there, too, mending a damaged switch which
wouldn't go right, and Ross had promised to help me when his business
was finished. Well, when it was done, and they had smoked a cigarette
together-- Mr. Tavish is awfully popular with the whole place, you know,
Mr. Deland, and Ross liked him immensely--well, as I was saying, when
they'd done, they came over to me, where I was tinkering away at the
switch by the wall, and while Ross explained to me what exactly was the
matter, Mr. Tavish stood over us and made remarks."

"Can you remember what any of those remarks were?"

"Yes. He said he thought I was growing to be a clever youngster, with a
turn for electricity which ought to drive my father nearly mad, and then
he shook his head, and Ross laughed sort of uncomfortably, and agreed
with him. And then Ross asked Mr. Tavish if he knew anything of
electricity. 'Not a blessed thing!' Mr. Tavish said, with a loud laugh.
'I don't know the difference between a short circuit and a Bath bun.'
And of course we all laughed again, and then Ross explained a little of
it to him, and he seemed to catch on awfully quick, and asked some jolly
interestin' questions."

"And what were the 'jolly interestin' questions,' may I ask?"

"Oh-- I've really forgotten. Whether one could get a shock from that
sort of thing when you were working at it, and Ross said you could; and
electricity could kill a person instantly. And then they began to talk
about electrocution and the electric chair which criminals had to sit in
instead of being hanged, as they used to do in the old days. And Ross,
who simply loves anything to do with the subject as much as I do, Mr.
Deland, began to explain how a man could be killed by leaving a live
wire somewhere near where he could grasp hold of it, and then taking a
long piece of flexible wire in his hands, he wired it along the edge of
the room from the ground plug to the window, just to show what he meant
by it."

"Oh, he did, did he? And what colour was the flexible wire?"

"Crimson. Usual shade. Mr. Tavish was awfully interested at what Ross
did, and Ross got so enthusiastic that he carried the piece of wire up
to the window and left the raw edge of the wire exposed, and when he put
a piece of stuff against it, it singed up immediately, and, my word!
there _was_ a stink!"

"Naturally. And then?"

"Ross said a lot of things about the power of electricity that seemed to
interest Mr. Tavish, and of course _I_ was f