in and wished he had never seen it. For he
was face to face with a real temptation, one of the hardest and most
alluring his young manhood had ever confronted, and he was afraid, as he
continued to stare at the diagram made by Felix Bauer.

CHAPTER IV

IT was ten o'clock at night when Walter finally went out of the shop and
up to his room. He did not turn on the light at once, but went over by
his table and sat down.

The temptation he still faced had assumed alluring shapes. In the first
place, he was saying to himself, "Bauer's drawings differ only a trifle
from my own and I had practically gone as far as he, only one or two
points were suggested to me by his diagram of the electrodes resting at
an angle on the porcelain plate. The cutting of the teeth in the soft
metal was also suggested by him. But I had thought out other points that
were essential."

Then, again, Walter kept going over the great advantage it would be to
him if this discovery were made by him first. He knew that the
commercial value of any real improvement in city lighting was very
large. There was money for him in this discovery. And Walter was growing
more and more restless over his stewardship and the burdens it involved.
He hated the drudgery and the time it took, and of late he began to feel
quite certain that the same attitude displayed in other schools was
creeping into Burrton, an attitude of contempt for the working student,
nothing very pronounced, but enough to make him feel disagreeable and
annoyed, for he was a finicky youth, sensitive to a great degree and
with the taste of an aristocrat at heart.

"I don't see that I do Bauer any harm if I go ahead and make a model.
I'll do that anyhow," he said out loud at last, as he got up and turned
on his light. And then he saw under the edge of his door a note which
had been slipped in there.

He went over, picked it up, opened it, and found it was a note from
Bauer.

"My Dear Douglas:--Within an hour after leaving the shop to-night I had
a telegram calling me home. I do not know how soon I shall be able to
return to Burrton, if at all. Will you kindly see if I left any of my
apparatus or papers on my table and return them to my locker? I enclose
the key with this note. Thank you.
"FELIX BAUER."

So Bauer was going to be away indefinitely. He might not come back at
all. He had not given any reason for the call to come home, but Walter
remembered one