y been so scarce, and Ruth and Nancy so timid. They did not
like mysterious sparks and buzzings in the pantry and about the kitchen
and told him so in no uncertain terms.

"The next thing you know you'll be setting the house afire!" Ruth had
asserted. "Besides, we've no room for wires and truck around here.
You'll have to take your clutter somewhere else."

And so Ted had obediently bundled his precious possessions into the
room where he slept with his father only to be as promptly ejected from
that refuge also.

"You can't be spreadin' wires an' jars an' things round my room!"
protested Mr. Turner with annoyance.

[Illustration: "You can't be spreadin' wires an' jars an' things round
my room!" protested Mr. Turner. _Page_ 9.]

It did not seem to occur to him that it was Ted's room as well,--the
only room the boy had.

Altogether, his treasures found no welcome anywhere in the tiny
apartment, and at length convinced of this, Ted took everything down
and stowed it away in a box beneath the bed, henceforth confining his
scientific adventures to the school laboratories where they might
possibly have remained forever but for Mr. Wharton, the manager of the
farms at Aldercliffe and Pine Lea.

CHAPTER II

TED RENEWS OLD TIMES

Mr. Wharton was about the last person on earth one would have connected
with boxes of strings and wires hidden away beneath beds. He was a
graduate of a Massachusetts agricultural college; a keen-eyed, quick,
impatient creature toward whom people in general stood somewhat in awe.
He had the reputation of being a top-notch farmer and those who knew
him declared with zest that there was nothing he did not know about
soils, fertilizers, and crops. There was no nonsense when Mr. Wharton
appeared on the scene. The men who worked for him soon found that out.
You didn't lean on your hoe, light your pipe, and hazard the guess that
there would be rain to-morrow; you just hoed as hard as you could and
did not stop to guess anything.

Now it happened that it was haying time both at Aldercliffe and Pine
Lea and the rumor got abroad that the crop was an unusually heavy one;
that Mr. Wharton was short of help and ready to hire at a good wage
extra men from the adjoining village. Mr. Turner brought the tidings
home from the mill one June night when he returned from work.

"Why don't you try for a job up at Aldercliffe, my lad?" concluded he,
after stating the case. "Ever since you were knee-high