anding before a roughly-built table on which were
ranged some odd-looking bits of apparatus.

There was a gasoline motor in one corner, geared to a generator--or
what appeared to be one--from which feed wires led to a square metal
box on the table. Attached to this metal box was a sort of horn-shaped
mouthpiece something like the transmitter of a telephone. Hanging from
its side was what looked like an enlarged telephone receiver. Jack
regarded his father questioningly.

"You sent for us, dad?"

"Yes, Jack," was the reply. "I'm in a quandary. Have you any idea what
this apparatus is?"

Both boys shook their heads.

"Looks like some kind of a telephone," ventured Tom.

"It is a telephone," replied Mr. Chadwick.

"But--but--where are the wires?" asked Jack, glancing about him, "or
haven't you connected it up yet?"

"It's connected up as much as it will ever be," said Mr. Chadwick with
a smile. "Can't you guess what it is?"

"I've got it," cried Jack suddenly. "It's a wireless telephone."

"That's right," admitted his father, and, in response to a flood of
questions from the boys, he told them how he had been working day and
night to bring the device to perfection.

"Now," he said, as he concluded, "I want you boys to go down to that
shed that was put up last week at the northwest corner of the
orchard."

"The one that was put up to store gasoline?" asked Tom.

"I said it was for that purpose in order to avoid questions till I had
my work completed," said Mr. Chadwick with a smile. "Here is the key
to it. Inside you will find an apparatus similar to this one. Start
the dynamo and then stand in front of the transmitter and place the
receiver to your ear. If you don't hear anything at once use the
inductor to tune your aerial earth circuit to the transmitted current
from my end just exactly as you would tune up a wireless telegraph
instrument to catch certain wave lengths from another instrument"

"Then the principle of the radio telephone is the same as that of the
wireless telephone?" asked Tom.

"I'll explain that to you later in as plain language as I can," said
the inventor, "but now I am anxious to see how this instrument will
transmit sound."

The boys were excited. Anything novel in the way of science attracted
their bright, active minds as an electromagnet attracts steel. The
idea of a wireless telephone, of the possibility of transmitting
actual speech through space, just as the dots and dashes