" retorted Christopher
mischievously. "I only mean that so far as I am concerned the clock
world stopped with Quare, Tompion, and Graham."

"Indeed it didn't," contradicted the Scotchman, instantly bristling.
"Though if it had, you would not need to be pitied for those makers
would have bequeathed you some pretty fine products. And when you
consider that Tompion, at least, began life as a blacksmith it is the
more remarkable. Think what it meant to work out of such a crude, rough
trade into one so delicate! Still, it was an age of marvels--a strange,
fantastic, interesting era in which to have lived. Many members of the
Clockmakers' Company were blacksmiths who had graduated into this higher
calling and now boasted their own shops and apprentices. These latter
men helped about under supervision, learning the trade and completing
from eight to ten years of service before being taken in turn into the
guild and permitted to make clocks. In the meantime they prepared simple
parts of the work and made themselves useful in any direction they were
able, even running errands or standing at the shop door and coaxing the
passers-by to come in and purchase."

"Pretty primitive advertising," smiled Christopher.

"Advertising was primitive in those days," agreed McPhearson. "Sometimes
when trade was dull the unfortunate apprentices were sent out to tour
the streets and bring in customers. Or the present of a watch or clock
would be made to the king or some nobleman of wealth and influence in
the hope that such a gift would stimulate others to buy. No doubt even
the celebrated Graham, in the days of his apprenticeship to Tompion, may
have had some of these humble duties to perform. But if so they failed
to dash his enthusiasm for his profession, for you see how well he
profited by his teaching and what a master at clockmaking he finally
became. He had always been an ingenious fellow interested in evolving
mathematical instruments of all sorts."

"Were his clocks as good as Tompion's?" queried Christopher.

"As to that, the two were pretty well matched," was the answer. "Graham,
however, concentrated most of his skill on watches while Tompion put the
major part of his talent into long-case clocks which were unrivaled.
For, by this time, with the gradual development and improvement of clock
machinery, it was possible to make grandfather, or long-case, clocks
that kept excellent time. The defects of the old wheel escapement of the