model is at home. I brought it from Paris."

He fetched a parcel of manuscript from his pocket and unrolled it into
flatness.

"I should like to show it to you. Do you mind?"

"It would interest me enormously," said Sypher.

"I invent all sorts of things. I can't help it. But I always come back to
guns--I don't know why. I hope you've done nothing further with the guns of
large caliber. I've been thinking about them seriously, and I find they're
all moonshine."

He smiled with wan cheerfulness at the waste of the labor of years. Sypher,
on whose conscience the guns had laid their two hundred ton weight, felt
greatly relieved. Their colossal scale had originally caught his
imagination which loved big conceptions. Their working had seemed plausible
to his inexpert eye. He had gone with confidence to his friend, the expert
on naval gunnery, who had reported on them in breezy, sea-going terms of
disrespect. Since then he had shrunk from destroying his poor friend's
illusions.

"Yes, they're all unmanageable. I see what's wrong with them--but I've lost
my interest in naval affairs." He paused and added dreamily: "I was
horribly seasick crossing the Channel this time.

"Let us have a look at the field-gun," said Sypher encouragingly.
Remembering the naval man's language, he had little hope that Septimus
would be more successful by land than by sea; but his love and pity for the
inventor compelled interest. Septimus's face brightened.

"This," said he, "is quite a different thing. You see I know more about
it."

"That's where the bombardier comes in," laughed Sypher.

"I shouldn't wonder," replied Septimus.

He spread the diagram on a table, and expounded the gun. Absorbed in his
explanation he lost the drowsy incertitude of his speech and the dreaminess
of his eyes. He spoke with rapidity, sureness, and a note of enthusiasm
rang oddly in his voice. On the margins he sketched illustrations of the
Gatling, the Maxim, and the Hotchkiss and other guns, and demonstrated the
superior delicate deadliness of his own. It could fire more rounds per
minute than any other piece of artillery known to man. It could feed itself
automatically from a magazine. The new sighting apparatus made it as
accurate as a match rifle. Its power of massacre was unparalleled in the
history of wholesale slaughter. A child might work it.

Septimus's explanation was too lucid for a man of Sypher's intelligence not
to grasp the essentials of his