Come in, won't you!"

With that he leads the way through the dark shed to a sort of workshop
at the back, where there's a window. There's a tool bench, a little hand
forge with an old coffee pot and a fryin' pan on it, and a cot bed not
ten feet away.

"Campin' out here?" says I.

"I'm not supposed to," says he; "but the yard superintendent lets me.
This is where I've lived and worked for nearly two years, and until you
came a minute ago it was where I expected to end. But now it's
different."

"It is?" says I. "How's that?"

Which is Tink Tuttle's cue to open up on the story of his life. It's a
soggy, unexcitin' yarn, most of it. As I'd kind of guessed by the way he
talked, he wa'n't just an ordinary fact'ry hand. He'd been through some
high class scientific school up in Massachusetts, where he'd lived
before his father lost his grip. Seems the old man was a crackerjack
boss machinist; but he got to monkeyin' with fool inventions, drifted
from place to place, got to be a lunger, and finally passed in. The last
four years in the fact'ry here had finished him. Tink had worked there,
too, and his sister had married one of the hands.

"It's the graveyard of the Tuttle family, this place is, I suppose,"
says Tink. "It got father, and it has almost got me. Some folks can
breathe brass filings and carbon dioxide and thrive on it; but we can't.
So I gave up and hid myself away in here to work out one of my silly
dreams. Last spring I caught a bad cold, and Sister sent me West. There
we have an uncle. She thought the change of climate might help my cough.
It didn't do a bit of good; but it was out there that I picked up this
option. That was when I saw a chance of making my dream come true. You
saw what I've been building, didn't you, as we came through?"

"I didn't notice," says I. "What is it, anyway?"

[Illustration: "TUT, TUT," SAYS THE BOSS OF THE RESTORIUM.]

"Wait until I light the lantern," says Tuttle. "Now come. This way.
Don't hit your head on those wings. There!"

And, say, it's a wonder I could walk right by a thing of that kind
without gettin' next, even if it was kind of dark. But all I needs now
is one glimpse of the outlines.

"Oho!" says I. "A flyer! Say, every bughouse in the country is at work
on one of them."

"I suppose so," says he. "I may be as big a fool as any of them, too;
but I think I know what I'm doing. At any rate, I've put my last dollar
into it. That's why my sister is so----Well