y got his friend the operator to help put up the line, and the
operator made an ingenious arrangement by which a little electric bell
was rung in the work-room whenever any of the keys were used. By leaving
the door open this bell could be heard.

"Ain't it grewh!" Harry clicked off after the boys had been practising a
few days, meaning to say "Ain't it great!"

"Biggryf thirg out," Tom ticked in reply, imagining that he had said
"Biggest thing out."

But they soon did better than that, and in the course of a week or two
they were talking over the wire almost as glibly as though they were in
the same room. Their mothers and sisters were delighted with it, for
Mrs. Dailey found that without the trouble of going out she could ask
Mrs. Barker just how much flour to put in those new ginger-snaps, and
the girls made frequent appointments to walk down town together--all by
telegraph.

The line was so successful that the boys had to talk with their
schoolmates about it, and through them the news reached the reporter of
the Westbridge _Eagle_, and he put a paragraph in the paper about it.

"Our young townsmen Tom Dailey and Harry Barker and Joe Bailey," the
_Eagle_ said, "have added materially to the comfort and safety of their
respective families by putting up a telegraph line and burglar alarm
between their houses. It is a regularly equipped line, with an office in
each house. Td is the office call of young Dailey, Hb of Barker, and Jb
of Master Bailey. The instruments are in the boys' sleeping-rooms,
except Barker's; he uses his workshop for the purpose, and an electric
bell gives warning when he is wanted. Burglars will give those three
houses a wide berth in the future."

"Give us a wide berth!" Tom exclaimed. "Well, I guess they will! They
wouldn't have any chance at all. Father always keeps a revolver in his
room, and I have my baseball bat. Now mind, fellows, if we hear a
burglar at night, we send an alarm first thing, and the minute we get an
alarm we call our fathers. I guess a burglar would soon wish he was
somewhere else."

"I have a baseball bat all ready at the head of the bed too," said
Harry. "Do you suppose it would kill a man to hit him over the head with
it, Tom? I shouldn't like to kill a man, not even a burglar. I guess I'd
give him a rap over the shoulders. But I'm afraid father would fire some
bullets into him before I had a chance."

"I almost wish we'd have a chance," Joe put in. "But, of cours