to me?" thundered
Durmont. "Haven't you ambition enough to look around your wire and see
if you can find the trouble?"

"Lineman's paid to look up trouble; I'm not," was the surly answer.

Durmont was furious, but what he was about to say was cut off by a quiet
voice at his elbow.

"I noticed linemen repairing wires upon the main road, that's where this
wire is open. If you have any message you are in a hurry to send,
perhaps I can help you out."

Durmont turned to see a colored boy of fifteen whose entrance he had not
noticed.

"What can you do about it?" he asked contemptuously, "take it into town
in an ox team?"

"I can send it by wireless, if that is sufficiently quick."

Durmont turned to the operator at the table.

"Is there a wireless near here?"

"He owns one, you'll have to do business with him on that," said the
youth with a grin at Durmont's unconcealed prejudice.

It would be hard to estimate the exact amount of respect, mingled with
surprise, with which the city man now looked at the boy whose
information he had evidently doubted till confirmed by the white boy.

"Suppose you've got some kind of tom-fool contraption that will take
half a day to get a message into the next village. Here I stand to lose
several thousands because this blame company runs only one wire down to
this camp. Where is this apparatus of yours? Might as well look at it
while I'm waiting for this one-wire office to get into commission
again."

"It's right up on top of the hill," answered the colored boy. "Here,
George, I brought down this wireless book if you want to look it over,
it's better worth reading than that stuff you have there," and tossing a
book on the table he went out, followed by Durmont.

A couple of minutes' walk brought them in sight of the sixty-foot aerial
erected on the top of a small shack.

"Not much to look at, but I made it all myself."

[Illustration: His Motto]

"How did you happen to construct this?" And Durmont really tried to keep
the emphasis off the "you."

"Well, I'm interested in all kinds of electrical experiments, and have
kept up reading and studying ever since I left school, then when I came
out here on my uncle's farm, he let me rig up this wireless, and I can
talk to a chum of mine down in the city. And when I saw the wire at the
station was gone up, I thought I might possibly get your message to New
York through him."

They had entered the one-room shack which contained a