ile you are gone?" asked
the young inventor, gravely.

"I have got my servant trained to look after those chickens," declared
Mr. Damon. "And this invention of yours is really more important than
even my buff Orpingtons."

"Just the same," remarked Tom to his eccentric friend, when Rad had
left the room. "I've got to fix it so that Eradicate stays at home with
father. He doesn't really know how old and broken he is--poor fellow."

"His heart is green, Tom. That's what is the matter with Rad."

"He is a loyal old fellow. But I shall take Koku with me, not Rad," and
the young inventor spoke decidedly. "And that is going to trouble poor
Rad a lot."

The prospect of going West, however, was not the main subject of Tom's
thoughts at this time. As the weeks passed and the end of the six
months of experiment came nearer, the inventor was more and more
troubled by the principal difficulty which had from the first
confronted him. Speed.

That was the mark he had set himself. A maximum speed of two miles a
minute on a level track for the Hercules 0001. With the speed already
attained by both steam and electric locomotives in the more recent
past, this was by no means an impossible attainment, as Tom quite well
knew.

But he became convinced that the conditions under which he labored made
it impossible for him to be positive of just how great a speed on a
straight, level track his invention would attain.

There was no electrified stretch of railroad near Shopton on which the
Hercules 0001 might be tested. The track inside the Swift Company's
enclosure did not offer the conditions the inventor needed. He felt
balked.

"I believe I have hit the right idea in my improvements on the Jandel
patents," he told Ned Newton when they were discussing the matter. "But
believing is one thing. Knowing is another!"

"Theoretically it works out all right, I suppose?" questioned Ned.

"Quite. I can prove on paper that I've got the speed. But that isn't
enough. You can see that."

"Impossible to be sure on the trackage already built here, Tom?"

"I haven't dared give her all she'll take," grumbled Tom. "If I did, I
fear she'd jump the rails and I'd have a wreck on my hands."

"And maybe kill yourself!" exclaimed Ned. "You want to have a care."

"Oh, that's all right! I've taken risks before. I don't want to risk
the safety of the locomotive, which is more important. That machine has
cost us a lot of money."

"I'll say so!" agre