It was a beautiful crystal,
almost two feet in diameter and without a scratch.

"What a corker!" cried Tom.

"Where will you put it, boys?" asked the Forecaster.

There was a moment's pause and then Bob said:

"Club-house."

"Yes," the Forecaster agreed, "I think that's best, because I know Dan'l
really would like to see it a part of Anton's outfit. Besides, boys,
Anton's going to do some work this summer on sunshine measuring and the
relation of sun-spots to the weather, and he'll need a recorder just
like this."

"Have sun-spots anything to do with the weather, sir?" asked Ross, in
surprise.

"Yes," the Forecaster answered, "it seems quite possible that they
have, though to what extent we don't quite know. There's a big field of
original work, there, and we've only just found out about it. It's
rather a pitiful story, boys, but the man who blazed the trail to that
new knowledge, died just two months before the world knew about him."

"Who was that, sir?" asked Anton.

"Veeder," was the answer. "Dr. Major Albert Veeder, who lived and died,
an almost unknown country doctor in the little town of Lyons, N. Y.
Without any money of his own, he worked hard on meteorology, especially
studying auroras and sun-spots. More than any man who ever lived, he
tried to show to what an extent the weather of the earth is modified by
changes in the sun, chiefly by intensifying the pressure of the
anticyclonic areas.

"Now, boys, for the discovery.

"In January, 1916, one of the best-known American meteorologists sent to
a brother scientist a postal card which called attention to a recently
published article which appeared to be of a good deal of importance. By
a curious coincidence, the other scientist had that very day been
reading an article published twenty years before in an obscure local
scientific magazine, written by Dr. Veeder.

"The two meteorologists, struck by the originality of the ideas and the
evidence of the vast amount of work that lay behind them, wrote to Dr.
Veeder at his home in the little New York State town. The recognition
that had so long been delayed was on its way. A black-bordered letter
came in reply. Dr. Veeder had died two months before!"

A sharp indrawing of the breath told of the boys' interest.

"Dr. Veeder's family at once forwarded the papers, published and
unpublished, of the unknown country doctor. These revealed that, as
early as twenty years before his death, he had made discover