exposed film on the crude,
improvised film racks that had lately been beer kegs, and closed the dark
room door upon the last empty bucket that had been carried in full. In
the dull light of the ruby lamp he carefully wound his long strip of
exposed negative, emulsion side out, around the keg which Andy held for
him. His developer bath was ready, and he immersed the film-jacketed keg
slowly, with due regard for bubbles of air.

"You may not know it, but right here in this dark room is where I look
for the real test of success or failure," he confided to Andy, while he
rocked the keg gently in the barrel. "I wish I could afford a good
camera-man; but then, the most of them wouldn't work with this kind of an
outfit; they'd demand all the laboratory conveniences, and that would run
into money. Ever notice that when you can't get anything but the crudest
kind of tools to work with, you generally have to use them yourself? But
it will take more than--oh, _hell_!"

"What's wrong?" Andy Green bent his brown head anxiously down beside
Luck's fast graying mop of hair, and peered at the images coming out of
the yellowish veil that had hidden them. "Ain't they good?"

Luck reached into the water tank and splashed a little water on his film
to check it while he looked. "Now, what in the name of--" He scowled
perplexedly down at the streaked strips. "What do you suppose streaked it
like that?" He lifted worried, gray eyes to Andy's apprehensive frown,
and looked again disgustedly at the negative before he dropped it back
with a splash into the developer.

"No good; she's ruined," he said in the flat tone of a great
disappointment. "Eighty feet of film gone to granny. Well, that's
luck for you!"

Andy reached gingerly into the barrel and brought up the keg so that
he could take another look. He had owned a kodak for years and had
done enough amateur developing to know that something had gone very
wrong here.

"What ails the darned thing?" he asked fretfully, turning to Luck, who
was scowling abstractedly into his barrels of "soup."

"You can search me," Luck replied dully. "Looks like I'd been stung with
a bunch of bum chemicals. Either that, or something's wrong with our
tanks here." He reached down and pulled up the keg by its hooped top,
glimpsed a stain on his finger and thumb and let the keg slip hastily
over into the pure water so that he could examine the stains.

"Iron! Iron, sure as thunder!" he exclaimed suddenly.