through the
short curly hair over his ear.

"That's all I lack," said Walter. "If I could get your '_einege
gewolite,_' I would have my answer."

"Hope you will get it," said Bauer, pleasantly, as he closed up his
locker and went out to meet another class period.

After he had gone, Walter worked on until he was the only person left in
the workroom. He had the entire afternoon and evening, as it happened,
and was so absorbed in his experiments that he was hardly aware of his
being alone until he looked up and saw that the big room was empty, and
that it was dusk. Without any thought of supper he turned on the light
over his table and made some mathematical calculations. Then he ran out
of paper and looked about over the litter of stuff in front of him for
another piece, but not finding any, glanced naturally over to Bauer's
table, which was next his own.

There was a folded bit of paper there, and Walter reached out for it,
took it, and opened it up. It was covered on one side with some drawings
and diagrams, and as Walter looked at them, not paying much attention at
first, as he worked a high power formula over in his head, a little at a
time it dawned on him as he continued to stare at Bauer's drawings, that
without having realised it himself, perhaps, Bauer had actually
suggested in his own drawing the key to the arc light Walter had been
puzzling over for several months without success.

"Yes! yes!" Walter was saying, excitedly, to himself. "I see it! I see
it! What a dummy I was. The electrodes can be fitted with teeth at equal
distances. Let the tooth rest on the porcelain plate. It will gradually
soften and melt under the heat of the arc. Then--then. I see! I see--the
electrode will, or it ought to, drop down of its own weight upon the
next tooth. Then that will melt and the electrode will drop again. The
two electrodes can be coupled together with a scissors coupling, so the
teeth will have to be made in only one of them. I see the whole thing!
Hurrah!" He said the last word out loud. The echo of it in the big,
empty shop startled him. The glow of the discoverer, of the inventor,
was on him and within him. Then he received a distinct reaction. That
was Bauer's paper, not his! He had left it out of the locker when he
went away! It was Bauer's discovery, not his, even if Bauer did not yet
realise the real value and meaning of his diagram. He was on the road to
the discovery.

Walter stared at the paper aga