he small black object which they had been
watching with so much interest was seen to fall backward, make a wild
grasp at nothing with both hands, and fall promptly to the ground.

His father threw up the window, leaped out, dashed across the
four-feet-wide lawn, cleared the winding rivulet, and cut, like a hunted
hare, over the smiling landscape towards the telegraph-post, at the foot
of which he picked up his unconscious though not much injured son.

"What made you climb the post, Robin?" asked his cousin Madge that
evening as she nursed the adventurous boy on her knee--and Madge was a
very motherly nurse, although a full year younger than Robin.

"I kimed it to see if I could hear the 'trissity," replied the injured
one.

"The lek-trissity," said Madge, correcting. "You must learn to
p'onounce your words popperly, dear. You'll never be a great man if you
are so careless."

"I don't want to be a g'eat man," retorted Robin. "I on'y want
t'understand things whats puzzlesum."

"Well, does the telegraph puzzle you?"

"Oh! mos' awfully," returned Robin, with a solemn gaze of his earnest
eyes, one of which was rendered fantastic by a yellow-green ring round
it and a swelling underneath. "I's kite sure I's stood for hours beside
dat post listin' to it hummin' an hummin' like our olianarp--"

"Now, Robin, _do_ be careful. You know mamma calls it an olian _harp_."

"Yes, well, like our olian _h_arp, only a deal louder, an' far nicer.
An' I's often said to myself, Is that the 'trissity--?"

"Lek, Robin, lek!"

"Well, yes, _lek_-trissity. So I thought I'd kime up an' see, for, you
know, papa says the 'trissity--lek, I mean--runs along the wires--"

"But papa also says," interrupted Madge, "that the sounds you want to
know about are made by the vi--the vi--"

"Bratin'," suggested the invalid.

"Yes, vibratin' of the wires."

"I wonder what vi-bratin' means," murmured Robin, turning his lustrous
though damaged eyes meditatively on the landscape.

"Don'no for sure," said Madge, "but I think it means tremblin'."

It will be seen from the above conversation that Robert Wright and his
precocious cousin Marjory were of a decidedly philosophical turn of
mind.

CHAPTER FOUR.

EXTRAORDINARY RESULT OF AN ATTEMPT AT AMATEUR CABLE-LAYING.

Time continued to roll additional years off his reel, and rolled out
Robin and Madge in length and breadth, though we cannot say much for
thickness. Time also developed t