rather timidly.

But Overholt was not one of these, and he took it gladly when it was
offered, and stood ready to be led away by a new path, which was not the
road to fame or wealth, but which might bring him to a quiet little
place where he could live in peace with those he loved, and after all
that would be a great deal.

VII

HOW A LITTLE WOMAN DID A GREAT DEED TO SAVE THE CITY

A fortnight earlier Mrs. Overholt had been much disturbed in her mind,
for she read each of her husband's letters over at least three times,
and Newton's fortnightly scrawls even oftener, because it was less easy
to make them out; but she had understood one thing very well, and that
was that there was no more money for the invention, and very little cash
for the man and the boy to live on. If she had known what a dreadful
mistake John Henry had made about debit and credit, the little woman
would have been terribly anxious; but as it was, she was quite unhappy
enough.

Overholt had written repeatedly of his attempts to raise just a little
more money with which to finish the invention, and he had explained very
clearly what there was to do, and somehow she had always believed in the
idea, because he had invented that beautiful scientific instrument with
which his name was connected, but she was almost sure that in working
out his theory he was quite on the wrong track. She did not really
understand the engine at all, but she was quite certain that when a
thing was going to succeed, it succeeded from the first, without many
hitches or drawbacks. Most women are like that.

She had never written this to her husband, because she would do anything
rather than discourage him; but she had almost made, up her mind to
write him a letter of good advice at last, begging him to go back to
teaching for the present, and only to work at the invention in his spare
time. Just then, however, she came across a paragraph in a German
newspaper in Munich which said that a great scientific man in Berlin had
completed an air-motor at last, after years of study, and that it worked
tolerably, enough to demonstrate the principle, but could never be of
any practical use because the chemical product on which it ultimately
depended was so enormously expensive.

Now Mrs. Overholt knew one thing certainly about her husband's engine,
namely, that the chemical he meant to use cost next to nothing, so that
if the principle were sound, the Motor would turn out to