disreputable branch of the Ray family. If you
could only get an ultra-violet ray as he was sneaking out of the lamp,
and hit him violently on the back of the head, you were rendering a
service to science and humanity.

This lamp was so fixed that the moment Mr. Ultra V. Ray reached the
threshold of freedom he was tripped up, pounced upon, and beaten until
he (naturally enough) changed colour!

It was all done by the lens.

Jelf drew a Dutch cheese on the table-cloth to Illustrate the point.

"This light never goes out," said Jelf passionately. "If you lit it
to-day, it would be alight to-morrow, and the next day, and so on. All
the light-buoys and lighthouses around England will be fitted with this
lamp; it will revolutionise navigation."

According to the exploiter, homeward bound mariners would gather
together on the poop, or the hoop, or wherever homeward bound manners
gathered, and would chant a psalm of praise, in which the line "Heaven
bless the Tibbetts-Jelf Lamp" would occur at regular intervals.

And when he had finished his eulogy, and lay back exhausted by his own
eloquence, and Bones asked, "But what does it _do_?" Jelf could have
killed him.

Under any other circumstances Bones might have dismissed his visitor
with a lecture on the futility of attempting to procure money under
false pretences. But remember that Bones was the proprietor of a new
motor-car, and thought motor-car and dreamed motor-car by day and by
night. Even as it was, he was framing a conventional expression of
regret that he could not interest himself in outside property, when
there dawned upon his mind the splendid possibilities of possessing
this accessory, and he wavered.

"Anyway," he said, "it will take a year to make."

Mr. Jelf beamed.

"Wrong!" he cried triumphantly. "Two of the lamps are just finished,
and will be ready to-morrow."

Bones hesitated.

"Of course, dear old Jelf," he said, "I should like, as an experiment,
to try them on my car."

"On your car?" Jelf stepped back a pace and looked at the other with
very flattering interest and admiration. "Not your car! _Have_ you a
car?"

Bones said he had a car, and explained it at length. He even waxed as
enthusiastic about his machine as had Mr. Jelf on the subject of the
lamp that never went out. And Jelf agreed with everything that Bones
said. Apparently he was personally acquainted with the Carter-Crispley
car. He had, so to speak, grown up wit