t shape its own destiny, as friends and brothers. It is for me to
strike the swords from their hands!"

But still Kasia trembled and a shadow lay across her face.

"What is it you fear?" her father asked, looking at her.

"It seems too great a destiny!" she answered, with quivering lips.
"There is so great a risk! Suppose some one should steal that
instrument...."

"That would do no harm. I can make another--a hundred others! That is my
purpose. The whole world must know of it--must possess it. Every nation
must know that, the instant it marches to war, it risks annihilation. I
see no danger there."

"But suppose," Kasia persisted, "that the man who stole it should kill
you--what then? Oh, I have thought of it, father, so much, so closely,
all through the night! We must run no risk like that."

Vard took a rapid turn up and down the room. He was deeply perturbed. At
last he paused beside her.

"You are right, Kasia," he said. "I do not believe there is any
danger--and yet we must run no risk like that! Well, it is easy to avoid
it! Wait!"

He disappeared into his bedroom, and Kasia heard him pulling out the bag
and opening it. Then the lock snapped again, the bag was pushed back
under the bed, and her father rejoined her. He held in his hand a
little case of polished steel. Within it were three filament-like wires
wound peculiarly around a series of tiny pins.

"Here it is," he said, "the very heart of the mechanism. Without this it
is useless. Without this, it is merely a transformer. It can do no one
any harm--can betray no secret."

Kasia took the little box and looked at it.

"Is this difficult to make, father?" she asked.

"It took me eight years to make that one; but I can make another in two
days, or perhaps three."

"You are sure of that?"

"Oh, yes," and he smiled. "It is very intricate, yet very simple when
one has the clue. Every convolution of those filaments is photographed
on my brain. I can close my eyes and see them winding in and out."

The girl hesitated, the little box still in her hand.

"Then it would be safe to destroy this?" she asked, at last.

"Safe? Yes! That is my meaning! Let us destroy it!"

Still a moment she paused, then she closed her hand.

"Yes," she agreed; "let us destroy it."

Her father nodded his head indifferently. With him the moment of tension
had passed.

"Drop it into the sea," he said. "That will end it. Now, I think, I
shall go and examine the book