"but he had a good deal of trouble
doin' it. It was moonlight, and I watched him."

"Why didn't you fire at him?" asked Clewe. "Or at least let fly one of
the ammonia squirts and bring him down?"

"I wanted to see what he would do," said the old man. "The machine he
had couldn't be steered, of course. He could go up well enough, but the
wind took him where it wanted to. But I must give this feller the credit
of sayin' that he managed his basket pretty well. He carried it a good
way to the windward of the lens-house, and then sent it up, expectin'
the wind to take it directly over the glass roof, but it shifted a
little, and so he missed the roof and had to try it again. He made two
or three bad jobs of it, but finally managed it by hitchin' a long cord
to a tree, and then the wind held him there steady enough to let him
look down for a good while."

"You don't tell me that!" cried Clewe. "Did you stay there and let him
look down into my lens-house?"

The old man laughed. "I let him look down," said he, "but he didn't see
nothin'. I was laughin' at him all the time he was at work. He had his
instruments with him, and he was turnin' down his different kinds of
lights, thinkin', of course, that he could see through any kind of
coverin' that we put over our machines; but, bless you! he couldn't do
nothin', and I could almost hear him swear as he rubbed his eyes after
he had been lookin' down for a little while."

Clewe laughed. "I see," said he. "I suppose you turned on the
photo-hose."

"That's just what I did," said the old man. "Every night while you were
away I had the lens-room filled with the revolving-light squirts, and
when these were turned on I knew there was no gettin' any kind of rays
through them. A feller may look through a roof and a wall, but he can't
look through light comin' the other way, especially when it's twistin'
and curlin' and spittin'."

"That's a capital idea," said Clewe. "I never thought of using the
photo-hose in that way. But there are very few people in this world who
would know anything about my new lens machinery even if they saw it.
This fellow must have been that Pole, Rovinski. I met him in Europe, and
I think he came over here not long before I did."

"That's the man, sir," said Samuel. "I turned a needle searchlight
on him just as he was givin' up the business, and I have got a little
photograph of him at the house. His face is mostly beard, but you'll
know him."

"What be