announcement:

"My subject is the early life of Thomas Alva Edison. "

Everyone settled down most contentedly and Gus saw Bill hug himself inanticipatory pleasure; the lame boy had always been a staunch admirer ofthe great inventor. There was no need of calling anyone's attention tothe necessity for keeping quiet. Out of the big horn, as out of aphonograph, came the deliberate and carefully enunciated words:

"It has been said that 'the boy is father to the man. ' That may beworthy of general belief; at least evidences of it are to be found inthe boyhood of him we delight to speak of as one of the first citizensof our country and probably the greatest scientific discoverer of alltime. The boyhood of this remarkable man was almost as remarkable as hismanhood; it was full of incidents showing the tendencies that afterwardcontributed to true greatness in the chosen field of endeavor of a mindbent upon experiment, discovery and invention. 

"Thomas Alva Edison was born in Milan, Ohio, in the year 1847. Theprecise date, even to Mr. Edison, seems somewhat doubtful. 

"He was a frail little chap, with an older brother and sister. But hewas active enough to have several narrow escapes from death. He wouldn'thave been a real boy if he hadn't fallen into the canal and barelyescaped drowning at least once. 

"Then while he was a little bit of a fellow, climbing and prowlingaround a grain elevator beside the canal, he fell into the wheat bin andwas nearly smothered to death. 

"Once he held a skate strap for another boy to cut off with a big ax andthe lad sliced off the end of the fingers holding it!

"Another time the small Edison boy was investigating a bumblebee's nestin a field close to the fence. He was so interested in watching the beesthat he didn't notice a cross old ram till it had butted in and sent himsprawling. Although he was then 'between two fires, ' the little lad wasquick-witted enough to jump up and climb the fence just in time toescape a second attack from the ugly old beast. From a safe place hewatched the bees and the ram with keen concern. But Edison says hismother used up a lot of arnica on his small frame after this doubleencounter. The little lad early learned to observe that 'It's a greatlife if you don't weaken!'

"Mr. Edison tells this story about himself:

"'Even as a small boy, before we moved away from Milan, I used to try tomake experiments. Once I built a fire in a barn. I remember how startledI was to see how fast a fire spreads in such a place. Almost before Iknew it the barn was in flames and I barely escaped with my life. 

"The neighbors thought I ought to be disciplined and made an example of. My mortified parents consented and I was publicly whipped in the villagesquare. I suppose it was a good lesson to me and made the neighbors feeleasier. But I think seeing that barn burning down made me feel worsethan the whipping, --though I felt I deserved that, too. '

"The Edisons moved to Port Huron, Michigan, and lived a little way outof the town on the St. Clair river, where it flows out of Lake Huron. The house was in an orchard, but within easy walking distance of thetown. There was no compulsory school law in those days and young Edisondid not attend school, but his mother taught him all she could. She wasa good teacher--she had taught school before she was married--but evenshe could not be answering questions all the time. There was a publiclibrary in town, so the boy spent a good deal of his time there. Hewould have liked to read all the books in the library--but he started inon a cyclopedia. He thought because there was 'something abouteverything' in that, he'd know all there was to know if he read itthrough. But he soon found question after question to ask that thecyclopedia did not answer. Some of the books he took home to read. 

"Mr. Edison, the boy's father, had built a wooden tower that permitted abeautiful view of the town, River St. Clair and Lake Huron; one couldsee miles around in Michigan and over into Canada. Mr. Edison chargedten cents a head to go up and get the view on top of this tower. Veryfew people came, so the tower was not a great success. But the boy wentup there to read, not caring so much for the view as to be alone. 

"Young Edison read all he could find about electricity. That alwaysfascinated him. But the father seemed to have a hard time making aliving and Al, as they called the boy, went to work. He began sellingnewspapers in Port Huron, but there was not much in that, so he got achance to sell on the seven o'clock train for Detroit. He applied at theGrand Trunk offices for the job and made his arrangements before he toldany one. He had to be at the station at 6:30 A. M. And have his stock allready before the train started, which compelled him to leave home atsix. The train was a local with only three cars--baggage, smoking andpassenger. The baggage car was partitioned off into three compartments. One of these was never used, so Al was allowed to take that for hispapers to which he added fruits, candies and other wares. 

"The run down to Detroit took over three hours. His train did not startback till 4:30 in the afternoon, so the lad had about six hours in thebig city. He took all the time he needed to buy stock to sell on thetrain and to eat his lunch. This left him several hours for reading inthe Detroit public library, where he found more books on the subjects heliked, more answers to appease his never abating curiosity. "

CHAPTER III

GETTING THE MONEY-MAKING HABIT

"Those were the anxious days of the Civil War, " the lecturer continued, "and every-one was worked up to a high pitch of excitement most of thetime. When it was rumored that a battle had been fought the newspaperssold 'like hot cakes. ' Any other boy would have been satisfied if hecould supply as many papers as people wanted and let it go at that. Butthat was not the way with young Edison. He was not content with hopingfor an opportunity. He made his opportunity. 

"In spite of his getting into trouble so often, Al was a most likablelad, and a real boy, --earnest, honest and industrious. He had a bigstock of horse sense and a great fund of humor. Though his life seemedto be 'all work and no play, ' he took great pleasure in his work. In thecourse of his daily routine at Detroit, he could hardly help makingfriends on the _Free Press_, the greatest newspaper there. In this heresembled that other great inventor, also a great worker as aboy--Benjamin Franklin. 

"Young Edison had a friend up in the printing office who let him seeproofs from the edition being set up, so that he kept posted as to whatwas to be in the paper before it came off the press. After the _FreePress_ came out, he had to get an armful and hustle for his train. Inthis shrewd way the train-boy was better off than 'he who runs mayread, ' for he _had_ read, and could _shout_ while running: 'All aboutthe big battle!' So he sold his papers in short order. He had learned toestimate ahead how many papers the news of a battle ought to sell, andso he stocked up well beforehand. One day he saw in the advance proofs aharrowing account of the great two-days' battle of Shiloh. He graspednot only the news value but also the strategic importance of thatvictory. 

"Running down to the telegraph office at the Grand Trunk Station inDetroit, he told the operator all about it. Edison has told us himselfabout the offer he made that telegrapher:

"'If you will wire to every station on my run and get the station masterto chalk up on the blackboard out on the station platform that there hasbeen a big battle, with thousands killed and wounded, I'll give you_Harper's Weekly_ free for six months!'

"The operator agreed and that Edison boy tore back to the _Free Press_office. 

"'I want a thousand papers!' he gasped. 'Pay you to-morrow!' This wasmore than three times as many as he had taken out before, so the clerkrefused to trust him. 

"'Where's Mr. Storey?' demanded the lad. The clerk snickered as hejerked his head toward where the managing editor was talking with a'big' man from out of town. Young Edison was forced to break in, but theeditor noticed how anxious and business-like he was. When the boy hadtold him what he wanted, the great newspaper man scribbled a few wordson a scrap of paper and handed it down to him, saying:

"'Here, take this. Wish you good luck!'

"Al handed the clerk the order and got his thousand papers at once. Hehired another 'newsie' to help him down to the station with them. Longafter this, he told the rest of the story:

"'At Utica, the first station, twelve miles out of Detroit, I usuallysold two papers at five cents each. As we came up I put my head out andthought I saw an excursion party. The people caught sight of me andcommenced to shout. Then it began to occur to me that they wantedpapers. I rushed back into the car, grabbed an armful, and sold fortythere. 

"'Mt. Clemens was the next stop. When that station came in sight, Ithought there was a riot. The platform was crowded with a howling mob, and I realized that they were after news of Shiloh, so I raised theprice to ten cents, and sold a hundred and fifty where I never had gotrid of more than a dozen. 

"'At other stations these scenes were repeated, but the climax came whenwe got to Port Huron. I had to jump off the train about a quarter of amile from the station which was situated out of town. I had paid a bigDutch boy to haul several loads of sand to that point, and the engineersknew I was going to jump so they slowed down a bit. Still, I was quitean expert on the jump. I heaved off my bundle of papers and landed allright. As usual, the Dutch boy met me and we carried the rest of thepapers toward the town. 

"'We had hardly got half way when we met a crowd hurrying toward thestation. I thought I knew what they were after, so I stopped in front ofa church where a prayer-meeting was just closing. I raised the price totwenty-five cents and began taking in a young fortune. 

"'Almost at the same moment the meeting closed and the people camerushing out. The way the coin materialized made me think the deacons hadforgotten to pass the plate in that meeting!'

"In those days they commonly called trainboys 'Candy Butchers'; theterms 'Newsies' and 'Peanuts' may have been used then also but were notso common. They are not so common on trains nowadays, except in the Westand South, but formerly they were even more of an institution than thewater cooler or the old-fashioned winter stove. The station-shoutingbrakemen were no more familiar or comforting to weary passengers thanthe 'candy butchers' and their welcome stock. "

CHAPTER IV

_Paul Pry_ ON WHEELS

"With all he had to do, young Edison found that he had time on his handswhich he might yet put to good use. One would think being 'candybutcher' and newsboy from 6 A. M. To 9 P. M. , and making from $10. 00 to$12. 00 a day might satisfy the boy's cravings. But contentment wasn'tone of Al Edison's numerous virtues. 

"He did not know it, but he was following the footsteps of that othergreat American inventor, Benjamin Franklin, as a printer, editor, proprietor and publisher. In one of the stores where he stocked up withbooks, magazines and stationery for his train, there was an old printingpress which the dealer, Mr. Roys, had taken for a debt. Mr. Roys oncetold the little story of that press:

"'Young Edison, who was a good boy and a favorite of mine, bought goodsof me and had the run of the store. He saw the press, and I suppose hethought at once that he would publish a paper himself, for he couldcatch onto a new idea like lightning. He got me to show him how itworked, and finally bought it for a small sum. '

"From his printer friends on the _Free Press_ he bought some old type. Watching the compositors at work, he learned to set type and make up theforms, so within two weeks after purchasing the press he brought out thefirst number of _The Weekly Herald_--the first paper ever written, setup, proof-read, printed, published and sold (besides all his other work)on a local train--and this by a boy of fourteen!

"Of course, it had to be a sort of local paper, giving train and stationgossip with sage remarks and 'preachments' from the boy's standpoint. Itsold for three cents a copy, or eight cents a month to regularcustomers. Its biggest 'sworn circulation' was 700 copies, of whichabout 500 were _bona fide_ subscriptions, and the rest 'news-standsales. '

"The great English engineer, Robert Stephenson, grandson of the inventorand improver of the locomotive, is said to have ordered a thousandcopies to be distributed on railways all over the world to show what anAmerican newsboy could do. 

"Even the _London Times_, known for generations as '_The Thunderer_, 'and long considered the greatest newspaper in both hemispheres, quotedfrom _The Weekly Herald_, as the only paper of its kind in the world. Young Edison's news venture was a financial success, for it added $45. 00a month to his already large income. 

"But _Paul Pry_ came to grief because he tried to be funny in disclosingthe secret motives of certain persons. People differ widely in theirnotions about fun. In a local paper, too, some one's feelin's are likelyto get 'lacerated!' This was the case with a six-foot subscriber to thepaper which was published then under Al Edison's pen name of 'Paul Pry. 'One day the juvenile editor happened to meet his huge and wrathy readertoo near the St. Clair river. Whereupon the subscriber took the editorby his collar and waistband and heaved him, neck and crop, into theriver. Edison swam to shore, wet, but otherwise undisturbed, discontinued the publication of _Paul Pry_, and bade good-by tojournalism forever!

"While young Edison was wading through such mammoth works as Sears's_History of the World_, Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_, and the_Dictionary of Sciences_ (and had begun to wrestle desperately withNewton's _Principia_!) he was showing a rare passion for chemistry. He'annexed' the cellar for a laboratory. His mother said she counted, atone time, no less than two hundred bottles of chemicals, all shrewdlymarked POISON, so that no one but himself would dare to touch them. Before long the lad took up so much room in his mother's cellar with his'mess, ' as she called it, that she told him to take it out, 'bag andbaggage. '

"He once stated that his great desire to make money was largely becausehe needed the cash to buy materials for experiments. Therefore, in thisemergency, he took keen pleasure in buying all the chemicals, appliancesand apparatus he wished, and installing them in his real 'bag andbaggage' car. As the railroad authorities had allowed him to set up aprinting press, in addition to his miscellaneous stock in trade, whyshould he not have his laboratory there also? So his stock of batteries, chemicals and other 'calamity' grew apace. 

"One day, after several weeks of happiness in his moving laboratory, hewas 'dead to the world' in an experiment. Suddenly the car gave a lurchand jolted the bottle of phosphorus off its shelf. It broke, flamed up, set fire to the floor and endangered the whole train. While the boy wasfrantically fighting the fire, the Scotch conductor, red-headed andwrathy, rushed in and helped him to put it out. 

"By this time they were stopping at Mt. Clemens, where the indignantScotchman boxed the boy's ears and put him out also. Then the man threwthe lad's bottles, apparatus and batteries after him, as if they wereunloading a carload of freight there. 

"These blows on his ears were the cause of the inventor's life-longdeafness. But there never was a gamer sport than Thomas A. Edison. Once, long after this, he saw the labor of years and the outlay of at leasttwo million dollars at the seashore washed away in a single night by asudden storm. He only laughed and said that was 'spilt milk, not worthcrying over. ' Disappointments of that sort were 'the fortunes of war' or'all for the best' to him. The injury so unjustly inflicted on him bythat irate conductor was not a defect to him. Many years afterwards hesaid:

"'This deafness has been of great advantage to me in various ways. Whenin a telegraph office I could hear only the instrument directly on thetable at which I sat, and, unlike the other operators, I was notbothered by the other instruments. 

"'Again, in experimenting on the telephone, I had to improve thetransmitter so that I could hear it. This made the telephone commercial, as the magneto telephone receiver of Bell was too weak to be used as atransmitter commercially. '

"It was the same with the phonograph. The great defect of thatinstrument was the rendering of the overtones in music and the hissingconsonants in speech. Edison worked over one year, twenty hours a day, Sundays and all, to get the word 'specie' perfectly recorded andreproduced on the phonograph. When this was done, he knew thateverything else could be done, --which was a fact. 

"'Again, ' Edison resumed, 'my nerves have been preserved intact. Broadway is as quiet to me as a country village is to a person withnormal hearing. '"

The talk suddenly ceased. Then another voice announced from out of thehorn: "The second installment of the lectures on Edison will be given at3 P. M. Next Friday. We will now hear a concert by Wayple's band. "

CHAPTER V

OPINIONS

The boys and girls filed out, after most of them had expressedappreciation of Professor Gray's interest in their enjoyment, and on thestreet a lively discussion started. Terry Watkins was laughingderisively at some remark of Cora Siebold, who, arm in arm with her chum"Dot" Myers, had paused long enough to fire a broadside at him. 

"Why don't some of you smarties who talk so much about the wonderfulthings you can do make yourselves receiving sets! Too lazy? Baseball andswimming and loafing around are all you think about. But leave it to thegirls; Dot and I are going to tackle one. "

"What? You two? Won't it be a mess? Bet you can't hear yourselves thinkon it. Girls building a radio! Ho, ho, ho!"

"Bet there'll be a looking-glass in it somewhere, " laughed Ted Bissell. 

"Well, we aren't planning to ask advice from either of you, " Cora said. 

"No, and it would be worth very little if you got any, " Bill Brownoffered, as he and Gus, who had been detained a moment by ProfessorGray, joined the loitering group. 

"Thanks, Mr. Brown, " said Dot, half shyly. 

"Who asked you for your two cents' worth?" Terry demanded. 

"I'm donating it, to your service. Go and do something yourself beforeyou make fun of others, " Bill said. 

"That's right, too, Billy. Terry can't drive a carpet tack, nor draw astraight line with a ruler. " Ted was always in a bantering mood andeager for a laugh at anybody. "I'll bet Cora's radio will radiateroyally and right. You going to make one--you and Gus?"

"I guess we can't afford it, " Bill replied quickly. "We're both going towork in the mill next Monday. Long hours and steady, and not too muchpay, either. But we need the money; eh, Gus?"

"We do, " agreed Gus, smiling. 

Bill's countenance was altogether rueful. Life had not been very kind tohim and he very naturally longed for some opportunity to dodge continuedhardship. He wished that he might, like the boy Edison, makeopportunity, but that sounded more plausible in lectures than in reallife. He was moodily silent now, while the others engaged in a spiriteddiscussion started by Dot's saying kindly:

"Well, lots of boys and girls have to work and they often are the betterfor it. Edison did--and was. "

"Oh, I guess he could have been just as great, or greater if he hadn'tworked, " remarked Terry sententiously. "It isn't only poor boys thatamount to----"

"Mostly, " said Bill. 

"Oh, of course, _you'd_ say that. We'll charge your attitude up toenvy. "

"When I size up some of the rich men's sons I know, I'm rather glad I'mpoor, " said Bill, "and I would rather make a thousand dollars all by myown efforts than inherit ten thousand. "

"I guess you'd take what you could get, " Terry offered, and Bill wasquick to reply:

"We know there'll be a lot coming to you and it will be interesting toknow what you'll do with it and how long you'll have it. "

"He will never add anything to it, " said Ted, who also was the son ofwealth, but not in the least snobbish. The others all laughed at thisand Terry turned away angrily. 

Bill, further inspired by what he deemed an unfair reference to Edison, began to wax eloquent to the others concerning his hero. 

"I don't believe Edison would have amounted to half as much as he has ifhe hadn't had the hard knocks that a poor fellow always gets. Terrymakes me tired with his high and mighty----"

"Oh, don't you mind him!" said Cora. 

"You've read a lot about Edison, haven't you, Bill?" asked Dot, knowingthat the lame boy possessed a hero worshiper's admiration for the wizardof electricity and an overmastering desire to emulate the greatinventor. The girl sat down on the grassy bank, pulled Cora down besideher and in her gentle, kindly way, continued to draw Bill out. "Whenonly quite a little fellow he had become a great reader, the lecturersaid. "

"I should say he was a reader!" Bill declared. "Why, when he was elevenyears old he had read Hume's History of England all through and--"

"Understood about a quarter of it, I reckon, " laughed Ted. 

"Understood more than you think, " Bill retorted. "He did more in thatlibrary than just read an old encyclopedia; he got every book off theshelves, one after the other, and dipped into them all, but of course, some didn't interest him. He read a lot on 'most every subject; mostlyabout science and chemistry and engineering and mechanics, but a lotalso on law and even moral philosophy and what you call it?oh--ethics--and all that sort of thing. He had to read to find outthings; there seemed to be no one who could tell him the half that hewanted to know, and I guess a lot of people got pretty tired of havinghim ask so many questions they couldn't answer. And when they would say, 'I don't know, ' he'd get mad and yell: '_Why_ don't you know?'"

"Hume's history, --why, we have that at home, in ten volumes. If he gotoutside of all of that he was going some!" declared Ted. 

"Well, he did, and all of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, too. "

"Holy cats! What stopped him?" Ted queried. 

"He didn't stop--never stopped. But he had to earn his living--didn'the? He couldn't read all the books and find out about everything rightoff. But you bet he found out a lot, and he believes that after a fellowgets some rudiments of education he can learn more by studying in hisown way and experimenting than by just learning by rote and rule. Maybehe's not altogether right about that, for education is mighty fine andI'd like to go to a technical school; Gus and I both are aiming forthat, but we're going to read and study a lot our own way, too, andexperiment; aren't we, Gus? Nobody can throw Edison's ideas down whenthey stop to think how much he knows and what he's done. "

"He certainly has accomplished a great deal, " the usually reticent Gusoffered. 

"And yet he seems to be very modest about it, " was Cora's contribution. 

"Of course, he is; every man who does really big things is neverconceited, " declared Bill. 

"Oh, I don't know. How about Napoleon?" queried Dot. 

"Napoleon? All he ever did was to get up a big army and kill people andgrab a government. He had brains, of course, but he didn't put them tomuch real use, except for his own glory. You can't put Napoleon in thesame class with Edison. "

"Oh, Billy, you can't say that, can you?"

"I have said it and I'll back it up. Look how Edison has given billionsof people pleasure and comfort and helped trade and commerce. Nobodycould do more than that. War and fighting and being a king, --that'snothing but selfishness! Some day people will build the largestmonuments to folks who have done big things for humanity, --not togenerals and kings. Just knowing how to scrap isn't much good. I've gotmore respect for Professor Gray than I have for the champion prizefighter. You can't-----"

"Maybe if you knew how to use your fists, you wouldn't talk that way;eh, Gus?" queried Ted. 

"Well, I don't know but I think Bill is right. It's nice to know how toscrap if scrapping has to be done, but it shouldn't ever have to bedone, --between nations, anyway. " This was a long speech for Gus, butevidently he meant it. 

Bill continued:

"Talking about Edison when he was a boy: he wasn't afraid of work, either. He got up at about five, got back to supper at nine, or later, and maybe that wasn't some day! But he made from $12 to $20 a dayprofits, for it was Civil War times and everything was high. "

"I think I'd work pretty hard for that much, " said Gus. 

"I reckon, " remarked Ted, "that he had a pretty good reason to say thatsuccessful genius is one per cent. Inspiration and ninety-nine per cent. Perspiration. "

"But I guess that's only partly right and partly modesty, " declaredBill. "There must have been a whole lot more than fifty per cent, inspiration at work to do what he has done. But he is too busy to goaround blowing his own horn, even from a talking-machine record. "

"He doesn't need to do any blowing when you're around, " Ted offered. 

Bill laughed outright at that and there seemed nothing further to besaid. The girls decided to go on, Ted walked up the street with them, and Gus and his lame companion turned in the opposite direction towardthe less opulent section of the town. There were chores to do at homeand Gus often lent a hand to help his father who was the town carpenter. Bill, the only son of a widow whose small means were hardly adequate forthe needs of herself and boy, did all he could to lessen the dailypinch. 

CHAPTER VI

THE BOYHOOD OF A GENIUS

The class had assembled again in Professor Gray's study and all wereeager to hear the second talk on Edison. There was a delay of manyminutes past the hour stated, but the anticipation was such that thetime was hardly noticed. During the interim, Professor Gray came towhere Bill and Gus sat. 

"I hear that you boys intend to go to work in the mills next week, " hesaid. "Well, now, I have some news and a proposition, so do not bedisappointed if the beginning sounds discouraging. In the first place Isaw Mr. Deering, superintendent of the mills, again and he told me thatwhile he would make good his promise to take you on, there would hardlybe more than a few weeks' work. Orders are scarce and they expect to layoff men in August, though there is likely to be a resumption of businessin the early fall when you are getting back into school work. Sowouldn't it be better to forego the mill work, --there goes theannouncement! I'll talk with you before you leave. "

"But we need the money; don't we, Gus?"

"We do, " said Gus. 

"I wonder if the Professor thinks we're millionaires. " Bill was plainlydisappointed. 

"Oh, well, he didn't finish what he was saying to us. Let's listen tothe weather report, " demanded Gus, ever optimistic and joyful. 

The words came clearer than ever out of that wonderful horn. There wasto be rain that afternoon--local thunderstorms, followed by clearing andcooler. On the morrow it would be cloudy and unsettled. 

Bill felt as though that prediction suited his mental state! Gus wasnever the kind to worry; he sat smiling at the horn and he received withadded pleasure the music of a band which followed. And then came thesecond talk on the boyhood of the master of invention. 

"It has been said, " spouted the horn, "that high mental characteristicsare accompanied by heroic traits. Whether true or not generally, it wasdemonstrated in young Edison and it governed his learning telegraphy andthe manner thereof. The story is told by the telegraph operator at Mt. Clemens, where the red-headed conductor threw the train boy and hislaboratory off the train. 

"'Young Edison, ' says the station agent, 'had endeared himself to thestation agents, operators and their families all along the line. As themixed train did the way-freight work and the switching at Mt. Clemens, it usually consumed not less than thirty minutes, during which time Alwould play with my little two-and-a-half-year old son, Jimmy. 

"'It was at 9:30 on a lovely summer morning. The train had arrived, leaving its passenger coach and baggage car standing on the main trackat the north end of the station platform, the pin between the baggageand the first box car having been pulled out. There were about a dozenfreight cars, which had pulled ahead and backed in upon thefreight-house siding. The train men had taken out a box car and pushedit with force enough to reach the baggage car without a brakemancontrolling it. 

"'At this moment Al turned and saw little Jimmy on the main track, throwing pebbles over his head in the sunshine, all unconscious ofdanger. Dashing his papers and cap on the platform he plunged to therescue. 

"'The train baggage man was the only eyewitness. He told me that when hesaw Al jump toward Jimmy he thought sure both boys would be crushed. Seizing Jimmy in his arms just as the box car was about to strike them, young Edison threw himself off the track. There wasn't a tenth of asecond to lose. By this instinctive act he saved his own life, for if hehad thrown the little chap first and then himself, he would have beencrushed under the wheels. 

"'As it was, the front wheel struck the heel of the newsboy's boot andhe and Jimmy fell, face downward on the sharp, fresh-gravel ballast sohard that they were both bleeding and the baggage man thought sure thewheel had gone over them. To his surprise their injuries proved to beonly skin deep. 

"'I was in the ticket office when I heard the shriek and ran out in timeto see the train hands carrying the two boys to the platform. My firstthought was: 'How can I, a poor man, reward the dear lad for risking hislife to save my child's?' Then it came to me, 'I can teach himtelegraphy. ' When I offered to do this, he smiled and said, 'I'd like tolearn, ' and learn he did. I never saw any one pick it up so fast. It wasa sort of second nature with him. After the conductor treated him sobadly, throwing off his apparatus, boxing his ears and making him hardof hearing, Al seemed to lose his interest in his business as train boy. 

"'Some days Al would stop at my station at half past nine in the morningand stay all day while the train went on to Detroit and returned to Mt. Clemens in the evening. The train baggage man who saw Al rescue Jimmywould get the papers in Detroit and bring them up to Mt. Clemens forhim. During these long hours the Edison boy made rapid progress inlearning. And every day he made the most of the half hour or more ofpractice he had while the train stopped at Mt. Clemens each way. 

"'At the end of a couple of weeks I missed him for several days. Nexttime he dropped off he showed me a set of telegraph instruments he hadmade in a gunshop in Detroit, where the stationer who had sold him goodshad told the owner of the machine shop the story of the printing press. '

"The first place young Edison worked after he was graduated from the Mt. Clemens private school of telegraphy was in Port Huron, his home town. Here he had too many boy friends to let him keep on the job as ayouthful telegrapher should. Besides, he had a laboratory in his homeand found it too fascinating to take enough sleep. Between too much sidework and mischief, young Edison sometimes found himself in trouble. Someof his escapades he has described to his friend and assistant, WilliamH. Meadowcroft. 

"'About every night we could hear the soldiers stationed at FortGratiot. One would call out: "Corporal of Guard Number One!" This wasrepeated from one sentry to another till it reached the barracks and"No. 1" came out to see what was wanted. The Dutch boy (who used to helpme with the papers) and I thought we would try our hand in militarymatters. 

"'So one dark night I called, "Corporal of the Guard Number One!" Thesecond sentry, thinking it had come from the man stationed at the end, repeated this, and the words went down the line as usual. This reachedCorporal Number One, and brought him back to our end only to find outthat he had been tricked by someone. 

"'We did this three times, but on the third night they were watching. They caught the Dutch boy and locked him up in the fort. Severalsoldiers chased me home. I ran down cellar where there were two barrelsof potatoes and a third which was almost empty. I dumped the contents ofthree barrels into two, sat down, pulled the empty barrel over my head, bottom upwards. The soldiers woke my father, and they all came huntingfor me with lanterns and candles. 

"'The corporal was perfectly sure I had come down cellar. He couldn'tsee how I had got away, and asked father if there wasn't a secret placefor me to hide in the cellar. When father said "No, " he exclaimed, "Well, that's very strange!"

"'You can understand how glad I was when they left, for I was in acramped position, and as there had been rotten potatoes in that barrel, I was beginning to feel sick. 

"'The next morning father found me in bed and gave me a good switchingon my legs--the only whipping I ever received from him, though motherkept behind the old clock a switch which had the bark well worn off! Mymother's ideas differed somewhat from mine, most of all when I mussed upthe house with my experiments. 

"'The Dutch boy was released the next morning. '

"Another escapade described by Edison was pulled off on the Canada sideof the St. Clair, in Port Sarnia, opposite Port Huron. 

"'In 1860 the Prince of Wales (afterward King Edward) visited Canada. Nearly every lad in Port Huron, including myself, went over to Sarnia tosee the celebration. The town was profusely draped in flags--there werearches over some streets--and carpets were laid on the crossings for theprince to walk on. 

"'A stand was built where the prince was to be received by the mayor. Seeing all these arrangements raised my idea of the prince very high. But when he finally came I mistook the Duke of Newcastle for AlbertEdward. The duke was a very fine-looking man. When I discovered mymistake--the Prince of Wales being a mere stripling--I was sodisappointed that I couldn't help mentioning the fact. Then several ofus American boys expressed our belief that a prince wasn't much afterall! One boy got well whipped for this and there was a free-for-allfight. The Canucks attacked the Yankee boys and, as they greatlyoutnumbered us, we were all badly licked and I got a black eye. Thisalways prejudiced me against that kind of ceremonial and folly. '"

CHAPTER VII

THE MAKING OF AN INVENTOR

"It was during the time young Edison was employed at Port Huron, " theradio continued, "that the cable under River St. Clair between that cityand Port Sarnia was severed by an ice jam. The river at that point isthree quarters of a mile wide. Navigation was suspended and the ice hadbroken up so that the stream could not be crossed on foot nor could thebroken cable lying in the bed of the river be mended. 

"The ingenious young telegrapher suggested signaling Sarnia by giving, with the whistle of a locomotive, the dot-and-dash letters of the Morsetelegraph code. Or course, this strange whistling caused considerablewonderment on the Canada side until a shrewd operator recognized thelong-and-short telegraph letters, and communication was at onceestablished--important messages being transmitted by steam whistles--agigantic system of broadcasting. This was a simple way out of a sublimedifficulty involving the affairs of two great peoples. 

"But the too-enterprising operator had started so much trouble forhimself that he decided to find employment where his mind would not bedistracted from his job or tempted away from working out his chemicaland electrical experiments. Because of these he preferred the positionof night operator. His telegraph work was really a side line. 

"On these accounts he found a job as night operator at StratfordJunction, Canada West, as Ontario was then called. He was only sixteenbut his salary of twenty-five dollars a month seemed very small aftermaking ten or twelve dollars a day as 'candy butcher. ' But on account ofthe chances it gave him for experimenting, he resigned himself to thesmallness of his pay. The treatment he had received at the hands of thattrain conductor had convinced him that he could not follow his bentwhile working all day on the railroad. 

"Mr. Edison likes to tell of the prevailing ignorance of the science oftelegraphy. He once told a friend:

"'The telegraph men themselves seemed unable to explain how the thingworked, though I was always trying to find out. The best explanation Igot was from an old Scotch line repairer employed by the MontrealTelegraph Company, then operating the railway wires. Here is the way hedescribed it: "If you had a dachshund long enough to reach fromEdinburgh to London, and pulled his tail in Edinburgh he would bark inLondon!"

"'I could understand that, but I never could get it through me what wentthrough the dog or over the wire. '

"It was at Stratford Junction that the Edison boy began his career ofinvention. From the first his chief aim was the saving of labor. Inorder to be sure that the operators all along the line were not asleepat their posts, they were required to send to the train dispatcher'soffice a certain dot-and-dash signal every hour in the night. YoungEdison was like young Napoleon in grudging himself the necessary hoursof sleep. While the ingenious lad was fond of machinery--to make amachine of himself was utterly distasteful to him. It was against hisprinciples and instincts to do anything a mere machine could do instead. So he made a little wheel with a few notches in the rim, with which heconnected the clock and the transmitter, so that at the required instantevery hour in the night the wheel revolved and sent the proper signal toheadquarters. Meanwhile that wily young operator slept the sleep of thegenius, if not of the just. Of one experience at this little placeEdison relates:

"'This night job just suited me, as I could have the whole day tomyself. I had the faculty of sleeping in a chair any time for a fewminutes at a time. I taught the night yardman my call, so I could gethalf an hour's sleep now and then between trains, and in case thestation was called the watchman was to wake me. One night I got an orderto hold a freight train, and I replied that I would do so. I ran out tofind the signal man, but before I could locate him and get the signalset--_the train ran past!_ I rushed back to the telegraph office andreported that I could not hold it. 

"'But on receiving my first message that I would hold the freight, thedispatcher let another train leave the next station going the oppositeway. There was a station near the Junction where the day operator slept. I started to run in that direction, but it was pitch dark. I fell down aculvert and was knocked senseless. '

"The two engineers, with a feeling that all was not as it should be, kept a sharp lookout and saw each other just in time to avert a fatalaccident. But young Edison was cited to trial, for gross neglect ofduty, by the general manager. During an informal hearing two Englishmencalled on the manager. While he was talking with them the young nightoperator disappeared. Boarding a freight train bound for Port Sarnia, hemade his escape from the five-years' term in prison threatened by theirate manager. Edison afterward confessed that his heart did not leavehis throat until he had crossed the ferry to Port Huron and 'one wideriver' lay between him and the Canadian authorities. 

"Following his escape from Canada young Edison knocked about the homecountry, North and South. As it was during the Civil War he had somepeculiar adventures. After making a long circuit, broken in many placesby 'short circuits, ' the journeyman telegrapher landed in Port Huron, and wrote his friend Adams, then in Boston to find him a job. 

"His friend relates that he asked the Boston manager of the WesternUnion Telegraph office if he wanted a first-class operator from theWest. 

"'What kind of copy does he make?'" was the manager's first query. "Adams continues:

"'I passed Edison's letter through the window for his inspection. He wassurprised, for it was almost as plain as print, and asked:

"'Can he take it off the wire like that?'

"'I said he certainly could, and that there was nobody who could stickhim. He told me to send for my man and I did. When Edison came he landedthe job without delay. '"

"The inventor himself has told the story of his reporting for duty inBoston:

"'The manager asked me when I was ready to go to work. 

"'_Now_!' said I, and was instructed to return at 5:30 P. M. , which Idid, to the minute. I came into the operators' room and was ushered intothe night manager's presence. 

"'The weather was cold and I was poorly dressed; so my appearance, as Iwas told afterward, occasioned considerable merriment, and the nightoperators conspired to "put up a job on the jay from the wild and woollyWest. " I was given a pen and told to take the New York No. 1 wire. Afteran hour's wait I was asked to take my place at a certain table andreceive a special report for the Boston _Herald_, the conspiratorshaving arranged to have one of the fastest operators in New York sendthe despatch and "salt" the new man. 

"'Without suspecting what was up I sat down, and the New York manstarted in very slowly. Soon he increased his speed and I easily adaptedmy pace to his. This put the man on his mettle and he "laid in his bestlicks, " but soon reached his limit. 

"'At this point I happened to look up and saw the operators all lookingover my shoulder with faces that seemed to expect something funny. ThenI knew they were playing a trick on me, but I didn't let on. 

"'Before long the New York man began slurring his words, running themtogether and sticking the signals; but I had been used to all that sortof thing in taking reports, so I wasn't put out in the least. At last, when I thought the joke had gone far enough, and as the special wasnearly finished, I calmly opened the key and remarked over the wire tomy New York rival:

"'Say, young man, change off and send with the other foot!'

"'This broke the fellow up so that he turned the job over to anotheroperator to finish, to the real discomfiture of the fellows around me. '

"Friend Adams goes on to tell of other happennings at the Hub:

"'One day Edison was more than delighted to pick up a complete set ofFaraday's works, bringing them home at 4 A. M. And reading steadily untilbreakfast time, when he said, with great enthusiasm:

"'Adams, I have got so much to do and life is so short, _I am going tohustle_!'"

"'Then he started off to breakfast on a dead run. '

"He soon opened a workshop in Boston and began making experiments. Itwas here that he made a working model of his vote recorder, the firstinvention he ever patented. 

"Edison has told us of this trip to Washington and how he showed thathis invention could register the House vote, pro and con, almostinstantaneously. The chairman of the committee saw how quickly andperfectly it worked and said to him:

"'Young man, if there is any invention on earth that we _don't_ wantdown here, it is this. Filibustering on votes is one of the greatestweapons in the hands of a minority to prevent bad legislation, and thisinstrument would stop that. '

"The youth felt the force of this so much that he decided from that timeforth not to try to invent anything unless it would meet a genuinedemand, --not from a few, but many people. 

"It was while in Boston that Edison grew weary of the monotonous life ofa telegraph operator and began to work up an independent business alonginventive lines, so that he really began his career as an inventor atthe Hub. 

"After the vote recorder, he invented a stock ticker, and started aticker service in Boston which had thirty or forty subscribers, andoperated from a room over the Gold Exchange. 

 * * * * *

"The third talk on Mr. Edison and his inventions will be given from thisbroadcasting station WUK next Monday at the same hour. "

CHAPTER VIII

OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS

As the young people rose to depart, Professor Gray beckoned Bill and Gusto remain. He turned to a large table desk, took from it a roll ofpapers, untied and laid before the boys a number of neatly executedplans and sections--all drawn to scale. In an upper corner waspen-printed the words:

Water Power Electric Plant to be erected for and on the estate of Mr. James Hooper, Fairview. Engineer and Contractor, J. R. Gray. 

"Boys, you see here, " began the Professor, "the layout of a job to bedone on the Hooper property. You know I do this sort of thing in a smallway between school terms and I am told to go ahead with this at once. The amount I am to receive, on my own estimate, is ample, but naturallynot very great; it covers all material, labor and a fair profit. 

"But now, " he went on, "comes the hitch. I am compelled, by anothermatter which is far more important, --having been appointed one of theconsulting engineers on the Great Laurel Valley Power Plant, --to desertthis job almost entirely, and yet, I am bound, on the strength of myword, to see that it is completed. If I hand it over to anotherengineer, or a construction firm, it will cost me more than I get out ofit. And naturally, while I don't expect to gain a thing, I would preferalso not to lose anything. Now, what would you fellows advise in thismatter?"

Bill looked at Gus and Gus looked at Bill; there was a world of meaning, of hope and hesitation, in both glances. The Professor saw this, and hespoke again:

"Out with it, boys! I asked you to stay, in order to hear what you mightsay about it. There seems to be only one logical solution. I cannotafford to spend a lot of my own money and yet I will gladly give all ofmy own profits, for I must complete Mr. Hooper's job and look after mybigger task at once. "

"I don't suppose, " said Gus, with the natural diffidence he oftenexperienced in expressing his mind, "that we could help you. "

"Why, of course we can, and we will, too, " said Bill, the idea breakingon him suddenly. "We can carry on the work perfectly under youroccasional direction. Is that what you wanted us to say, Professor?"

"I did. I hoped you would see it that way and I wanted you toacknowledge the incentive to yourselves. I am sure you can carry on thework, as you say. We have had enough of practical experimentationtogether, and then, what made me think of you, was that fish dam you putin for old Mr. McIlvain last summer. "

The boys glanced at each other again, but this time with mutual feelingsof pride. Bill had interested a well-to-do farmer in making a pool belowa fine spring and with his consent and some materials he had furnished. The boys had stonewalled a regular gulch, afterwards stocking thecrystal clear pool they had made with landlocked salmon obtained fromthe state hatchery. The fish were now averaging a foot in length andmany a fine meal the boys and the farmer had out of that pond. 

"Now, fellows, I'll divide between you the entire profits, " ProfessorGray began, but Bill and Gus both stopped him. 

"No, sir! You pay us no more than we could have got in the mill, and therest is yours. Look at the fun we'll have, that's worth a lot. " Billalways tried to be logical and he never failed to have a reason for hisconclusions. "And then, " he added, "this will be for you and we couldn'tdo enough--"

"I'll see that you are paid and thank you, also, " laughed the Professor. "And tomorrow morning, if it suits you, we shall start with the work, which means making a survey of the ground and listing materials. Therewill be a segment dam, with flood gates; about an eighth of a mile ofpiping; a Pelton wheel, boxed in; a generator speeded down; atwo-horse-power storage battery; wiring and connections made withpresent lighting system in house; lodge; stables and garage;--and thething is done if it works smoothly. The closest attention to everydetail, taking the utmost pains, will be necessary and I know youwill--"

"Just like Edison!" Bill fairly shouted, making Professor Gray and Guslaugh heartily. The Professor said:

"Eight! And we shall hope to follow his illustrious example. Tomorrow itis, then. "

When the two chums, elated over their sudden advancement to beprofessional engineers, came out on the street, they were not a littlesurprised to see all the girls and boys of the class waiting, andevidently for them, as they could but judge on hearing the words:

"Here they come! We'll get him started. Bill knows. "

CHAPTER IX

GUS HOLDS FORTH AGAIN

"Say, old scout, " cautioned Gus, in a low voice, "better not tell aboutour job. Let it dawn on them later. "

"Righto, Gus. It's nobody's business but ours. But what do the bunchwant?"

Bill soon found out, however, when Cora and Ted came to meet him. 

"We've had an argument, Terry and I, about Edison, " said the girl, "andI know you can settle it. I said that--"

"Hold on! Don't tell me who said anything; then it'll be fair, " Billdemanded. 

"'O wise, wise judge!'" gibed Ted. "Ought to have a suit of ermine. Proper stunt, too. Let me put it, Cora; I'll be the court crier. Come onand let's squat on the bank like the rest. Judge, you ought to be themost elevated. Now, then, here's the dope: Did Edison really ever doanything much to help with the war?"

"He did more than any other man, " Bill declared promptly. "Positively!Everybody ought to know that. He invented a device so that they couldsmell a German submarine half a mile away, and they could tell when atorpedo was fired. Another invention turned a ship about with her prowfacing the torpedo, so that it would be most likely to go plowing andnot hit her, as it would with broadside on. I guess that saved many aship and it helped to destroy lots of submarines with depth bombs. Itgot the Germans leery when their old submersibles failed to get in anylicks and went out never to come back; it was as big a reason as any whythey were so ready to quit. Well, who was right?"

"I was!" announced Cora, gleefully. "Terry just can't see any good inEdison at all. He says he hires people who really make his inventionsand he gets the credit for them. He says--"

"I don't suppose it makes much difference what he says; he simplydoesn't know what he's talk--"

"You think you know, but do you? You've read a lot of gush that--" Terrybegan, but Gus interrupted him, almost a new thing for the quiet chap. 

"Listen, Terry: get right on this. Don't let a lot of foolish peopleinfluence you; people who can't ever see any real good in success andwho blame everything on luck and crookedness. And Bill does know. "

"Anybody who tries to make Edison out a small potato, " declared Bill, addressing the others, rather than the supercilious youth who hadmaligned his hero, "is simply ignorant of the facts. My father knew aman well who worked for Edison in his laboratory for years. He said thatthe stories about Edison making use of the inventions of others is allnonsense; it is Edison who has the ideas and who starts his assistantsto experimenting, some at one thing, some at another, so as to find outwhether the ideas are good. 

"He said that the yarns they tell about Edison's working straight aheadfor hours and hours without food and sleep, then throwing himself on acouch for a short nap and getting up to go at it again are all exactlytrue, over and over again. He said that one of the boys in the shoptried to play a trick on the old man, as they call him, while he wasnapping on the couch. They rigged up a talking-machine on a stand anddressed it in some of Edison's old clothes, put a lullaby record on it, lugged it in, set it up in front of the couch and set it going, toexpress the idea that he was singing himself to sleep. But while theywere at this Mr. Edison, getting on to the joke, for he generally napswith one eye open, got up and put a lot of stuffing under the couchspread, stuck his old hat on it so as to make it look as though his facewas covered; then peered through the crack of a door. When the musiccommenced he opened the door and said:

"'Boys, it won't work; music can't affect dead matter. ' Then they pulledoff the couch cover and all had a good laugh. 

"Now. You can see, " Bill went on, with ever increasing enthusiasm, "justhow that shows where Mr. Edison stands. Nobody can get ahead of him, andthere isn't anyone with brains who knows him who doesn't admit he hasmore brains and is wider awake than anybody else. There's nothing thathe does that doesn't show it. You have all seen his questionnaires forthe men who are employed in his laboratories and you can bet they're nojoke. And his inventions--they're not just the trifling things likeegg-beaters, rat-traps, coat-hangers, bread-mixers, fly-swatters andlipsticks. "

"But some of these things are mighty cute and they coin the dough, " saidTed. 

"Oh, they're ingenious and money-makers some of them, I'll admit, but wecould get along very well without them and most of us do. But think ofthe real things Edison has done. The first phonograph; improving thetelegraph so that six messages can be sent over the same wire at thesame time; improving the telephone so that everybody can use it;collecting fine iron ore from sand and dirt by magnets; increasing thepower and the lightness of the storage battery. And there are thetrolleys and electric railways that have been made possible. And theincandescent electric lamp--how about that? Edison has turned hiswonderful genius only to those things that benefit millions of--"

"And he deserved to make millions out of it, " said Ted. 

"I guess he has, too, " offered one of the girls. 

"You bet, and that's what he works for: not just to benefit people, "asserted Terry. 

"I suppose your dad and most other guys got their dough all by accidentwhile they were trying to help other folks; eh?" Bill fired at Terry. 

But the rich boy walked away, his usual method to keep from getting theworst of an argument. 

"Oh, I wish Grace Hooper were here, " Cora said. "She's no snob likeTerry and wouldn't she enjoy this?"

"And her dad, too. Isn't he a nice old fellow, even though he's awfullyrich?" laughed Dot. 

"He'd have his say about this argument, grammar or no grammar. He thinksa lot of this chap he calls Eddy's son, " Mary Dean declared. 

"Great snakes! Does he really think the wizard is the child of some guynamed Eddy?" Ted queried. 

"Sounds so, " Cora said. "But you can't laugh at him, he's so kind andgood and it would hurt Grace. He would be interested in radio, too. "

"Wonder he hasn't got a peach of a receiver set up in his house, " LucyShore ventured. 

"Is he keen for all new-fangled things?" asked Ted. 

"You bet he is, though somebody would have to tell him and show himfirst. Well, people, I'm going home; who's along?"

With one accord the others got to their feet and started up or down thestreet. Gus and Bill went together, as always; they had much to talkabout. 

CHAPTER X

BRASS TACKS

On the day following the radio lecture, true to his promise, ProfessorGray led Bill and Gus to the broad acres of the Hooper estate and there, with the plans before them, they went over the ground chosen for thewater-power site, comprehending every detail of the engineering task. Professor Gray was more pleased than surprised by the ready manner inwhich both lads took hold of the problem and even suggested certainreally desirable changes. 

Bill indicated a better position fifty yards upstream for the dam and hesketched his idea of making a water-tight flood gate which was soingenious that the Professor became enthusiastic and adopted it at once. 

After nearly a whole day spent thus along the rocky defiles of thelittle stream, eating their lunch beside a cold spring at the head of aminiature gulch, the trio of engineers were about to leave the spot whena gruff voice hailed them from the hilltop. Looking up they saw anothergroup of three: an oldish man, a slim young fellow who was almost agrown man and a girl in her middle teens. The young people seemed to bequarreling, to judge from the black looks they gave each other, but theman paid them no attention. He beckoned Professor Gray to approach andcame slowly down the hill to meet him, walking rather stiffly with acane. 

"Well, Professor, you're beginnin' to git at it, eh? Struck any snagsyit? Some job! I reckon you're not a goin' to make a heap outside theprice you give me. When you goin' to git at it reg'lar?"

"Right away, Mr. Hooper. To-morrow. We have been making our plans to-dayand these young assistants of mine, who will principally conduct thework, are ready to start in at once. They--"

"Them boys? No, sir! I want this here work done an' done right; nobunglin'. What's kids know about puttin' in water wheels an' 'letriclights? You said you was--"

"These boys are no longer just kids, Mr. Hooper, and they know more thanyou think; all that is needed to make this job complete. Moreover, I amgoing to consult with them frequently by letter and I shall be entirelyresponsible. It is up to me, you know. "

Mr. Hooper evidently saw the sense in this last remark; he stoodblinking his eyes at Bill and Gus and pondering. The slim youth pluckedat his sleeve and said something in a low voice. 

Gus suddenly remembered the fellow. The youth had come into the town aweek or two before. He had, without cause, deliberately kicked old Mrs. Sowerby's maltese cat, asleep on the pavement, out of his way, and Gus, a witness from across the street, had departed from his usually reticentmood to call the human beast down for it. But though Gus hoped thefellow would show resentment he did not, but walked on quickly instead. 

Mr. Hooper listened; then voiced a further and evidently suggestedopposition:

"Them lads is from the town here; ain't they? Nothin' but a lot o'hoodlums down yan. You can't expec'--"

"You couldn't be more mistaken, Mr. Hooper. I'll admit there are a lotof young scamps in Fairview, but these boys, William Brown and AugustusGrier, belong to a more self-respecting bunch. I'll answer for them inevery way. "

"Of course, Dad, Professor Gray knows about them. Billy and Gus are inour class at school. " This from the girl who had joyfully greeted theProfessor and the boys, yodeling a school yell from the hillside. Thenshe shot an aside at the slim youth: "You're a regular, downrightsimpleton, Thad, and forever looking for trouble. Don't listen to him, Dad. "

This appeared to settle the matter. Mr. Hooper squared his shoulders andgrinned broadly, adding: "Well, I ain't just satisfied 'bout themknowin' how, but go to it your own way, Professor. I'm a goin' to watchit, you know; not to interfere with your plans an' ways, but it's got tobe done right. If it goes along free an' fine, I ain't goin' to kick. "

The Professor explained that they had further work to do on the plansand must be going back. He took leave of Mr. Hooper and the daughter, and retreated with the boys as hurriedly as Bill could manage his handycrutch. They all proceeded silently in crossing the broad field, butwhen in the road Bill had to voice his thoughts:

"I expect that old fellow'll make it too hot for us. "

"Not for a minute; you need not consider that at all. Of course it wouldbe more satisfactory if Mr. Hooper could be assured at once of your realability, but it will have to grow on him. Just let him see what you cando; that's all. "

"I rather expect we can frame up something that will satisfy him andBill can spring it, " said Gus. 

"In just what way, can you imagine?" queried the Professor. 

"Some geometrical stunt, maybe; triangulation, or--"

"Why, sure! That's just it!" exploded Bill. "I know how we can get him:Parallax! Shucks, it'll be easy! Just leave it to me. "

"Looks as though some kind of Napoleonic strategy were going to bepulled off, " asserted Professor Gray, laughing. "But, boys, keep in mindthat Mr. Hooper, while a rough-and-ready old chap, with a big fortunemade in cattle dealing, is really an uncut diamond; a fine old fellow atheart, as you will see. "

CHAPTER XI

ENGINEERING

Two busy days followed during which Bill and Gus went to the city withProfessor Gray to purchase materials in full for the power plant. Theyalso had cement, reinforcing iron, lumber for forms and a small toolhouse hauled out to the power site and they drove the first stakes toshow the position of wheel and pipe line. Mr. Hooper did not put in anappearance. 

On the third morning the Professor bade the boys good-by, exacting thepromise that they would write frequently of their progress. They hadprivately formed an engineering company with Professor Gray aspresident, Gus as vice-president, which was largely honorary, and Billas general manager and secretary. Advance payments necessary for extralabor and their own liberal wages were deposited at the Fairview Bank byProfessor Gray and the boys were given a drawing account thereon, with asimple expense book to keep. 

That afternoon, dressed in new overalls and blouses, with a big, good-natured colored man to help with the laboring work, the boys wereearly on the job, at first making a cement mixing box; then Bill drovethe center stake thirty feet below where the dam was to be placed andfrom which, using a long cord, the curve of the structure twenty-ninefeet wide, was laid out upstream. 

At the spot chosen the rock-bound hillsides rose almost perpendicularlyfrom the narrow level ground that was little above the bed of thestream; it was the narrowest spot between the banks. George, the coloredfellow, was set to work digging into one bank for an end foundation; theother bank held a giant boulder. 

The boys were giving such close attention to their labors that they didnot see observers on the hilltop. Presently the gruff voice that theyhad heard before hailed them from close by and they looked up to see Mr. Hooper and the slim youth approaching. The boys had heard that thisThaddeus was the old man's nephew and that he called the Hooper mansionhis home. 

"What you drivin' that there stake down there for? Up here's where thePerfesser said the dam was to set, " Mr. Hooper demanded. 

"Yes, right here, " Bill replied. "But it is to be curved upstream andthat stake is our center. "

"What's the idea of curvin' it?"

"So that it will be stronger and withstand the pressure. You can't breakan arch, you know, and to push this out the hills would have to spreadapart. "

"I kind o' see. " The old man was thoughtful and looked on silently whilethe dam breast stakes were being driven every three feet at the end of astretched cord, the other end pivoting on the center stake below, thisgiving the required curve. 

"How deep you goin' into that hill? Seems like the water can't git roundit now. " Mr. Hooper, at a word from Thad, seemed inclined to criticize. 

"We must get a firm end, preferably against rock, " Bill explained. 

"Shucks! Reckon the clay ain't goin' to give none. How much fall yougoin' to git on that Pullet wheel?"

"Pelton wheel. About eighty feet, Professor Gray figured it roughly. We'll take it later exactly. "

"Kin you improve on the Perfesser?"

"No, but he made only a rough calculation. We'll take it both by levelsand by triangulation, using an old sextant of the Professor's. It isn'ta diff----"

"What's try-angleation?" Mr. Hooper was becoming interested. 

"The method of reading angles of different degrees and in that waygetting heights and distances. That's the way they measure mountainsthat can't be climbed and tell the distance of stars. "

"Shucks, young feller! I don't reckon anybody kin tell the distance o'the stars; they only put up a bluff on that. They ain't no ackshall wayo' gittin' distance onless you lay a tape measure, er somethin' like iton the ground. These here surveyors all does it; I had 'em go round myplace. "

Bill smiled and shook his head. "I guess you just haven't given it anyconsideration. There are lots of easier and better ways. Triangulation. Now, for instance, suppose an army comes to a wide river and wants toget across. They can't send anybody over to stretch a line; there may beenemy sharp-shooters that would get them and it is too wide, anyway. Butthey must know how many pontoon boats and how much flooring plank theymust have to bridge it and so they sight a tree or a rock on the othershore and take the distance across by triangulation. Or suppose--"

"Never heard of it. Why wouldn't surveyors git from here to yan thata-way, 'stead o' usin' chains? Could you----?"

"Chaining it is a little more accurate, where they have a lot of curvesand angles and the view is cut off by woods and hills. Yes, we can worktriangulation; we could tell the distance from the hilltop to your houseif we could see it and we had the time. "

"Bunk! Don't let 'em bluff you that a-way, Uncle. Make 'em prove it. "Thad showed his open hostility thus. 

Gus dropped his shovel and came from the creekside where he had begun todig alongside of the stakes for the foundation. He was visibly and, forhim, strangely excited as he walked up to Thad. 

"See here, fellow, Bill can do it and if there is anything in it we willdo it, too! You are pretty blamed ignorant!"

Mr. Hooper threw back his head and let out a roar of mirth. "Well, Ireckon that hits me, too. An' I reckon it might be true in a lot o'things. But Thad an' me, we kind o' doubt this. "

"We sure do. I'd bet five dollars you couldn't tell it within half amile an' it ain't much more than that. "

"I'll take your bet and dare you to hold to it, " said Gus. 

"Bet 'em, Thad; bet 'em! I'll stake you. "

"Oh, we don't want your money; betting doesn't get anywhere and it isn'tjust square, anyway. " Bill was smilingly endeavoring to restore goodfeeling. "Now, Mr. Hooper, we're not fixed to make a triangulationmeasurement to-day, but----"

"Not fixed? Of course not. Begins with excuses, " sneered Thad. 

"But to-morrow we'll bring out Professor Gray's transit and show you theway it's done. "

"Oh, yes, Uncle; they'll show us--to-morrow, or next day, or next week. Bunk!" Thad was plainly trying to be offensive. 

"You'll grin on the other side of your hatchet face, fellow, when we doshow you, " said Gus. 

"Now, Gus, cut out the scrapping. You can't blame him, nor Mr. Hooper, for doubting it if they've never looked into the matter. We can bringthe transit out this afternoon for taking the levels. Be here afterdinner, Mr. Hooper, if you can. "

"I'll be here, lads, " said the ex-cattle-dealer. "An' I reckon mynephew'll come along, too. "

CHAPTER XII

DISTANCE LENDS ENCHANTMENT

Mr. Hooper, his nephew, his daughter and another girl, fat and dumpy, were at the power site before two o'clock, and without more ado Billasked Gus to bring the transit to the comparatively level field on topof the hill. 

"Now, Mr. Hooper, please don't think we're doing this in a spirit ofidle controversy; we only want to show you something interesting. "

"That's all right, lad; an' I ain't above learnin', old as I am. ButThad here, he's different. " Mr. Hooper gave Bill and Gus a long wink. "Thad, he don't reckon he can be learned a thing, an' he's so blamesure--say, Thad, how 'bout that bet?"

"We don't want to bet anything; that only--" began Bill, but Gus wasless pacific. 

"Put up, or shut up, " he said, drawing a borrowed five dollar note outof his pocket and glaring at Thad. The slim youth did not respond. 

"He's afraid to bet, " jeered the daughter. "Hasn't got the nerve, or themoney. "

"I ain't afraid to bet. " Thad brought forth a like amount in bills. "Uncle'll hold the stakes. You got to tell how far it is from here tothe house without ever stepping the distance. "

"We'll make a more simple demonstration than that, " Bill declared. "It'll be the same thing and take less time and effort. Mr. Hooper, takesome object out there in the field; something that we can see;anything. "

"Here, Gracie, you take a stake there an' go out yan an' stick it up. Keep a-goin' till I holler. "

Both girls carried out these directions, the fat one falling down acouple of times, tripped by the long grass and getting up shaking withlaughter. The boys were to learn that she was a chum of Grace Hooper, that her name was Sophronia Doyle, though commonly nicknamed "Skeets. "

The stake was placed. Bill drove another at his feet, set the transitover it, peeped through it both ways and at his direction, afterstretching the steel tape, Gus drove a third stake exactly sixty feetfrom the transit at an angle of ninety degrees from a line to the fieldstake. 

"Now, folks, " explained Bill, "the stake out yonder is A, this one is Band the one at the other end of the sixty-foot base line is C. Pleaseremember that. "

The transit was then placed exactly over the stake C and, peeping again, Bill found the angle from the base line to the stake B and the line tostake A to be 78 degrees. Thereupon Gus produced a long board, held upone end and rested the other on a stake, while Bill went to work with asix-foot rule, a straight edge and a draughtsman's degree scale. Billelucidated:

"Now, then, to get out of figuring, which is always hard to understand, we'll just lay the triangulation out by scale, which is easilyunderstood. One-eighth of an inch equals one foot. This point is stake Band the base line to C is this line at right angles, or square acrossthe board. C stake is 7-1/2 inches from B which is equal to sixty feeton the scale, that is sixty one-eighth inches. Now, this line, parallelto the edge of the board, is the exact direction of your stake A. Do youall follow that?

"The direction to your stake was 78 degrees from the base line at C. This degree scale will give us that. " Bill carefully centered the latterinstrument, sharpened his pencil and marked the angle; then placing thestraight edge on the point C and the degree mark he extended the lineuntil it crossed the other outward line. At this crossing he marked aletter A and turned to his auditors. 

"This is your stake out yonder. The rule shows it to be a little over34-5/8 inches from the base line at B. That is, by the scale, a fewinches over 277 feet and that is the distance from here to where Gracestuck it into the ground. Our hundred-foot steel tape line is at yourservice, Mr. Hooper. "

Mr. Hooper merely glanced at Bill. He took up the tape line and spoke tohis nephew. "Git a holt o' this thing, Thad, an' let's see if--"

Grace interrupted him. "No, Dad; never let Thad do it! He'd make somemistake accidentally on purpose. I'll help you. "

There was utter silence from all while Grace carried out the end of thetape and placed her sticks, Mr. Hooper following after. Skeets borroweda pencil and a bit of paper from Gus and went along with Grace to keeptally, but she dropped the pencil in the grass, stepped on and broke it, was suffused with embarrassment and before she could really becomeuseful, the father and daughter had made the count mentally and theycame back to the base line, still without saying a word, a glad smile onthe girl's face and something between wonder and surprise on the oldman's features. 

Still without a word Mr. Hooper came straight to Bill, thrust out hisbig hand to grasp that of the smiling boy and in the other hand was heldthe bills of the wager, which he extended toward Gus. 

"Yours, lad, " he said. "We made the distance two hundred andseventy-eight foot. I reckon you git the money. "

Thad stood for a moment, nonplussed, a scowl on his face. Suddenly herecovered. 

"Hold on! That's more than they said it was. The money's mine. "

"Shucks, you dumb fool! Maybe a couple o' inches. I reckon we made themistake, fer we wasn't careful. It gits me they was that near it. Thecash is his'n. "

Gus took the bills, thrust his own into his pocket again and handed thetwo dollar note and the three ones to Skeets. 

"Please give them to him for me, " indicating Thad, "I don't want hismoney. "

"Not I, " said the fat girl; "it isn't my funeral. Let him do the weepingand you take and give them to the poor. "

Gus offered them to Grace, who also refused, shaking her head. Bill tookthe bills, and, limping over to Thad, handed him his wager. "You mustn'tfeel sore at us, " counseled the youthful engineer. "This was only alongthe lines of experiment and--and fun. "

But though Bill meant this in the kindliest spirit of comradeship, theboy sensed a feeling of extreme animosity that he was at a loss toaccount for. Bill backed off, further speech toward conciliationbecoming as lame as his leg. The others witnessed this and Grace said, quite heatedly:

"Oh, you can't make a silk purse out of a pig's ear. Thad's an incurablegrouch, " at which Skeets laughed till she shook, and Mr. Hooper noddedhis head. 

"Lad, " he said, "you're a wonder an' I ain't got no more to say ag'in'your doin' this work here. Go ahead with it your own way. But this I amabossin': to-morrow's half day, I reckon, so both o' you come over tothe house nigh 'long about noon an' set at dinner with us. You're more'nwelcome. "

CHAPTER XIII

COUNTER INFLUENCES

Thereafter, having been fully convinced by the demonstration and fullyassured of the precise accuracy in the work on the power plant, Mr. Hooper treated the boys with the utmost consideration and confidence. The owner of the great estate came down to see them every day andchatted as familiarly as though he had been a lifelong crony of theirown age. From time to time the boys were taken to dinner at the bighouse; they were given access to the library, and they found some timefor social and sportive pastimes with the young folks whom Grace invitedto her home. 

Throughout all this Bill shone as an entertainer, a mental uplift thatwas really welcome, so spontaneous and keen were his talks and commentson people and things. Gus, though having little practice, held his ownat tennis and golf; in swimming races and other impromptu sports hegreatly excelled; and when a young fellow who bore the reputation of anall-round athlete came for the week-end from the city, Gus put on thegloves with him and punched the newcomer all over an imaginary ring onthe lawn to the delight of Mr. Hooper, Grace and Skeets, as well as theadmiring Bill. 

Throughout all this, also, there was an element of ill feeling, an oftenopen expression of antagonism toward the boys, which probably the otherguests all tensed unpleasantly, but which the contented, jovial host andhis impetuous and volatile daughter hardly recognized or thought of. Thaddeus, the thin-faced, pale, stoop-shouldered, indolent, cigarette-smoking nephew, though often treated with slight courtesy, continually pushed himself to the front, compelling considerationapparently for the sole purpose of exerting a counter-influence upon thepopularity of Bill and Gus, especially the latter. The youth even wentso far at times as to attempt an interference in the power-plant work, declaring that it did not proceed rapidly enough and that certainmethods were at fault, to all of which Mr. Hooper turned a deaf ear. 

There was nothing else but open warfare between Grace and Thad, Skeetsalso echoing the daughter's hostility, while the nephew easily pretendedto ignore it, or to regard the sharp words aimed at him as jokes. Hetreated Skeets with as much contempt as her jovial manner permitted, butnow and then it could be seen that his pale eyes glared at Grace's backin a way that seemed almost murderous. 

One day Gus and George, the colored man, were working at the far end ofthe curved dam breast, the stone work having risen to four feet inheight. Bill was stooping to inspect the cement on the near end and theview of the hill was cut off. Presently voices came to him, mostly asort of good-natured protest in monosyllables; then Thad's tones, lowenough to keep Gus from hearing. 

"I tell you, Uncle, they're putting it over on you. It ain't any of mybusiness, but I hate to see you having your leg pulled. "

"'Taint!" was the brief answer. 

"Well, if you don't want to think so; but I know it. Look at this dam:not over two feet thick and expected to hold tons of water. Wait till aflood hits it. Will it go out like a stack of cards, or won't it? Andthey're not using enough cement; one-fourth only with the sand. "

"Grouting, broken stones, " growled Mr. Hooper. 

"Not sufficient, as you'll see. And does anybody want to say that atwo-inch pipe is going to run a water wheel with force enough to turn agenerator that will drive thirty or forty lights? Bosh!"

"They ought to know. "

"You think they do, but have you any proof of it? What they don't knowwould fill a libra--"

"How 'bout that there triang--what you call it? They knew that. "

"Oh, just a draughtsman's smart trick; used to catch people. I'm talkingabout things that are practical. You'll see. I'll bet you these blamedfools are going to strike a snag one of these days, or they'll leavethings so that there'll be a fall-down. But what need they care afterthey get their money?"

Bill heard footsteps retreating and dying away; Mr. Hooper went over toGus and, with evident hesitation, asked:

"Do you reckon you're makin' the stone work thick enough? It does lookmost terrible weak. "

"Sure, Mr. Hooper. Bill'll explain that to you. Professor Gray and heworked out the exact resistance and the pressure. "

And then Bill limped over; he had left his crutch on the hillside, andhe said, half laughing:

"This wall, Mr. Hooper, can't give way, even if it had the ocean behindit, unless the stone and cement were mashed and crumbled by pressure. The only thing that could break it would be about two days' hammeringwith a sledge, or a big charge of blasting powder, and even thatcouldn't do a great deal of damage. "

"All right, me lad; you ought to know an' I believe you. "

Mr. Hooper's genial good humor returned to him immediately; it wasevident that he was from time to time unpleasantly influenced by thesoft and ready tongue of his nephew. The old gentleman turned towardhome and disappeared; a short time afterward Thad came and stood nearwhere Gus was working, but he said nothing, nor did Gus address him. Then the slim youth also departed and hardly half an hour elapsed beforedown the hill came Grace and Skeets, the latter stumbling several times, nearly pitching headlong and yet most mirthful over her own nearmisfortune; but little Miss Hooper seemed unusually serious-minded. Alively exchange of jests and jolly banter commenced between Skeets andGus, who could use his tongue if forced to; but presently Grace left herlaughing chum and came over to where Bill had resumed his inspection. 

"They can't hear us, can they?" she queried, glancing back at theothers. 

"Why, I expect not, " Bill replied, surprised and mystified. 

"If I say something to you, real confidentially, you won't give me away, will you? Honest, for sure?"

"Honest, I won't; cross my heart; wish I may die; snake's tongue;butcher knife bloody!"

"That ought to do, and anybody with any sense would believe you, anyway. But, then, it will be a big temptation for you--"

"Resistance is my nickname; you may trust me. "

"Well, then, in some way, " said the girl, dropping her voice stilllower, "you are going to find that this work here won't be--it won'tgo--not just as you expect it to; it--it won't be just plain sailing asit ought to be and would be if you were let alone. There are things, "she put a forceful accent on the last word, "that will interfere--oh, sometimes dreadfully, maybe, and I felt that I must tell you, but--"

Bill, wondering, glanced up at her; she stood with her pretty faceturned away, a troubled look in her bright eyes, the usually smilinglips compressed with determination. The boy's quick wits began to fathomthe drift of her intention and the cause thereof; he must know more todetermine her precise attitude. 

"I must believe that you mean this in real kindness and friendlinesstoward Gus and me. "

"Of course I do; else I would not have told you a thing, " Grace said, blushing a little. 

"I think it must be something real and that you know. This thing, then, as you call it, is more likely a person--some person who is workingagainst us. You mean that; don't you?"

"Please don't ask me too much. I think you're very quick and intelligentand that you'll find out and be on your guard. "

"I think I understand. Naturally you must feel a certain loyalty towarda relation, or at least if not just that, toward one who has yourfather's good will. Gus and I surely appreciate your warning; you'llwant me to tell him, of course. "

"I don't know. Gus is not so cool-headed as you are; I was afraid hemight--"

"Trust Gus. He and I work together in everything. And I do thank you, Grace, more than I can express. Well keep our eyes open. "

CHAPTER XIV

FURTHER OPPOSITION

The dam was built, the flood gate in place, the pipe valve set forfurther extension of the line down the little valley; and as the pipehad all come cut and threaded, Bill and George were working withwrenches and white lead to get the sections tightly jointed against thepressure that would result. Gus, the carpenter, was laying out theframing of heavy timbers reinforced with long bolts and set in cement onwhich the Pelton wheel was to be mounted. 

Several days were thus spent; the water was pouring over the spillway ofthe dam and it was with satisfaction that the boys found, after aninspection one quitting hour, that the wall, five feet high, was notleaking a drop. 

That night Gus came over to Bill's home and the two went over the plansuntil late; then Gus chatted awhile on the steps, Bill standing in thedoorway. Suddenly, from over toward the northeast, in the direction ofthe upper tract of the Hooper estate, there was a flash in the sky and adull reverberation like a very distant or muffled blast. Bill wastalking and hardly noticed it, but Gus had been looking in thatdirection and, calling Bill's attention, wondered as to the cause of theodd occurrence. 

In the morning, as the boys descended the hill, George, who was alwayson hand half an hour ahead of time, came up to meet them and was plainlyexcited. 

"Mist' Bill an' Gus, de dam's done busted a'ready an' de water's jes'a-pourin' through t' beat ol' Noah's flood! Whut you 'low was de becauseo' dis givin' way?"

"By cracky, Bill!" was Gus' comment as they stood looking at the breakwhich seemed to involve a yard square of the base and cracks, as thoughfrom a shock. "You know and I know that the water didn't push this out. How about that flash and bang we heard last night?"

"I can't see how the water could have done it, " said Bill, who evidentlyhad more talent for construction than for determining destruction. 

"There's something behind this that I don't like and I'm going to findout about it, " said Gus, his usually quiet demeanor entirely gone. "Youought to be able, " he continued, "to put two and four together. Howabout that warning Grace gave you? And how did she know anything out ofwhich to give it? And why wouldn't she give any names?"

"Well, I have wondered; I thought I saw why, " Bill said. 

"Of course you see why, old scout. And if you'll leave it to me, you'llknow why and all the how and the what of it, too. " Gus was neverboastful; now he was merely determined. 

The boys opened the flood gate and after the water no longer flowedthrough the break, they began a closer examination that surprised them. Mr. Hooper, Thad, Grace and Skeets descended the hill. 

Bill, after greetings, merely pointed to the break. Mr. Hooper startedto say something about the structure's being too weak; Thad laughed, andGrace, looking daggers at him, turned away and pulled Skeets with her. Gus, gazing at Thad, addressed Mr. Hooper. 

"Yes, too weak to stand the force of an explosion. It wasn't the waterpressure. Mr. Hooper; you'll notice that the stones there are forced inagainst the water; not out with it. And the cracks--they're furtherevidence. We heard the explosion about eleven o'clock; saw the light ofthe flash, too. "

"Shucks! You reckon that's so? Got any notion who it was that done it?"

"Yes, sir; got a big notion who it was; but we won't say till we get iton him for sure. And then's it's going to be a sorry day for him. "

Gus was still gazing straight at Thad and that youth, first attemptingto ignore this scrutiny and then trying to match it, at last grewrestless and turned away. Mr. Hooper also had his eyes on Thad; the oldgentleman looked much troubled. He raised his voice loud enough for Thadto hear as he walked off:

"We'll git a watchman an' put him on the job, --that's what we'll do!They ain't goin' to be any more o' this sort o' thing. "

And Bill chimed in: "Good idea. There's George, Mr. Hooper; we're nearlythrough with him and we've been wondering what to put him at, for we'dbe sorry to lose him. "

So it was arranged then and there, much to the satisfaction of everyone, especially the old darkey, and Mr. Hooper, saying nothing more butlooking as though there were a death in his family, started away towardhome. 

CHAPTER XV

MR. EDDY'S SON'S SONS

It took but a short time to repair the break; before many other days hadpassed the Pelton wheel, a direct action turbine, was going at atremendous rate, driven by a nozzled stream from the pipe. It wasnecessary to belt it down from a small to a larger pulley to run thegenerator at a slower speed, which was 1200 a minute. Then came theboxing in, the wiring to the house, and the making of connections withthe wiring to the house after the town company's service was dispensedwith, and it was a proud moment when Gus turned on the first bulb andgot a full and brilliant glare. 

Mr. Hooper clasped the hands of both boys, compelled them to spend theevening, ordered special refreshments for the occasion, told Grace toinvite a lot of the young folks and when, at dusk all the lights of thehouse went on with an illumination that fairly startled the guests, thehost proposed a cheer for the boys which found an eager and unanimousresponse. Mr. Hooper attempted to make a speech, with his matronly andcontented wife laughing and making sly digs at his effort, and hisdaughter encouraging him. 

"Now, young fellers, " he began, "these boys--uh, Mister Bill Brown an'Mister 'Gustus Grier, --I says to them, --in the first place, I says:'Perfesser, these here kids don't know enough to build a chicken coop, 'I says, an' Perfesser Gray he says to me, he says, he would back themfellers to build a battleship or tunnel through to Chiny, he says. So Isays: 'You kids kin go ahead, ' I says, an' these blame boys they wentahead an' shucks! you all see what they, Bill an' Gus, has done. Youfellers has got to have a lot o' credit an' you are goin' to git it!

"Now, my wife she don't think I'm any good at makin' a speech an 'Iain't, but I'm a-makin' it jes' the same fer these boys, Bill an' Gus, b'jinks! They got to git credit fer what they done, jes' two kids doin'a reg'lar man's job. An' I reckon that not even that feller Eddy's son, that there chap they call the 'Wizard of Menlo Park, ' I reckon hecouldn't 'lectrocute nothin' no better'n these here boys, Bill an' Gus, has lighted this here domycile. An'--oh, you kin laugh, Ma Hooper, b'jinks, but I reckon you're as proud o' these here young Eddy's son'ssons as I be. Now, Mister Bill an' Mister Gus, you kin bet all thesefolks'd like to have a few words. Now, as they say in prayer meetin', 'Mister Bill Brown'll lead us in a speech. ' Hooray!"

Bill seized his crutch, got it carefully under his arm and arose. He wasnot just a rattle-box, a mere word slinger, for he always had somethingto say worth listening to; talking to a crowd was no great task for himand he had a genius for verbal expression. 

"I hope my partner in mechanical effort and now in misery will let mespeak for him, too, for he couldn't get up here and say a word if you'dpromise him the moon for a watch charm. Our host, Mr. Hooper, would havegiven us enough credit if he had just stated that we were twopersevering ginks, bent on making the best of a good chance and using, perhaps with some judgment, the directions of our superior, ProfessorGray, along with some of our own ideas that fitted, in. But to compareus and our small job here, which was pretty well all mapped out for us, to the wonderful endeavors of Thomas Alva Edison is more than even ourcombined conceit can stand for. If we deserved such praise, even in thesmallest way, you'd see us with our chests swelled out so far that we'dlook like a couple of garden toads. 

"Edison! Mr. Hooper, did you, even in your intended kindness inflattering Gus and myself, really stop to think what it could mean tocompare us with that wonderful man? I know you could not mean tobelittle him, but you certainly gave us an honor far beyond what anyother man in the world, regarding electrical and mechanical things, could deserve. If we could hope to do a hundredth part of the greatthings Edison has done, it would, as Professor Gray says, indeed makelife worth living. 

"But we thank you, Mr. Hooper, for your kind words and for inviting allthese good friends and our classmates, and we thank you and good Mrs. Hooper for this bully spread and everything!"

Bill started to sit down amidst a hearty hand-clapping, but Cora Sieboldwaved her hand for silence and demanded:

"Tell us more about Edison, Billy, as you did after the talk over theradio! You see, we missed the last of it and I'll bet we'd all like tohear more--"

"Yes!" "Yes!" "Sure!" "Me, too!" "Go on, Billy!" came from Dot Myers, Skeets, Grace Hooper, Ted Bissell and Gus. In her enthusiastic effortsat showing an abundant appreciation, the fat girl wriggled too far outon the edge of her chair, which tilted and slid out from under her, causing sufficient hilarious diversion for Bill to take a sneak out ofthe room. When Cora and Grace captured and brought him back, the keenedge of the idea had worn off enough for him to dodge the issue. 

"I'll tell you what we're going to do, " he said, and it will be betterthan anything we can think of just between us here. You all read, didn'tyou, that the lectures were to be repeated by request in two monthsafter the last talk? We didn't hear it because Professor went away, andnow three weeks of the time have gone by. But I'll tell you what Gus andI are going to do: we're going to build a radio receiver and get it donein time to get those talks on Edison all over again. "

"Really?"

"Do you think you can do it?"

"If Billy says he can, why, the--"

"Oh, you Edison's son!" This from the irrepressible Ted. 

"Go to it, Bill!"

"Can we all listen in?"

"Why, of course, " said Bill, replying to the last question. "Everybody'll be invited and there will be a horn. But don't forgetthis: We've only got a little over four weeks to do it and it's somejob! So, if you're disappointed--"

"We won't be. "

"No; Bill'll get there. "

"Hurrah for old Bill!"

"Say, people, enough of this. I'm no candidate for President of theUnited States, and remember that Gus is in this, too, as much as I am. "

"Hurrah for Gus!" This was a general shout. 

Gus turned and ran. 

CHAPTER XVI

THE DOUBTERS

The party was on the point of breaking up, with much laughter over theembarrassment of poor Gus, when Skeets unexpectedly furnished furtherentertainment. She had paused to lean comfortably against a centertable, but its easy rolling casters objected to her weight, rolled awayhastily and deposited her without warning on the floor. Ted, whogallantly helped her to her feet, remarked, with a grunt due to extremeeffort, that she really might as well stand up or enlist the entire fourlegs of a chair to support her. 

Bill, about to take leave of the host and hostess, felt a slight jerk athis sleeve and looking round was surprised to find Thad at his elbow. The youth said in a low voice:

"Want to see you out yonder among the trees. Give the rest the slip. Gota pipe of an idea. "

Bill nodded, wondering much. A moment later Mr. Hooper was repeatingthat he was proud of the work done by the boys and glad that he hadtrusted them. Then he added:

"But say, young feller, much as I believe in you and Gus, seein' yoursmartness, I got to doubt all that there bunk you give them young people'bout that there what you call radier. I been borned a long time--goin'on to seventy year now, --an' I seen all sorts of contraptions likereapers an' binders, ridin' plows, typewritin'-machines, telephones, phonygraphs, flyin'-machines, submarines an' all such, but b'jinks, Iain't a-believin' that nobody kin hear jes' common talk through the airwithout no wires. An' hundreds o' miles! 'Tain't natch'all an' 'taintpossible now, is it?"

"Why, yes, Mr. Hooper; it's both poss--"

"Come on, Billy! Good-night, Mr. Hooper and Mrs. Hooper. We all had adandy time. " And Bill was led away. But he was able, by hanging back alittle, to whisper to Gus that he was on the track of something fromThad, --for Bill could only think that the young man would make aconfession or commit himself in some way. 

"See you in the morning, " he added and turned back. 

Thad was waiting and called to Bill from his seat on a bench beneath theshade of a big maple. The fellow plunged at once into his subject, evidently holding the notion that youth in general possesses a shadysense of honor. 

"See here, Brown. I think I get you and I believe you've got wit enoughto get Uncle Hooper. Did he say anything to you as you came out aboutbeing shy on this radio business?"

Bill nodded. 

"Say, he don't believe it's any more possible than a horse car can turninto a buzzard! Fact! He told me you fellows might fool him on a lot ofthings and that you were awful smart for kids, but he'd be hanged for aquarter of beef if you could make him swallow this bunk about talkingthrough the air. You know the way he talks. "

"I think he can and will be convinced, " said Bill, "and you can't blamehim for his notion, for he has never chanced to inquire about radio andI expect he doesn't read that department in the paper. If he meets aplain statement about radio broadcasting or receiving, it either makesno impression on him, or he regards it as a sort of joke. But, anyway, what of it?"

"Why, just this and you ought to catch on to it without being told:Unk's a stubborn old rat and he hasn't really a grain of sense, in spiteof all the money he made. All you've got to do is to egg him on as ifyou thought it might be a little uncertain and then sort o' dare to makea big bet with him. I'll get busy and tell him that this radio businessis the biggest kind of an expert job and that you fellows are blameddoubtful about it. Then, when you get your set working and let Unklisten in, he'll pay up and we'll divide the money. See? Easy as pie. Orwe might work it another way: I'll make the bet with him and you fellowslet on to fall down. Or we might--"

"Well, I've listened to your schemes, " said Bill, "and I'm going to saythis about them: I think you are the dirtiest, meanest skunk I ever ranacross. You--"

"Say, now, what's the matter?"

"You're a guest under your uncle's roof; eating his grub, accepting hishospitality, pretending to be his friend--"

"Aw, cut that out, now! You needn't let on you're so awful fine. "

"And then deliberately trying to hatch a scheme to rob him! Of all therotten, contemptible--" Unable to voice his righteous indignation, Billclenched his fist and struck Thad square in the eye. 

Thad had risen and was standing in front of Bill, trembling with rage asimpotent as though _he_ were little and lame, leaning, like Bill, on thecrutch a less valiant cripple would have used instead of his bare fist. 

With a look of fiendish hatred, instead of returning blow for blow, Thadmade a sudden grab and tore Bill's crutch out of the hand which had feltno impulse to use it in defense against his able-bodied antagonist. 

"Now, you blow to Uncle and I'll break this crutch!"

Strange, isn't it, how we often are reminded of funny things even in themidst of danger? Bill, a cripple and unable to move about with theagility needed to fend off a cowardly attack by this miserable piker, showed the stuff he was made of when he burst out laughing, for he wasreminded by this threat of that old yarn about a softy's threatening tobreak the umbrella of his rival found in the vestibule of his girl'shouse, then going out and praying for rain!

Thad, astonished at Bill's sudden mirth, held the crutch mid-air, anddemanded with a malignant leer:

"Huh! Laugh, will you?"

"Go ahead and break it, but it won't be a circumstance to what I'll doto you. I can imagine your uncle--"

"So? Listen, you pusillanimous, knock-kneed shrimp? I'm going to mashyour jaw so you'll never wag it again! And right now, too, you--"

Possibly there was as much determination back of this as any evilintent, but it also was doomed to failure. There was a quick step fromthe deeper shadows and a figure loomed suddenly in front of Thad who, with uplifted crutch, was still glaring at Bill. Only two words werespoken, a "_You_, huh?" from the larger chap; then a quick tackle, ashort straining scuffle, and Thad was thrown so violently sidewise andhurtled against the bench from which Bill had just risen, that it andThad went over on the ground together. The bench and the lad seemed tolie there equally helpless. Gus picked up the crutch and handed it tohis chum. 

"Let's go. He won't be able to get up till we've gone. "

But as they passed out from among the shadows there followed them athreat which seemed to be bursting with the hatred of a demon:

"Oh, I'll get even with you two little devils. I'll blow you to--"

The two boys looked at each other and only laughed. 

"Notice his right eye when you see him again, " chuckled Bill. 

CHAPTER XVII

THE UNEXPECTED

"Where did you come from, Gus?" Bill asked, still inclined to laugh. 

"The road. Slipped away from the others for I was wondering whether youmight not get into trouble. Couldn't imagine that chump would springanything that wouldn't make you mad, and I knew you'd talk back. So Idid the gumshoe. "

"Well, I suppose he would have made it quite interesting for me and I ameternally grateful to you. If it weren't for you, Gus, I guess, I'd havea hard time in--"

"By cracky, if it weren't for you, old scout, where would I be? Nowhere, or anywhere, but never somewhere. "

"That sounds to me something like what Professor Gray calls a paradox, "laughed Bill. 

"I don't suppose you're going to peach on Thad, " Gus offered. 

"No; but wouldn't I like to? It's a rotten shame to have that lowdownscamp under Mr. Hooper's roof. It's a wonder Grace doesn't give himaway; she must know what a piker he is. "

"Bill, it's really none of our business, " Gus said. "Well, see you inthe morning early. "

The boys wished once more to go over carefully all the completed detailsof the water power plant; they had left the Pelton wheel flying aroundwith that hissing blow of the water on the paddles and the splashingwhich made Bill think of a circular log saw in buckwheat-cake batter. The generator, when thrown in gear, had been running as smoothly as aspinning top; there were no leaks in the pipe or the dam. But now theyfound water trickling from a joint that showed the crushing marks of asledge, the end of the nozzle smashed so that only enough of the streamstruck the wheel to turn it, and there was evidence of sand in thegenerator bearings. 

Then appeared George, with an expression of mingled sorrow, shame, wonder and injured pride on his big ebony features, his eyes rollingabout like those of a dying calf. At first he was mute. 

"Know anything about this business, George?" asked Bill. 

"Don't know a thing but what Ah does know an' dat's a plenty. What'shappened here?"

"The plant has been damaged; that's all. "

"Damage? When? Las' night, close on t' mawnin'? Well, suh, Ah 'low thatthere ghos' done it. "

"Ghost? What--where was any ghost?"

"Right yer at de tool house. Come walkin' roun' de corner fo' Ah couldgrab up man stick an' Ah jes' lef' de place. "

"What? Ran away and from your duty? You were put here to guard theplant; not to let any old--"

"Didn't 'low t' guard it 'gainst no ghos'es. Dey don' count in decontrac'. Folks is one thing an' ghos'es--"

"Ghosts! Bosh! There's no such thing as a ghost! If you had swung yourclub at the silly thing you'd have knocked over some dub of a man thatwe could pretty well describe right now, and saved us a heap of troubleand expense--and you'd have kept your job!" Bill was disgusted andangry. 

"Lawsee! Ah ain't gwine lose mah job jes' fo' dodgin' a ghos', is I?"

"What did this fellow look like?" asked Gus. 

"Ah nevah could tell 'bout it; didn't take no time for' t' look sharp. Ah wuz on'y jes' leavin'. "

"Now, see here, George, " said Bill, his native gentleness dominating, "if you'll promise to say nothing about this, keep on the job and grabthe next ghost, we'll let you stay on. And we'll make an awful goodguess when we tell you that you'll find the ghost is Mr. Hooper'snephew. If you do grab him, George, and lock him in the tool house, we'll see that you're very nicely rewarded, --a matter of cold cash. Areyou on?"

"Ah shore is, an' Ah'll git him, fo' Ah reckon he's gwine come again. 'Tain't no fun tacklin' whut looks lak a ghos', but Ah reckon Ah'll makethat smahty think he's real flesh an' blood fo' Ah gits through withhim!"

The boys were two days making repairs, which time encroached upon theirplan to get their promised radio receiver into action. Having no shopnor proper tools for finer work, they would be handicapped, for they haddecided, because of the pleasure and satisfaction in so doing, to makemany of the necessary parts that generally are purchased outright. Billmade the suggestion, on account of this delay, that they abandon theiroriginal plan, but Gus, ever hopeful, believed that something might turnup to carry out their first ideas. 

The afternoon that they had everything in normal condition again, Mr. Hooper came down to see them; he knew nothing of the tampering with thework, but it became evident at once that his nephew had slyly andforcibly put it into his head that amateur radio construction waslargely newspaper bunk, without any real foundation of fact. Thad mayhave had some new scheme, but at any rate the unlettered old man wouldswallow pretty nearly everything Thad said, even though he oftenrepudiated Thad's acts. Again Mr. Hooper, Bill and Gus got on thesubject of radio and the old gentleman repeated his convictions:

"I ain't sayin' you boys can't do wonders, an' I'm fer you all the time, but I'm not goin' t' b'lieve you kin do what's pretty nigh out o'reason. Listen to me, now, fer a minute: If you fellers kin rig up amachine to fetch old man Eddy's son's talk right here about two hundredan' fifty mile, I'll hand out to each o' you a good hundred dollars;yes, b'jinks. I'll make it a couple a hun--"

"No, Mr. Hooper, we value your friendship altogether too much to takeyour money and that's too much like a wager, anyway. " Bill was mostearnest. "But you must take our word for it that it can be done. "

"Fetch old man Eddy's son's voice--!"

"Just that exactly--similar things have been done a-plenty. People aretalking into the radio broadcasters and their voices are hearddistinctly thousands of miles. But, Mr. Hooper, you wouldn't know Mr. Edison's voice if you heard it, would you?"

"N--no, can't say as how I would--but listen here. I do know a fellerwhat works with him--they say he's close to the ol' man. Bill Medders. Knowed Bill when he was a little cack, knee-high to a grasshopper. Theysay he wrote a book about Eddy's son. I'd know Bill Medder's voice if Iheard it in a b'iler factory. "

Bill Brown could hardly repress a smile. "I guess you must mean WilliamH. Meadowcroft. His 'Boys' Life of Edison' sure is a dandy book. I likedit best of all. Sometimes no one can see Mr. Edison for weeks at a time, when he's buried in one of his 'world-beaters. ' But I reckon we can letyou hear Mr. Meadowcroft's voice. He wrote me a pippin of a letter onceabout the Chief. "

"All righty. I'll take Medders's. I know Bill, an' you can't fool me onthat voice. "

"Mr. Hooper, I'll tell you what, " said the all-practical Bill eagerly. "This demonstration will be almost as interesting to you as it is to us, and you can help us out. We can get what little power we need from anypower plant. But we want a shop most of all--a loft or attic with roomenough to work in. We're going to get all the tools we need--"

"No. I'll get 'em fer you an' you kin have all that there room over thegarage. " (The old gentleman pronounced this word as though it rhymedwith carriage. ) "An' anything else you're a mind to have you kin have. Some old junk up there, I reckon, " he went on. "You kin throw it out, ermake use of it. An' now, let's see what you kin do!"

The boys were eager to acknowledge this liberal offer, and theyexpressed themselves in no measured terms. They would do better thanmake one receiver; they would make two and one would be installed in Mr. Hooper's library, --but of this they said nothing at first. Get busy theydid, with a zeal and energy that overmatched even that given the powerplant. That afternoon they moved into the new shop and were delightedwith its wide space and abundant light. The next day they went to thecity for tools and materials. Two days later a lathe, a grinder and aboring machine, driven by a small electric motor wired from the Hoopergenerator were fully installed, together with a workbench, vises, acomplete tool box and a drawing board, with its instruments. No younglaborers in the vineyard of electrical fruitage could ask for more. 

"Isn't it dandy, Gus?" Bill exclaimed, surveying the place and theresult of their labors in preparation. "If we can't do things here, it'sonly our fault. Now, then--"

"It is fine, " said Gus, "and we're in luck, but somehow, I think we mustbe on our guard. I can't get my mind off ghosts and the damage overyonder. I'm going to take a sneak around there to-night again, alongaround midnight and a little after. I did last night; didn't tell you, for you had your mind all on this. George was on duty, challenged me, but I've got a hunch that he knows something he doesn't want to worry usabout and thinks he can cope with. "

CHAPTER XVIII

A BIT TRAGIC

"Hold up your hands, nigger!"

The voice was low and sepulchral, but either the ghostly apparition thatuttered the command had slipped up on its vernacular, or it was thespirit of a bandit. Some demand of the kind was, however, urgentlynecessary, for George did not, as formerly, show a desire to flee; hisbelligerent attitude suggested fight and he was a husky specimen with ahandy club. Even though he might have suffered a qualm at againbeholding the white apparition in the moonlight, his determination todare the spectre was bolstered by the voice and the manner of thecommand. 

"Ah knows who yo' is an' Ah's gwine hol' yo' up! Yo' ain't no ghos'. Disclub'll knock de sure 'nough breff out'n yo'; then we'll see. "

To Gus, on the hillside above the power plant, it looked very much asthough this threat were going to be carried out. He had been quietlyobserving, under the light of a half moon, the ghostly visitation andeven the advent of this individual before the white raiment had beendonned some distance behind the tool house and unknown to the watchfulGeorge. All this had not surprised Gus, but he had been puzzled by theappearance on the hillside of another figure that kept behind the scantbushes much as Gus was doing, except that it was screened against beingseen from below and evidently did not know of Gus's presence. Now, however, all attention was given to the altercation before the toolhouse, around which the ghost had come, evidently to be disappointed atnot seeing George take to his heels. 

Suddenly there was a shot. The reverberation among the hills seemedominous, but not more so than the staggering back and sinking down ofpoor George. Gus saw the white figure stand for a moment, as thoughpeering down at the victim of this murderous act; then it turned andfled straight up the hill and directly toward the one up there crouchingand--waiting? Were they in collusion? Gus had but a moment to guess. Still crouching, unseen, though brave, --for Gus was courageous evensometimes to the point of being foolhardy in the rougher sports, orwhere danger threatened others, --he avoided now the almost certain fateof George, for the villain was still armed and desperate, no doubt. AndGus hoped that the arrest of the scamp would surely follow his meetingwith the other observer. 

But this safe and sane attitude of the watching Gus suffered a suddenchange when, as the ascending ruffian fairly stumbled upon the otherfigure crouching on the hillside, a scream, unmistakably that of afemale in dire distress, came to the ears of the witness. He could dimlysee the two struggling together, the dark figure with the white. Thenext instant, forgetting all danger to himself, Gus lessened thedistance by leaps and scrambles along the declivity and flung himselfupon the assailant. 

There was a short, sharp tussle; a second shot, but this time the weapondischarged its leaden pellet harmlessly. Then the ghost, takingadvantage of the hillside, flung Gus aside and before the boy had timeto leap upon his foeman again, the white figure, his habiliments tornoff, had backed away and threatened Gus with the pistol. There was nomistaking the voice that uttered the threat:

"Keep off, or you'll get punctured! You needn't think anybody's going toget me. I'm going to vanish. If you try to follow me now, I'll killyou!"

This sounded desperate enough and Gus had reason to believe the fellowmeant it. But in spite of that and driven by righteous anger, he wouldagain have tackled the enemy had not the voice of Grace Hooper checkedhim:

"Oh, let him go; let him go!" she begged. "He'll shoot, and you--youmust not be killed! No; you shall not!"

And then, as the rascal turned and fled over the brow of the hill, Gusturned to the girl, sitting on the ground. 

"How did you come here--what--?"

"I knew something was going to happen, and I thought I might prevent itsome way. Then he fired, and I saw how desperate he was, --and he shot--"

"Yes--we must do all we can for poor George, if anything can be done. But are you hurt?"

"Not very much; he meant to hurt me. I dodged when he struck and only myshoulder may be--bruised. "

"Then you should bathe it in hot water. Can I help you up? No, you mustnot go home alone--but I must see about poor George. I heard him groan. "

"I'd better go down with you. "

"It might be--too horrible--for a girl, you see. Better stay here. "

Gus had extended his hand to give her a lift; she took it and cameslowly to her feet; then suddenly crumpled up and lay unconscious beforehim, her face white against the dark sod, her arms outflung. Gus staredat her a few long seconds, as foolishly helpless as any boy could be. Hetold Bill afterward that he never felt so flabbergasted in his life. What to do he knew not, but he must try something, and do it quickly. Perhaps Grace had only fainted; should he go to George first? He mightbe dying--or dead! Then the thought came to him: "Women and childrenfirst. "

Gus dashed down the hill, dipped his cap, cup fashion, into the water ofthe dam and fled up with it again, brimming full and spilling over. Hewas able to dash a considerable quantity of reviving water into thegirl's face. With a gasp and a struggle she turned over, opened hereyes, sat up, --her physical powers returning in advance of her mentalgrasp. 

"Oh, am I, --no, not dead? Please help me--up and home. "

"Yes, I'll take you home in just a jiffy. Do you feel a little better?Can you sit still here, please, till I see about George? Just a moment?"

Again the boy went down the hill, now toward the tool house; he wasbrave enough, but a sort of horror gripped him as he rounded the cornerof the little shack. What, then, was his relief when he found thewatchman on his feet, a bit uncertain about his balance and leaningagainst the door frame. It was evident from the way he held his clubthat he meant not to desert his post and that he believed his lateassailant was returning. At sight of Gus, the colored man's reliefshowed in his drawn face. 

"Mist' Gus! It's you, honey! My Lawd! Ah done been shot! By the ghos', Mist' Gus, whut ain't nothin' no mo'n dat low-down, no 'count nephew o'ol' Mist' Hooper's. Ah reckon Ah's gwine die, but Ah ain't yit--not efhe's comin' back!"

"Good boy, George! You're the stuff! But you're not going to die andhe's not coming back. He lit out like a rabbit. Come now; we'll go to adoctor and then--"

"Reckon Ah can't do it. Got hit in de hip some'ers; makes mah leg totalwuthless. You-all go on an' Ah'll git me some res' yere till mawnin'. "

"And maybe bleed nearly to death! No, I'll be back for you in notime, --as soon as I get Miss Grace home. She's on the hill there. Shecame out to watch that cousin of hers. You hang on till I get back. "

Grace tried to show her usual energy, but seemed nearly overcome byfatigue. She made no complaint, but presently Gus saw that she wascrying, and that scared him. In his inexperience he could not know thatit was only overwrought nerves. He felt he must make speed in carryingout his intentions to get help to George and put the authorities on thetrack of Thad. Gus could see but one thing to do properly and hisnatural diffidence was cast aside by his generous and kindly nature. 

"Let me give you a lift, as I do Bill, sometimes, " he said, and drew thegirl's arm over his shoulder, supporting her with his other arm. In asecond or two they were going on at a rather lively pace. In a fewminutes they had reached the house. Grace entered and called loudly. Herfather and mother appeared instantly in the hallway above. The girl, half way up the stairway, told of the incidents at the power plant andadded:

"Thad boasted to me that he was going to give the boys a lot moretrouble, and I watched and saw him leave the house. So I followed, hoping to stop him, and after he shot George he ran into me and was soangry that he struck me. I wish _I_ had had a pistol! I would have--"

"Gracie, dear little girl! You mustn't wish to kill or wound anyone! Oh, are you _hurt_? Come, dear--"

"I'll be with you right off, me boy!" said Mr. Hooper to Gus, andpresently they were in the library alone. 

"Listen to me, lad. This nevvy o' mine is me dead sister's child, an' Iswore t' her I'd do all I could fer him. His brother Bob, he's in theNavy, a decent lad; won't have nothin' to do with Thad. An' you can'tblame him, fer Thad's a rapscallion. Smart, too, an' friendly enough tohis old uncle. But now, though, I'm done with him. I'm fer lettin' himslide, not wantin' to put the law on him. I'll take care o' George. Heshall have the best doctor in the country, an' I'll keep him an' hiswife in comfort, but I don't want Thaddeus to be arrested. Now I reckonhe's gone an' so let luck take him--good, bad, er indifferent. Won't youlet him hit his own trail, foot-loose?"

"I'd like to see him arrested and jailed, " said Gus, "but for you andbecause of what you'll do for George and your being so good to Bill andme, I'll keep mum on it. "

"Good, me lad. An' now you git back to George an' tell him to keepThad's name out of it. I'll 'phone fer 'Doc' Little and 'Doc' Yardley, an' have an ambulance sent fer the poor feller. Then you can tell hiswife. It means very little sleep fer you this night, but you can layabed late. "

Gus went away upon these duties, but with a heavy heart; he felt thatMr. Hooper, because of the very gentleness of the man was defeatingjustice, and though he had been nearly forced to give his promise, hefelt that he must keep it. 

CHAPTER XIX

CONSTRUCTION AND DESTRUCTION

Bill and Gus worked long hours and diligently. All that the power plantconstruction had earned for Bill, the boy had turned in to help hismother. But Mr. Grier, busy at house building and doing better than atmost other times, was able to add something to _his_ boy's earnings, sothat Gus could capitalize the undertaking, which he was eager to do. 

The layout of the radio receiver outfits to be built alike were put atfirst on paper, full size; plan, side and end elevations and tracingswere made of the same transferred to heavy manila paper. These were tobe placed on the varnished panels, so that holes could be bored throughpaper and panel, thus insuring perfect spacing and arrangement. Sketches, also, were made of all details. 

The audion tubes, storage batteries and telephone receivers had beenpurchased in the city. Almost all the other parts were made by the boysout of carefully selected materials. The amplifiers consisted of ironcore transformers comprising several stages of radio frequency. Thevariometers were wound of 22-gauge wire. Loose couplers were usedinstead of the ordinary tuning coil. The switch arms, pivoting shaftsand attachments for same, the contact points and binding posts werehome-made. A potentiometer puzzled them most, both the making and theapplication, but they mastered this rather intricate mechanism, as theydid the other parts. 

In this labor, with everything at hand and a definite object in view, noboys ever were happier, nor more profitably employed, considering theinfluence upon their characters and future accomplishments. How true itis that they who possess worthy hobbies, especially those governed bythe desire for construction and the inventive tendency, are gettingaltogether the most out of life and are giving the best of themselves!

The work progressed steadily--not too hastily, but most satisfactorily. Leaving at supper time, Bill's eyes would sparkle as he talked overtheir efforts for that day, and quiet Gus would listen with nods andmake remarks of appreciation now and then. 

"The way we've made that panel, Gus, with those end cleats doweled onand the shellacking of both sides--it'll never warp. I'm proud of thatand it was mostly your idea. "

"No, yours. I would have grooved the wood and used a tongue, but thedowels are firmer. "

"A tongue would have been all right. "

"But, dear boy, the dowels were easier to put in. "

"Oh, well, it's done now. To-morrow we'll begin the mounting and wiring. Then for the a๋rial!"

But that very to-morrow brought with it the hardest blow the boys hadyet had to face. Full of high spirits, they walked the half mile out tothe Hooper place and found the garage a mass of blackened ruins. It hadcaught fire, quite mysteriously, toward morning, and the gardener andchauffeur, roused by the crackling flames, had worked like beavers butwith only time to push out the two automobiles; they could save nothingelse. 

The Hoopers had just risen from breakfast when the boys arrived; at onceGrace came out, and her expressions of regret were such as to imply thatthe family had lost nothing, the boys being the only sufferers. And it_was_ a bit staggering--all their work and machinery and tools and plansutterly ruined--the lathe and drill a heap of twisted iron. It was witha rueful face that Bill surveyed the catastrophe. 

"Never mind, Billy, " said Grace, detecting evidence of moisture in hiseyes; but she went over to smiling Gus and gazed at him in wonder. "Don't you care?" she asked. 

"You bet I care; mostly on Bill's account, though. He had set his heartmighty strong on this. I'm sorry about your loss, too. "

"Oh, never mind that! Dad is 'phoning now for carpenters and hisbuilder. He'll be out in a minute. "

Out he did come, with a shout of greeting; he, too, had sensed that thereal regrets would be with them. 

"It'll be all right, me lads!" he shouted. "Herring'll be here on thenext train, with a bunch o' men, an' I'll git your dad, Gus, too. Musthave this building up just like it was in ten days. An' now count upjust what you lads have lost; the hull sum total, b'jinks! I'm goin' tobe the insurance comp'ny in this deal. "

"The insurance company!" Bill exclaimed and Gus stared. 

"Sure. Goin' to make up your loss an' then some. I'm a heap int'restedin this Eddy's son business, ain't I? Think I ain't wantin' to see thatthere contraption that hears a hunderd miles off? Get busy an' give methe expense. We've got to git a-goin'. "

"But, Mr. Hooper, our loss isn't yours and you have got enough to--"

"Don't talk; figger! I'm runnin' this loss business. Don't want to makeme mad; eh? Git at it an' hurry up!" He turned and walked away. Gracefollowed in a moment, but over her shoulder remarked to the wonderingboys:

"Do as Dad says if you want to keep our friendship. Dad isn't any sortof a piker, --you know that. "

The insistency was too direct; "the queen's wish was a command. " Theboys would have to comply and they could get square with their goodfriends in the end. So at it they went, Bill with pad and pencil, Guscalling out the items as his eye or his memory gleaned them from thehard-looking objects in the burned mass as he raked it over. PresentlyGrace came out again. 

"Dad wants the list and the amount, " she said. "He's got to go to thecity with Mr. Herring. "

Bill handed over his pad and she was gone, to return as quickly in a fewminutes. 

"Here is an order on the bank; you can draw the cash as you need it. Youcan start working in the stable loft; then bring your stuff over. Therewill be a watchman on the grounds from to-night, so don't worry aboutany more fires. I must go help get Dad off. "

Once more she retreated; again she stopped to say something, as anafterthought, over her shoulder:

"And, boys, won't you let Skeets and me help you some? Skeets will behere again next week and I love to tinker and contrive and make allsorts of things; it'll be fun to see the radio receiver grow. "

"Sure, you can, " said Gus; and Bill nodded, adding: "We have only alimited time now, and any help will count a lot. "

Going down to the bank, Bill again outlined the work in detail, suggesting the purchases of even better machinery and tools, of only thebest grades of materials. There must be another trip to the city, themost strenuous part of the work. 

"We'll get it through on time, I guess, " said Bill. 

"I'm not thinking so much of that as about how that fire started, " saidGus. 

"It couldn't have been any of our chemicals, could it?"

"Chem--? My eye! Don't you know, old chap? I'll bet Mr. Hooper and Gracehave the correct suspicion. "

"More crooked business? You don't mean--"

"Sure, I do! Thad, of course. And, Bill, we're going to get him, sooneror later. Mr. Hooper won't want to stand this sort of thing forever. I've got a hunch that we're not through with that game yet. "

CHAPTER XX

"TO LABOR AND TO WAIT"

It was truly astonishing what well organized labor could do underintelligent direction; the boys had a fine example of this before themand a fine lesson in the accomplishment. The new garage grew into a newand somewhat larger building, on the site of the old, almost over night. There were three eight-hour shifts of men and two foremen, with thesupervising architect and Mr. Grier apparently always on the job. Assoon as the second floor was laid, the roof on and the sheathing inplace, Bill and Gus moved in. The men gave them every aid and Mr. Griergave special attention to building their benches, trusses, adrawing-board stand, shelving and tool chests. Then, how those new radioreceivers did come on!

Grace and Skeets were given little odd jobs during the very few hours oftheir insistent helping. They varnished, polished, oiled, cleaned copperwire, unpacked material, even swept up the _d้bris_ left by thecarpenters; at least, they did until Skeets managed to fall headlongdown about one-half of the unfinished stairway and to sprain her ankle. Then Grace's loyalty compelled her attention to her friend. 

Mr. Hooper breezed in from time to time, but never to take a hand; to doso would have seemed quite out of place, though the old gentlemanlaughingly made an excuse for this:

"Lads, I ain't no tinker man; never was. Drivin' a pesky nail's ahuckleberry above my persimmon. Cattle is all I know, an' I kin stilllearn about them, I reckon. But I know what I kin see an' hear an', b'jinks, I'm still doubtin' I'm ever goin' to hear that there Eddy's sondo this talkin'. But get busy, lads; get busy!"

"Oh, fudge, Dad! Can't you see they're dreadfully busy? You can't hurrythem one bit faster. " Grace was ever just. 

"No, " said Skeets, who had borrowed Bill's crutch to get into the shopfor a little while. "No, Mr. Hooper; if they were to stay up all night, go without eats and work twenty-five hours a day they couldn't do any--"And just then the end of the too-much inclined crutch skated outward andthe habitually unfortunate girl dropped kerplunk on the floor. Gus andGrace picked her up. She was not hurt by her fall. Her very plumpnesshad saved her. 

"For goodness' sake, Skeets, are you ever going to get the habit ofkeeping yourself upright?" asked Grace, who laughed harder than theothers, except Skeets herself; the stout girl generally got the utmostenjoyment out of her own troubles. 

Quiet restored, Mr. Hooper returned to his subject. 

"I reckon you lads, when you git this thing made that's goin' to hoodoothe air, will be startin' in an' tryin' somethin' else; eh?" heventured, grinning. 

"Later, perhaps, but not just yet, " Bill replied. "Not until we canmanage to learn a lot more, Gus and I. Mr. Grier says that thecompetition of brains nowadays is a lot sharper than it was in Edison'syoung days, and even he had to study and work a lot before he really didany big inventing. Professor Gray says that a technical education isbest for anyone who is going to do things, though it is a long way frommaking a fellow perfect and must be followed up by hard practice. "

"And we can wait, I guess, " put in Gus. 

"Until we can manage in some way to scrape together enough cash to buybooks and get apparatus for experiments and go on with our schooling. "

"We want more physics and especially electricity, " said Gus. 

"And other knowledge as well, along with that, " Bill amended. 

"I reckon you fellers is right, " said Mr. Hooper, "but I don't knowanything about it. I quit school when I was eleven, but that ain'tsayin' I don't miss it. If I had an eddication now, like you lads isgoin' to git, er like the Perfesser has, I'd give more'n half what Iown. Boys that think they're smart to quit school an' go to work isnatchal fools. A feller may git along an' make money, but he'd make aheap more an' be a heap happier, 'long of everything else, if he'd got aschoolin'. An' any boy that's got real sand in his gizzard can buckledown to books an' get a schoolin', even if he don't like it. What I'm alearnin' nowadays makes me know that a feller can make any old studyint'restin' if he jes' sets down an' looks at it the right way. "

"That's what Gus and I think. There are studies we don't like very much, but we can make ourselves like them for we've got to know a lot aboutthem. "

"Grammar, for instance, " said Gus. 

"Sure. It is tiresome stuff, learning a lot of rules that work onlyhalf. But if a fellow is going to be anybody and wants to stand in withpeople, he's got to know how to talk correctly and write, too. " Bill'slogic was sound. 

"Daddy should have had a drilling in grammar, " commented Grace, laughing. 

"Oh, you!" blurted Skeets. "Mr. Hooper can talk so that peopleunderstand him--and when you _do_ talk, " she turned to the oldgentleman, "I notice folks are glad to listen, and so is Grace. "

"But, my dear, " protested the subject of criticism, "they'd listenbetter an' grin less if I didn't sling words about like one o' thesehere Eye-talians shovelin' dirt. "

"You just keep a-shovelin', Mr. Hooper, your own way, " said Bill, "andif we catch anybody even daring to grin at you, why, I'll have Gus landon them with his famous grapple!"

Mr. Hooper threw back his coat, thrust his thumbs into the armholes ofhis big, white vest and swelled out his chest. 

"Now, listen to that! An' this from a lad who ain't got a thing toexpect from me an' ain't had as much as he's a-givin' me, either--an'knows it. But that's nothin' else but Simon pure frien'ship, I take it. An' Gus, here, him an' Bill, they think about alike; eh, Gus?" Gusnodded and the old gentleman continued, addressing his remarks to hisdaughter and Skeets:

"Now, if I know anything at all about anything at all I know what I'mgoin' to do. I ain't got no eddication, but that ain't goin' to keep mefrom seein' some others git it. You Gracie, fer one, an' you, too, Skeeter, if your old daddy'll let you come an' go to school with Gracie. But that ain't all; if you lads kin git ol' Eddy's son out o' the air onthis contraption you're makin' an' hear him talk fer sure, I'm goin' tosee to it that you kin git all the tec--tec--what you callit?--eddication there is goin' an' I'm goin' to put Perfesser Gray wiseon that, too, soon's he comes back. No--don't you say a word now. Iknow what I'm a-doin'. " With that the old gentleman turned and marchedout of the shop. But at the bottom of the garage steps he called back:

"Say, boys, I gotta go away fer a couple o' weeks, or mebbe three. Pushit right along an' mebbe you'll be hearin' from old man Eddy's son whenI git back!"

CHAPTER XXI

EARLY STRUGGLES

The receiving outfits were completed; the a๋rials had been put up, oneinstalled at the garage, the other at the mansion. Grace naturally hadall, the say about placing the one in her home. The a๋rial, of fourwires, each thirty feet long and parallel, were attached equi-distant, and at each end to springy pieces of ash ten feet long, these beinginsulators in part and sustained by spiral spring cables, each dividedby a glass insulator block, the extended cables being fastened to amaple tree and the house chimney. The ground wire went down the side ofthe house beside a drain pipe. 

The house receiver, in a cabinet that had cost the boys much painstakinglabor, was set by a window and, after Grace and Skeets had beeninstructed how to tune the instrument to varying wave lengths, they andgood Mrs. Hooper enjoyed many delightful periods of listening in, allzealously consulting the published programs from the great broadcastingstations. 

The other outfit made by the boys, which, except the elaborate box andstand, was an exact duplicate of the Hooper receiver, was taken to theBrown cottage. Gus insisted that Bill had the best right to it, and asthe Griers and Mrs. Brown had long been the best of friends and livedalmost next door to each other, all the members of the carpenter'sfamily would be welcome to listen in whenever they wanted to. The littleevening gatherings at certain times for this purpose were both mirthfuland delightful. 

The boys' a๋rial was a three-wire affair, stretching forty feet, anderected in much the same way as that at the Hooper house, except thatone mast had to be put up as high as the gable end of the cottage, whichwas the other support, thirty-five feet high. 

Then, when the announcement was made that the talks on Edison were to berepeated, Bill and Gus told the class and others of their friends, sothe Hoopers came also, the merry crowd filling the Brown living-room. Mr. Hooper's absence was noted and regretted from the first, as hiseagerness "to be shown" was well known to them all. 

The first lectures concerning Edison's boyhood were repeated. The secondand third talks were each better attended than the preceding ones. Cora, Dot, Skeets and two other girls occupied the front row; Ted Bissell andTerry Watkins were present. Bill presided with much dignity, mostcarefully tuning in, making the announcements, then becoming the mostinterested listener, the theme being ever dear to him. 

On the occasion of the third lecture, Bill said:

"Now, then, classmates and other folks, this is a new one to all of us. The last was where we left off in June on the Professor's receiver. Youcan just bet this is going to be a pippin. First off, though, is aviolin solo by--by--oh, I forget his name, --and may it be short andsweet!"

After the music, the now well-known voice came from the horn:

"This is the third talk on the career and accomplishments of Thomas AlvaEdison:

"In a little while young Edison began to get tired of the humdrum lifeof a telegraph operator in Boston. As I have told you, after thevote-recorder, he had invented a stock ticker and started a quotationservice in Boston. He opened operations from a room over the GoldExchange with thirty to forty subscribers. 

"He also engaged in putting up private lines, upon which he used analphabetical dial instrument for telegraphing between businessestablishments, a forerunner of modern telephony. This instrument wasvery simple and practical, and any one could work it after a fewminutes' explanation. 

"The inventor has described an accident he suffered and its effect onhim:

"'In the laboratory, ' he says, 'I had a large induction coil. One day Igot hold of both electrodes of this coil, and it clinched my hands onthem so that I could not let go!

"'The battery was on a shelf. The only way I could get free was to backoff and pull the coil, so that the battery wires would pull the cellsoff the shelf and thus break the circuit. I shut my eyes and pulled, butthe nitric acid splashed all over my face and ran down my back. 

"'I rushed to a sink, which was only half big enough, and got in as wellas I could, and wiggled around for several minutes to let the waterdilute the acid and stop the pain. My face and back were streaked withyellow; the skin was thoroughly oxidized. 

"'I did not go on the street by daylight for two weeks, as theappearance of my face was dreadful. The skin, however, peeled off, andnew skin replaced it without any damage. '

"The young inventor went to New York City to seek better fortunes. Firsthe tried to sell his stock printer and failed in the effort. Then hereturned to Boston and got up a duplex telegraph--for sending twomessages at once over one wire. He tried to demonstrate it betweenRochester and New York City. After a week's trial, his test did notwork, partly because of the inefficiency of his assistant. 

"He had run in debt eight hundred dollars to build this duplexapparatus. His other inventions had cost considerable money to make, andhe had failed to sell them. So his books, apparatus and other belongingswere left in Boston, and when he returned to New York he arrived therewith but a few cents in his pocket. He was very hungry. He walked thestreets in the early morning looking for breakfast but with so littlemoney left that he did not wish to spend it. 

"Passing a wholesale tea house, he saw a man testing tea by tasting it. The young inventor asked the 'taster' for some of the tea. The mansmiled and held out a cup of the fragrant drink. That tea was Thomas A. Edison's first breakfast in New York City. 

"He walked back and forth hunting for a telegraph operator he had known, but that young man was also out of work. When Edison finally found him, all his friend could do was to lend him a dollar!

"By this time Edison was nearly starved. With such limited resources hegave solemn thought to what he should select that would be mostsatisfying. He decided to buy apple dumplings and coffee, and in tellingafterward of his first real 'eats' in New York, Mr. Edison said he neverhad anything that tasted so good. 

"Just as young Ben Franklin, on arriving in New York City from Boston, looked for a job in a printing office, the youthful modern inventorapplied for work in a telegraph office there. As there was no vacancyand he needed the rest of his borrowed dollar for meals, Edison foundlodging in the battery room of the Gold Indicator Company. 

"It was four years after the Civil War and, besides there being muchunemployment, the fluctuations in the value of gold, as compared withthe paper currency of that day, made it necessary to have gold'indicators' something like the tickers from the Stock Exchange to-day. Dr. Laws, presiding officer of the Gold Exchange, had recently inventeda system of gold indicators, which were placed in brokers' offices andoperated from the Gold Exchange. 

"When Edison got permission to spend the night in the battery room ofthis company, there were about three hundred of these instrumentsoperating in offices in all directions in lower New York City. 

"On the third day after his arrival, while sitting in this office, thecomplicated instrument sending quotations out on all the lines made avery loud noise, and came to a sudden stop with a crash. Within twominutes over three hundred boys---one from every broker's office in thestreet--rushed upstairs and crowded the long aisle and office wherethere was hardly room for one-third that number, each yelling that acertain broker's wire was out of order, and that it must be fixed atonce. 

"It was pandemonium, and the manager got so wild that he lost allcontrol of himself. Edison went to the indicator, and as he had alreadystudied it thoroughly, he knew right where the trouble was. He wentright out to see the man in charge, and found Dr. Laws there also--themost excited man of all!

"The Doctor demanded to know what caused all the trouble, but his manstood there, staring and dumb. As soon as Edison could get Laws'attention he told him he knew what the matter was. 

"'Fix it! Fix it! and be quick about it!' Dr. Laws shouted. 

"Edison went right to work and in two hours had everything in runningorder. Dr. Laws came in to ask the inventor's name and what he wasdoing. When told, he asked the young man to call on him in his officethe next day. Edison did so and Laws said he had decided to place Edisonin charge of the entire plant at a salary of three hundred dollars amonth!

"This was such a big jump from any wages he had ever received that itquite paralyzed the youthful inventor. He felt that it was too much tolast long, but he made up his mind he would do his best to earn thatsalary if he had to work twenty hours a day. He kept that job, makingimprovements and devising other stock tickers, until the Gold and StockTelegraph Company consolidated with the Gold Indicator Company. "

CHAPTER XXII

FAME AND FORTUNE

"At twenty-two, " the lecturer continued, "while Edison was with the Goldand Stock Telegraph Company, he often heard Jay Gould and 'Jim' Fisk, the great Wall Street operators of that day, talk over the money market. At night he ate his lunches in the coffee-house in Printing HouseSquare, where he used to meet Henry J. Raymond, founder of _The New YorkTimes_, Horace Greeley of the _Tribune_ and James Gordon Bennett of the_Herald_, the greatest trio of journalists in the world. One of the mostmemorable remarks made by a frequenter of this night lunch, as recordedby Mr. Edison was:

"'This is a great place; a plate of cakes, a cup of coffee, and aRussian bath, all for ten cents!'

"The so-called bath was on account of the heat of the crowded room. 

"Mr. Edison tells this story of the terrible panic in Wall Street, inSeptember, 1869, brought on chiefly by the attempt of Jay Gould and hisassociates to corner the gold market:

"'On Black Friday we had a rather exciting time with our indicators. TheGould and Fisk crowd had cornered the gold and had run up the quotationsfaster than the indicator could record them. In the morning it wasquoting 150 premium while Gould's agents were bidding 165 for fivemillions or less. 

"'There was intense excitement. Broad and other streets in the WallStreet district were crammed with crazy crowds. In the midst of theexcitement, Speyer, another large operator, became so insane that ittook five men to hold him. I sat on the roof of a Western Union boothand watched the surging multitudes. 

"'A Western Union man I knew came up and said to me: "Shake hands, Edison. We're all right. We haven't got a cent to lose. "'

"After the company with which our young inventor was connected had soldout its inventions and improvements to the Gold and Stock TelegraphCompany, Mr. Edison produced a machine to print gold quotations insteadof merely indicating them. The attention of the president of the Goldand Stock Company was attracted to the success of the wonderful younginventor. 

"Edison had produced quite a number of inventions. One of these was thespecial ticker which was used many years in other large cities, becauseit was so simple that it could be operated by men less expert than theoperators in New York. It was used also on the London Stock Exchange. 

"After he had gotten up a good many inventions and taken out patents forthem, the president of the big company came to see him and was shown asimple device to regulate tickers that had been printing figures wrong. This thing saved a good deal of labor to a large number of men, andprevented trouble for the broker himself. It impressed the president somuch that he invited Edison into his private office and said, in a stagewhisper:

"'Young man, I would like to settle with you for your inventions here. How much do you want for them?"

"Edison had thought it all over and had come to the conclusion that, onaccount of the hard night-and-day work he had been doing, he reallyought to have five thousand dollars, but he would be glad to settle forthree thousand, if they thought five thousand was too much. But whenasked point-blank, he hadn't the courage to name either sum--thousandslooked large to him then--so he hesitated a bit and said:

"'Well, General, suppose _you_ make _me_ an offer. '

"'All right, ' said the president. 'How would forty thousand dollarsstrike you?'

"Young Edison came as near fainting then as he ever did in his life. Hewas afraid the 'General' would hear his heart thump, but he said quietlythat he thought that amount was just about right. A contract was drawnup which Edison signed without reading. 

"Forty thousand dollars was written in the first check Thomas A. Edisonever received. With throbbing heart and trembling fingers he took it tothe bank and handed it in to the paying teller, who looked at itdisapprovingly and passed it back, saying something the young inventorcould not hear because of his deafness. Thinking he had been cheated, Edison went out of the bank, as he said, 'to let the cold sweatevaporate. '

"Then he hurried back to the president and demanded to know what it allmeant. The president and his secretary laughed at the green youth'sneedless fears and explained that the teller had probably told him towrite his name on the back of the check. They not only showed him how toendorse it, but sent a clerk to the bank to identify him--because of thelarge amount of money to be paid over. 

"Just for a joke on the 'jay, ' the teller gave him the whole fortythousand dollars in ten- and twenty-dollar bills. Edison gravely stowedaway the money till he had filled all his pockets including those in hisovercoat. He sat up all night in his room in Newark, in fear andtrembling, lest he be robbed. The president laughed next day but saidthat joke had gone far enough; then he showed Thomas A. Edison how toopen his first bank account. "

Again the lecturer's voice ceased to be heard; again another voiceannounced that the fourth talk would be given on a certain date a fewdays later. A negro song with banjo accompaniment followed and the radioentertainment was over. 

Everyone was talking, laughing and voicing pleasure in the increasinglywonderful demonstration of getting sounds out of the air, from hundredsof miles away. Only Gus and Bill remained and the two--as Billy alwaysreferred to their confabs--went into "executive session. " This radioreceiver was altogether absorbing, much too attractive to let aloneeasily. The boys were proud of their very successful construction andthey could neither forget that fact, nor pass up the delight oflistening in. 

This time Gus had the first inspiration. Billy often thought how, sometimes strangely or by chance or correct steering, his chum seemed tograsp the deeper matters of detection. Gus eagerly acknowledged Bill aspossessing a genius for mechanical construction and invention, withoutwhich the comrades would get nowhere in such efforts, even admittingGus's skill and cleverness with tools. But when it came to havinghunches and good luck concerning matters of human mystery, Gus was theking pin. 

"I'm going to see what else we can get from near or far, " Gus said, detaching the horn and using the head clamp with its two ear 'phoneswhich had been added to the set. He sat down and began moving the switcharms, one from contact to contact, the other throughout the entire rangeof its contacts at each movement of the first, and proceeding thusslowly for some minutes. 

Bill had turned to the study of his Morse code, which the boys had takenup and pursued at every opportunity during the building of the radiosets. Gus, however, was less familiar with the dots and dashes. Awhisper, as though Gus were afraid the sound of his voice would disturbthe electric waves, suddenly switched Bill's attention. 

"Two dots, three dots, two dots, one dash, one dot and dash, one dot, one dash and two dots, same, dot, dash, dot, two dots, two dashes anddot, four dots, one dash, two dots, two dashes, two dots. " A pause. Gushad whispered each signal to Bill; then he asked: "What do you make it?"

"I make it: 'Is it all right, then?' They have been talking some time, Iguess, " said Bill; and added: "That's a good way to pick up and wrestlewith the code; it's dandy practice and we want--"

"Wait, pal, wait!" gasped Gus, bending forward again. 

Words came now, instead of the code. It was evident that the persongiving them out had sought authority for so doing from headquarters. 

Gus heard:

"This is to whom it may concern: Five hundred dollars' reward is to bepaid for information leading to the arrest of a party who last nightbroke into the home of Nathan R. Hallowell. After deliberately and, without apparent cause, shooting and badly wounding Mrs. Hallowell andstriking down an old servant woman, he stole several hundred dollars'worth of jewels and silverware. Both the servant, who kept her witsabout her, and Mrs. Hallowell, who is now out of danger, have describedthe assailant. He is about eighteen, of medium height, slender, darkcomplexioned, one eye noticeably smaller than the other, nose long andpointed, has a nervous habit of twitching his shoulder. He wore a lightbrown suit and a gray cap. Send all information, or broadcast same toPolice Headquarters, Willstown. Immediate detention of any reasonablesuspect is recommended. "

Gus wheeled about. 

"Bill, it's Thad! Description hits him exactly and there's five hundredreward. He's done a house-breaking stunt and tried to kill two peopleand I don't believe they've got him yet. Mr. Hooper wouldn't want us tokeep quiet on this; would he?"

"It might be a good idea to talk to Mrs. Hooper and Grace about itbefore you inform on Thad, " Bill said. 

"I'll do that, " Gus agreed and was off. In half an hour he was backagain. 

"I saw them, late as it was. Grace and Skeets were playing crokinole andMrs. Hooper came down. And, what do you think? Mr. Hooper wrote thatThad had forged his name on a check for several hundred dollars and gotaway with it and, even if he did still want to shield Thad, the lawwouldn't let him. Grace says Thad ought to be caught and punished andthat her father will want it done. "

"But Gus, even if you got Willstown on the long distance 'phone, howwould that help to----"

"We'll get them later; after we have located Thad. "

"Oh, Gus, do you think Ben Shultz was dreaming?"

"When he said he saw Thad out there in the barren ground woods by theold cabin? Not a bit of it! It's the last place they'd ever think oflooking for him--right on his uncle's place. Thad is pretty keen in someways. But I doubt if he'll stay there long. He'll be pulling out for themountains. There's a late moon to-night, you see. "

"I wish I could go with you; this old leg--"

"Never mind now; don't worry. I'll take Bennie Shultz and make himmessenger. If Thad's there you can get down to the drug store and callWillstown. That'll make our case sure. By cracky, old scout, fivehundred! We can--"

"Chickens, old man; chickens. Hatch 'em first. But you will, I'll bet, and it will be yours; not--"

"What are you talking about? Ours! It's as much your job as mine. Divy-divy, half'n'half, fifty-fifty. Well, I'm off. "

CHAPTER XXIII

JUSTICE

"Now then, Bennie, " whispered Gus, "beat it on the q. T. Then streak itfor Bill's house. He'll be watching for you. Tell him our man is hereand probably getting ready to light out. You needn't come back; I'm onlygoing to spot this bird and find out where he goes, if I can. You'll getwell paid for this, kid. "

The two boys were lying on the sandy ground among young cedars, andwatching the little cabin not fifty yards distant. Out of this crudeshack had come the sole occupant, to stand and gaze about him for aminute, lifting his face to the moon. Gus could plainly distinguish thegray cap, the slender build of the youth; he recognized the walk, acertain manner of standing, and once he plainly caught that upward shiftof the shoulder. Then Gus gave his orders to Bennie, knowing that theywould be carried out with precision, for the little fellow, almost awaif and lacking proper influences, would have nearly laid down his lifefor Gus after the athlete had very deservedly whipped two town bulliesthat were making life miserable for him. Moreover, the youngster wantedto be like Gus and Bill, in the matter of mentality, and a promise ofreward meant money with which he could buy books. 

Left alone, Gus crept nearer the cabin. He could be reasonably sure ofhimself, but not of Bennie, who might crack a stick or sneeze. Some lowcedars grew on the slope above the cabin; Gus took advantage of theseand got within about forty feet of the shack. Then he lay watching forfully an hour, there being no sign of the inmate. But after what hadseemed to Gus almost half the night, out came the suspect, stood amoment as before and started off; it could be seen that he carried asmall pack and a heavy stick in his hands. 

Then Gus was taken by surprise; even his ready intuition failed him. Hehad made up his mind that he was in for a long hike to the not toodistant mountains and that over this ground the work of keeping theother fellow in sight and of keeping out of sight himself was going tomean constant vigilance and keen stalking. But the midnight prowlerswung around the cabin and with long, certain strides headed straightfor the Hooper mansion. 

This was easier going for Gus than the open road toward the mountainswould have been; there was plenty of growth--long grass, trees andbushes--to keep between him and the other who never tried to seekshelter, nor hardly once looked behind him until the end of the broaddriveway was reached. 

Gus knew the watchman must be about, though possibly half asleep. Healso believed that the suspected youth, by the way he advanced, mustknow the ways of the watchman. Roger, the big Saint Bernard, let out abooming roar and came bounding down the driveway; the fellow spoke tohim and that was all there was to that. Gus stayed well behind, fearingthe friendly beast might come to him also and thus give his presenceaway, but Roger was evidently coaxed to remain with the first comer. 

The big house stood silent, bathed in the moonlight; there was no signof anyone about, other than the miscreant who stood now in the shadow, surveying the place. Presently he put down his pack, went to a windowand, quick and silent as an expert burglar, jimmied the sash. There wasonly one sudden, sharp snap of the breaking sash bolt and in a momentthe fellow had vanished within the darkness and Gus distinguished onlythe occasional flash of a pocket torch inside. 

There was but one thing to do, and that as quickly as possible. The doghad gone around to lie again on the front veranda. Gus made a bolt forthe rear of the grounds, reached the garage, found an open door, begansoftly to push it open and suddenly found himself staring into themuzzle of a revolver that protruded from the blackness beyond. 

"Don't shoot! I'm Gus Grier, Mr. Watchman. " The boy was conscious of acertain unsteadiness in his own voice. 

"Oh! An' phwat air yes doin' here?"

"Talk low, " said Gus, "but listen first: There's a burglar in the house. I spotted him some time ago, followed him and saw him get through thedining-room window. Move fast and he's yours!"

Pat moved fast. He recognized that he had not been up to his duty so farand he meant to make amends. With Gus following, the boy's nerves onedge with the possibility that the housebreaker would shoot, theIrishman, who was no coward, reached the house, entered the basement, flooded the house with light, alarmed the inmates and in a few minuteshad every avenue of escape guarded, the chauffeur, butler and gardenercoming on the scene, all half dressed and armed. 

What followed needs little telling. Hardly had the men decided to searchthe house before the sound of a rapidly approaching motor horn was heardand from the quickly checked car two men leaped out, the constable and adeputy from the town--and then Bill Brown! The illuminated house hadstopped their course. The search revealed Thad cowering in a closet, allthe fight gone out of him. Grace and Skeets were not even awakened; Mrs. Hooper did not leave her room. 

As the constable turned a light on the handcuffed prisoner he remarked:"That's the chap all right. Description fits. He'll bring that fivehundred all right. "

"A reward; is it?" said the watchman. "An' don't ye fergit who gits it. Not me, ner you, Constable, but the bye here. " He laid his hand on Gus'sshoulder. The constable laughed:

"Oh, you're slow, Pat. We all know that. The kid and his pal, that youngedition of Edison by the name of Billy Brown, got the thing cinched overtheir radio. We didn't know that the description that Willstown sent outfitted Mr. Hooper's own nephew. "

And so with relief, mixed with regret for Mr. Hooper's sake, Gus andBill saw a sulky and rebellious Thad vanish into the night and out oftheir immediate affairs. 

CHAPTER XXIV

GENIUS IS OFTEN ERRATIC

The fourth radio talk on the life, character and accomplishments of theworld's foremost inventor proved to be the most interesting of theseries. Fairview had heard of these entertainments and so many peoplehad asked Bill and Gus if they might attend, the boys became aware thatthe modest little living-room of the Brown home would not hold half ofthem. They, therefore, decided to let the radio be heard in the townhall, if a few citizens would pay the rent for the evening. 

This was readily arranged, but when the suggestion was made that anadmission be charged, the boys refused. This was their treat all round, even to transferring their a๋rial to the hall between its cupola and amast at the other end of the roof, put up by the ever willing Mr. Grierwho could not do too much to further the boys' interests. 

Early in the evening the hall was filled to overflowing, and ushers wereappointed to seat the crowd. Naturally there was much chattering andscraping of feet until suddenly a strain of music, an orchestralselection, began to come out of the horn and there was instant quiet. After its conclusion came the voice:

"This is our last lecture on Edison. Following this will be given aseries on Marconi, the inventor of the wireless. 

"As I have told you, Mr. Thomas Alva Edison's leap to fortune was suddenand spectacular, as have been most of his accomplishments since. Thosewho do really great things along the lines of physical improvement, orconcerning the inception of large enterprises are apt to startle thepublic and to surprise thoughtful people almost as though someimpossible thing had been achieved. 

"From a mere salaried operator to forty thousand dollars in a lump sumfor expert work was quite a jump. 

"The forty thousand dollars, however, did not turn Mr. Edison's head ashas been the effect of sudden wealth on many a good-sized but smallerminded man. 

"He used it as a fund to start a plant and hire expert men to experimentand work out the inventions which came to him so fast in his ceaselesswork and study. He could get along with as little sleep as Napoleon issaid to have required when a mighty battle was on. Edison could lie downon a settee or table and sleep just as the Little Corporal did evenwhile cannon were booming all around him. 

"There was something Napoleonic, also, about Edison's intensity ofapplication and his masterfulness in his gigantic undertakings. Ifgenius is the ability to take great pains, Thomas A. Edison is thegreatest genius in the world to-day--if not in all history. 

"Sometimes, as Napoleon did with his chief generals before a decisiveengagement, Edison would shut himself up with his confidentialcoworkers. Sometimes he and they would neither eat nor sleep till theyhad fought out a problem of greater importance to the world than evenNapoleon's crossing the Alps or the decisive battle of Austerlitz. But, though he began to work on a large scale, young Edison's financialfacilities were of the crudest and simplest. 

"Almost all of his men were on piece-work, and he allowed them to makegood salaries. He never cut them down, although their pay was very highas they became more and more expert. 

"Instead of _books_ he kept _hooks_--two of them. All the bills he owedhe jabbed on one hook, and stuck mems of what was due him on the other. If he had no tickers ready to deliver when an account came due, he gavehis note for the amount required. 

"Then as one bill after another fell due, a bank messenger came with anotice of protest pinned to the note, demanding a dollar and a quarterextra for protest fees besides principal and interest. Whereupon hewould go to New York and borrow more funds, or pay the note on the spotif he happened to have money enough on hand. He kept up this expensiveway of doing business for two years, but his credit was perfectly good. Every dealer he patronized was glad to furnish him with what he wanted, and some expressed admiration for his new method of paying bills. 

"But, to save his own time, Edison had to hire a bookkeeper whoseinefficiency made him regret for a while the change in his way of doingbusiness. He tells of one of his experiences with this accountant:

"'After the first three months I told him to go through his books andsee how much we had made. 

"Three thousand dollars!" he told me after studying a while. So, tocelebrate this, I gave a dinner to several of the staff. 

"'Two days after that he came to tell me he had made a big mistake, forwe had _lost_ five hundred dollars. Several days later he came roundagain and tried to prove to me that we had made seven thousand dollarsin the three months!'

"This was so disconcerting that the inventor decided to changebookkeepers, but he never 'counted his chickens before they werehatched. ' In other words, he did not believe that he had made anythingtill he had paid all his bills and had his money safe in the bank. 

"Mr. Edison once made the remark that when Jay Gould got possession ofthe Western Union Telegraph Company, no further progress in telegraphywas possible, because Gould took no pride in building up. All he caredfor was money, only money. 

"The opposite was true of Edison. While he had decided to invent onlythat which was of commercial value, it was not on account of the moneybut because that which millions of people will buy is of the greatestvalue to the world. 

"After he stopped telegraphing, Edison turned his mind to manyinventions. It is not generally known that the first successful, widelysold typewriter was perfected by him. 

"This typewriter proved a difficult thing to make commercial. Thealignment of the letters was very bad. One letter would be one-sixteenthof an inch above the others, and all the letters wanted to wander out ofline. He worked on it till the machine gave fair results. The typewriterhe got into commercial shape is now known as the Remington. 

"It is not hard to understand that Mr. Edison invented the AmericanDistrict Messenger call-box system, which has been superseded by thetelephone, but very few people know when they are eating caramels andother sticky confectionery that wax or paraffin paper was invented byEdison. Also the tasimeter, an instrument so delicate that it measuresthe heat of the most distant star, Arcturus. One of the few vacationsMr. Edison allowed himself was when he traveled to the Rocky Mountainsto witness a total eclipse of the sun and experiment on certain starswith his tasimeter, and this very clearly shows that Mr. Edison is asmuch interested in the advancement of science as in matters purelycommercial. "

CHAPTER XXV

THE GENIUS OF THE AGE

"I want to tell you something more about the personal side of this greatman, " continued the voice from the horn. 

"One of the striking things about Thomas Alva Edison is his gameness. Inthis respect he has been greater than Napoleon, who was not always a'good loser, ' for he had come to regard himself as bound to win, whetheror no; so when everything went against him, he expressed himself bykicking against Fate. But when Edison saw the hard work of nine yearswhich had cost him two million dollars vanish one night in a suddenstorm, he only laughed and said, 'I never took much stock in spiltmilk. '

"When his laboratories were burned or he suffered great reverses, Edisonconsidered them merely the fortunes of war. In this respect he was mostlike General Washington, who, though losing more battles than he gained, learned to 'snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, ' and win immortalsuccess. 

"Some of Edison's discoveries were dramatic and amusing. During histelephone experiments he learned the power of a diaphragm to take upsound vibrations, and he had made a little toy that, when you talkedinto the funnel, would start a paper man sawing wood. Then he came tothe conclusion that if he could record the movements of the diaphragmwell enough he could cause such records to reproduce the movementsimparted to them by the human voice. 

"But in place of using a disk, he got up a small machine with a cylinderprovided with grooves around the surface. Over this some tinfoil was tobe placed and he gave it to an assistant to construct. Edison had butlittle faith that it would work, but he said he wanted to get up amachine that would 'talk back. ' The assistant thought it was ridiculousto expect such a thing, but he went ahead and followed the directionsgiven him. Edison has told of this:

"'When it was finished and the foil was put on, I shouted a verse of"Mary had a little lamb" into the crude little machine. Then I adjustedthe reproducer, which when he began to operate it, proceeded to grindout--

"'Mary had a little lamb, Its fleece was white as snow, And everywhere that Mary went, The lamb was sure to go'

"with the very quality and tones of my voice! We were never so taken backin our lives. All hands were called in to witness the phenomenon and, recovering from their astonishment, the boys joined hands and dancedaround me, singing and shouting in their excitement. Then each yelledsomething at the machine--bits of slang or slurs--and it made them roarto hear that funny little contraption 'sass back!'

"Edison has always had a saving sense of humor. Though such a driver forwork--sometimes twenty hours a day seemed too short and they oftenworked all of twenty-four, --there was not unfrequently a jolly, prank-playing relaxation among the employees in the laboratory. If somefellow fell asleep and began snoring the others would get a record of itand play it later for the culprit or they would fix up a 'squawkophone'to outdo his racket. Most amusing was Edison's means of taking a shortnap by curling up in an ordinary roll-top desk, and then turning overwithout falling out. 

"Everybody knows Edison really invented the telephone--that is, he madeit work perfectly and brought it to the greatest commercial value, sothat a billion men, women and children are using it in nearly all thelanguages and dialects in the civilized world. But he was very carefulto give Dr. Alexander Graham Bell credit for his original work on thisgreat invention. 

"When a friend on the other side of the Atlantic wired that the Englishhad offered 'thirty thousand' for the rights to one of Edison'simprovements to the telephone for that country, it was promptlyaccepted. When the draft came the inventor found, much to his surprise, that it was for thirty thousand _pounds_--nearly one hundred and fiftythousand dollars. 

"The phonograph or talking machine has been considered one of Edison'sgreatest inventions, but it does not compare in importance and valuewith the electric incandescent burner light. This required manythousands of experiments and tests to get a filament that would burnlong enough in a vacuum to make the light sufficiently cheap to competewith petroleum or gas. During all the years that he was experimenting ondifferent metals and materials for the electric light which was yet tobe, in a literal sense, the light of the world, he had men hunting inall countries for exactly the right material out of which the carbonfilament now in use is made. Thousands of kinds of wood, bamboo andother vegetable substances were tried. The staff made over fiftythousand experiments in all for this one purpose. This illustrates theart and necessity of taking pains, one of Mr. Edison's greatestcharacteristics. The story of producing electric light would fill a bigvolume. 

"When the proper filament was discovered and applied there was greatrejoicing in the laboratory and a regular orgy of playing pranks andfun. 

"The philosophers say we measure time by the succession of ideas. Ifthis is true the time must have been longer and seemed shorter inEdison's laboratories than anywhere else. The great inventor seldomcarried a watch and seemed not to like to have clocks about. 

"Soon after he was married, the story went the rounds of the press thatwithin an hour or two after the ceremony, Edison became so engrossedwith an invention that he forgot that it was his wedding day. Edison hasdeclared this story to be untrue. 

"'That's just one of the kind of yarns, ' said the inventor laughing, 'that the reporters have to make up when they run short of news. It wasthe invention of an imaginative chap who knows I'm a littleabsent-minded. I never forgot that I was married. 

"'But there was an incident that may have given a little color to such astory. On our wedding day a lot of stock tickers were returned to thefactory and were said to need overhauling. 

"'About an hour after the ceremony I was reminded of those tickers andwhen we got to our new home, I told my wife about them, adding that Iwould like to walk down to the factory a little while and see if theboys had found out what was the matter. 

"'She consented and I went down and found an assistant working on thejob. We both monkeyed with the machines an hour or two before we gotthem to rights. Then I went home. 

"'My wife and I laughed at the story at first, but when we came acrossit about every other week, it began to get rather stale. It was one ofthose canards that stick, and I shall be spoken of always as the man whoforgot his wife within an hour after he was married. '

"A similar yarn was told of Abraham Lincoln, which was equally false, but even more generally believed. 

"Out of a multitude of labor savers and world-beaters--and world savers, too!--to be credited to Mr. Edison, it is impossible to mention morethan these:

"The quadruplex telegraph system for sending four messages--two in eachdirection--at the same time; the telephone carbon transmitter; thephonograph; the incandescent electric light and complete system;magnetic separator; Edison Effect now used in Radio bulbs; giant rockcrushers; alkaline storage battery; motion picture camera. These are butfew of Edison's inventions, but they are giving employment to over amillion people and making the highest use of billions of dollars. 

"With Mr. Edison's modesty it is difficult to get him to talk of therelative importance of his inventions, but he has expressed the opinionthat the one of most far-reaching importance is the electric lightsystem which includes the generation, regulation, distribution andmeasurement of electric current for light, heat and power. The inventionhe loves most is the phonograph as he is a lover of music. He haspatented about twelve hundred inventions. 

"Recent developments are proving that the moving picture, because of itseducational and emotional appeal is the greatest of them all. It isestimated that more than one hundred millions of people go to one ofthese shows once every seven days, which is equivalent to every man, woman and child in the United States of America going to a movie once aweek. The motion picture reaches, teaches and preaches to more people inAmerica than all the schools, churches, books, magazines and newspapersput together, and when it teaches, it does it in a vivid way that livepeople like. 

"Political campaigns are beginning to be carried on with the silverscreen for a platform. Writers in great magazines are proving, on theauthority of the Japanese themselves, that the American moving pictureis re-making Japan. Another, who has studied the signs of the times, asserts that the only way to bring order out of chaos in Russia is bymeans of the motion picture. 

"Comparisons are of times odious, but not in this case, for there is noman living, nor has there ever lived a man, except the Great Teacher, who has more greatly and generally benefited humanity or cast a strongerlight upon the processes of civilization than Thomas Alva Edison. "

At the close of another musical number there was a general expectationof dismissal, a shuffling of feet and a murmur of voices. This waschecked suddenly by Bill. The boy had been near the receiver all thewhile, on the chance of being needed in case of mishap, or for a sharper"tuning in"; now he got what the others did not and rising he let out ayell:

"Everybody quiet! Something else!" and in the instant hush was heard thecompletion of an announcement:

"--Scouts of America, the Girl Scouts and other organizations of kindrednature, upon their urgent invitation. We are making this announcementnow for the fourth and last time in the hope that it may be universallyreceived. Mr. Edison will now probably be here within an hour from thisminute. All the youth of the land who may avail themselves of radioservice will please respond and listen in. In a warmly appreciativesense this must be a gala occasion. "

"That's all, folks; I'm certain. " Bill shouted the school yell and theclass year: "Umpah, umpah, ho, ho; it's up to you, Fairview, 1922!"Then: "Bring 'em all back here, Gus. "

But not one of them needed urging nor reminding. Separating themselvesfrom the rapidly diminishing and retreating audience came Ted, Terry, Cora, Dot, Grace, with Skeets as a guest, Bert Haskell, Mary Dean, LemUpsall, Walt Maynard, Lucy Shore and Sara Fortescue, the entire buncheagerly attentive. They crowded around Bill and Gus and were well awareof the purpose. 

"Sure, we'll all be here, I'll bet a cow!" shouted Ted. 

"Dot and I could listen in on our own radio, " said Cora. "We've got itfinished and it works fine and dandy, Billy. We want you and Gus andeverybody to come over and try it. But we'll join in with the class onthis; eh, Dot?"

"Sure will, " agreed Dot. "Ours is only a crystal set, but it has someimprovements you boys haven't seen. Wait till we get it all done, andwe'll give you a spread and a surprise. "

"Say, Bill, this thing's great, " Terry said. "Father is going to get mean outfit in the city and I'll pay you and Gus to set it up for--"

"Set it up yourself, you lazy thing!" said Cora. 

"If you please, miss, I've got other matters--"

"All right, Terry, --see you later about it. Now, listen, hopefuls. You'll all be here, but this occasion is going to be incomplete, unlesswe have a lot more on deck. We all want to get out, and scout round andfetch in every kid that wants to amount to anything at all and is bigenough to understand and appreciate what's going on. And even then itwon't be quite up to snuff unless--"

"I know! You want Mr. Hooper here, too!" shouted Skeets. But in tryingto rise to make herself heard, she upset her chair and then sat down onthe floor, jarring the building. When the shout of mirth subsided, Billsaid:

"That's right. Mr. Hooper and Professor Gray. We'll have to tell themabout it. "

"Father wrote that he's coming home to-night, " announced Grace proudly. 

"Great shakes! Did he? Gus, get on the 'phone and find out!" Billcommanded. "Now, then, let's all get busy and----"

"Righto, Billy, but what will our folks think has become of us when it'sso late?" Dot questioned. 

"I move we go into executive session!" shouted Walt Maynard. 

"Sure, and the president of the class can call a meeting, " said TerryWatkins. 

"It's up to you then, Billy, " Cora agreed. 

"I call it. Come to order and dispense with the minutes, MissSecretary, " Billy grinned at Dot. "Motion in order to send a committeeto inform all the girls' parents. "

"I make that motion, " said Bert. 

"Second it. The boys' parents can get wise by radio, " asserted Ted. 

"Bert and Ted appointed. Get out and get busy!" Bill was no joke as anexecutive. "Here's Gus. Did you get Mrs. Hooper?"

"I sure did. Mr. Hooper got home an hour ago. "

"Glory!" Grace, you're driving your little runabout? I appoint Grace andMary a committee to go and get Mr. And Mrs. Hooper here right off. Noobjections? Don't fail, Grace, or we'll send the entire bunch. "

"We'll fetch him, " laughed Grace as she and Mary hurried out. 

"Now then, everybody else, including the chair, is appointed a committeeto bring in every boy and girl in the town who will come. Work fast! Iwonder if we could promise some eats. " Bill glanced at Terry. 

"Yes; tell them there'll be refreshments!" shouted the rich boy. "It'llbe my treat. Bill, make me a committee of one to hive the grub. Cakes, candy, bananas and ice cream; eh?"

"Done!" declared Bill. "Go to it, with the class's blessing!"

"Yes and Heaven's best on Terry Watkins, " said Cora. 

In a moment the hall was empty. Twenty minutes later the Hooper partyarrived and about three minutes thereafter who should appear butProfessor Gray, hurried, eager, registering disappointment when he sawthe empty room, then smiling as the Hoopers and Mary Dean came to greethim. 

"I had hoped to find my class here, " he began and was interrupted by thethump of Bill's crutch on the steps without. Forgetting his support theboy leaped, rather than limped, forward, followed more sedately byseveral lads and lasses he had rounded up. 

"If this isn't the best thing that _ever happened_!" shouted Bill, grasping the hands of the two men held out to him. "Both of you! Andyou, too, Mrs. Hooper. Great! Just got back, Professor! And now we'regoing to get the very thing we talked about, Mr. Hooper: we're going tohear Mr. Edison's voice or that of his right-hand man, nearly threehundred miles away. The rest of the bunch will be here in a minute. Iexpect Gus and Ted and Cora to fetch in a few dozen besides. Hello, here's Terry with the eats. "

CHAPTER XXVI

GOOD COUNSEL

"This quite overcomes me, " said Professor Gray to Mr. Hooper. "I hurriedback to invite some of my pupils to hear a message from Mr. Edison'slaboratory; but trust Bill to do the thing in a monumental fashion!"

"That there lad's a reg'lar rip-snorter, Perfesser. You can't beat him. Well, now, let's set down here in the middle; eh, Mother? an' wait ferwhat's a-comin'. I want a chance to tell the Perfesser 'bout that therewater-power plant an' what them boys done. Them's the lads, I'ma-sayin'. "

But conversation was out of the question, for in came another troop ofyoungsters, landed by Cora, Dot and Lucy, followed a moment later bymore, invited by the boys, who had joined forces in the street. The hallwas half filled by an expectant and noisy throng. Of course, half ofthem anticipated the refreshments more eagerly than anything else. Thesewere already, under the ministration of a young woman from theconfectionery hastily engaged by Terry, now becoming evident. 

Bill was beside the radio outfit, silently listening with the ear'phones clamped to the side of his head. Suddenly he arose and shouted:

"Quiet! Silence, everybody, and listen hard!"

Out of the horn again came the well-known voice of the transmittingstation official announcer:

"It gives us great pleasure to be able to broadcast very worth whilemessages of helpfulness and cheer to the youth of America. This occasionand opportunity was largely inspired by the Boy Scouts and the GirlScouts and it will interest you to know that the presidents, secretariesand many of the executive officers of these splendid organizations arenow here with us in person to inspire the occasion. They have asked meto express to you the hope that every Girl and Boy Scout--and I addevery other self-respecting girl and boy--has access to a radio receiverand is now listening in to catch these words. I will now reproduce foryou a message from one of the world's foremost citizens and greatestmen, one who has brought more joy and comfort to civilized millions thanany other man of his time, and therefore the greatest inventor inhistory; Mr. Thomas Alva Edison will now speak to the boys and girls ofAmerica through his constant associate and devoted friend, Mr. WilliamH. Meadowcroft. "

There was a slight pause. The silence in the hall was most impressive. Bill cast his eyes for a brief moment over the waiting throng. There wasin the eager faces, some almost wofully serious, some half-smiling, allwide-eyed and with craning necks, a tremendous indication of an almostbreathless interest. Then, from the horn came slow and measured accentsin a loud voice, perhaps a trifle tremulous from a proper feeling of thegravity of the occasion, but it was perfectly distinct:

"Young people, I--"

"_That's_ Bill--hello, Bill Medders--when did _you_------?"

And the startled company, staring about, saw Mr. Hooper stumblingforward in the aisle toward the trumpet. 

"You win, me lads, you--"

Bill Brown could not help laughing at the impetuous honesty of his kindold friend. Pointing to the horn, and placing his hand like a shellbehind his own ear, the amused boy signed to the excited old man tolisten. 

"The old geezer looks like 'His Master's Voice, ' don't he?" came like asneer from the background. 

During the pandemonium, the voice in the trumpet was proceeding quiteunperturbed. 

"Silence!" shouted Bill, looking severely in the direction of the "seatof the scornful. " "All please listen in on this. Mr. Meadowcroft isspeaking. " The confusion subsided and they heard these words:

"--sometimes impossible to get Mr. Edison's attention for weeks at atime. He has his meals brought in and sleeps in the laboratory--when hesleeps at all--and so intense is his interest in his work that it isuseless to attempt to disturb him even for what seems to me to bebusiness of the highest importance. 

"But he has permitted me to express his deep and sincere interest in allyou young people, and I am adding, on my own responsibility, threeexpressions of his which now seem to have maximum force because he hasused them:

"'Never mind the milk that's spilt. '

"Genius is one per cent. _in_spiration, and ninety-nine per cent. _per_spiration. '

"'Don't watch--don't clock the watch--oh!--_don't_ watch the CLOCK!--'Why, Mr. Edison, I thought you--I have just been explaining why youcouldn't come--and now (with a laugh) here you are!

"There was a hearty chuckle and another voice said:

"I know it's mean to make you a victim of misplaced confidence, but itcame across me like a flash that I couldn't do a better thing for theBoy Scouts and Girls Scouts and all the 'good scouts, ' old and young, than to broadcast a good word for my friend Marconi. So I have run uphere to speak to the Radio Boys after all. I know it's a shame, but--"

"Nothing of the sort, Mr. Edison, --not on your life!" (It is the morefamiliar voice of Mr. Meadowcroft now. )

"Wait, let me introduce you: Boys and girls, you are now 'listening in'with Thomas Alva Edison, who said, like the young man in the parable, 'Igo not, ' then he changed his mind and went. He is here--not to give youany message for or about himself, but to express his regard for the manto whom all Radio Boys and Girls owe so much. Mr. Edison has come onpurpose to say a word to you. "

When the room was in a silence so solemn that those present could heartheir own hearts beat, the voice the company now recognized as Mr. Edison's came through with trumpet clearness:

"I have great admiration and high regard for Marconi, the pioneerinventor of wireless communication. I wish you all the happiness thatComes through usefulness. Good night. "

"Mr. Edison--one moment! In the name of the millions who are not'listening in' on this, won't you please write this sentiment so that itcan be seen as well as heard?"

"All right"--came through in Edison's voice. A brief pause ensuedand--"Thank you, Mr. Edison, " from Mr. Meadowcroft in a low tone, whichhe immediately raised:

"Mr. Edison has just written the words you have heard him speak to bebroadcast, as it were, to the young eyes of America. "[A]

Hearty cheers followed this closing announcement, but as the speakersthey had heard were not aware of this, the demonstration soon ceased. Exuberant youth, however, must be heard, and so, led by theirrepressible Ted, they immediately sought fresh inspiration and beganto cheer whomever and whatever came quickly into their minds; first Billand Gus, with demands for a speech from Bill; then in answer to theschool yell, they cheered the school and Professor Gray. Finally theybegan to cheer the refreshments as these suddenly developed a full-formmaterialization. But this was suddenly switched off into a sort ofdoubtful hurrah as Mr. Hooper, with his wife trying to dissuade him byhis coat-tails, arose and cleared his throat. 

"Lads and lasses: I sez to this 'ere lad, Bill Brown, sez I, some timeback; I sez: 'Bill, me lad, if you ever fix it so's I kin hear my oldfriend Bill Medders talkin' out loud more'n a hunderd mile off, ' I sez, 'then, ' I sez, 'I'll give you a thousand dollers. ' Well, this Bill, he sez: 'No, sir, Mr. Hooper, ' he sez: 'We won't accept of no sich, 'he sez, an' what he sez he sticks to, this 'ere lad Bill does, an' sodoes his buddy, Gus, 'ere. So, young people, I'm goin' to tell youwhat I'm a-goin' to do. I'm goin' to spend that thousand some wayto sort o' remember this occasion by, an' it'll be spent fer whateveryour teacher here an' Bill an' Gus an' any more that want to git intoit sez it shall be. An', b'jinks, if you spring anything extry finean' highfalutin I'll double it--make it two thousand; anything tohelp 'em along, gettin' an eddication, which I ain't got, ner neverkin git, but my gal shall an' all her young friends. So, go to it, folks, an' I'm thinkin' my friends, Bill an' Gus--"

Roaring cheers interrupted the earnest speaker. He smiled broadly andsat down. Professor Gray got to his feet, but Bill, not seeing him, wasfirst to be heard when the crowd silenced; the boy had got to theplatform and then on a chair. Standing there balanced on his crutch, ahand where his shoulder usually rested, he was a sight to stir thepathos and inspire admiration in any crowd. 

"I say, people, give three royal yells for Mr. Hooper! He's one of thedearest old chaps that ever drew breath! Ready, now----"

The roof didn't quite raise, but the nails may have been loosened someand the timbers strained. With the ceasing of the cheers, Bill shoutedagain:

"And now don't forget Professor Gray! He's going to be in on this deal, big, as you know!"

Again the walls trembled. Once more Bill was heard:

"And I have this suggestion: We'll put up a radio broadcasting stationat the school. Get a government license, find means to make our serviceworth while and talk to anyone we want to. How's that?"

The building didn't crumble, but it surely shook. And then ProfessorGray had the floor:

"Girls and boys, we mustn't forget William Brown and Augustus Grier. Youcan hardly mention one without the other. I propose--"

Gus shamelessly interrupted his respected teacher and friend:

"Three yells for Bill Brown's radio! Let her go!"

It went; as did also the refreshments a little later. 

How Bill's idea of building a radio broadcasting station was carried outwill be told in "Bill Brown Listens In. "

THE END

[Footnote A: This message will be found in _facsimile_ in the forewordof this book. ]