eat difficulty, in
the waiting engine house and as soon as the condenser was finished, the
three men began to set up this child of Roger's heart and brain. But
after the heavy work was done Roger would let no one attempt adjusting
the parts but himself. He set Ernest and Gustav to digging the oil pit
for the storing of the sun-heated oil and spent his days and part of his
nights in the engine house.

As the weeks slipped into May, many were the surmises as to what had
become of the Von Mindens. The madam's tent stood just as she had left
it and the burros she had left behind ranged about the desert, near the
Preble corral, coming home each night for the good feed Dick gave them.

Almost every day Felicia came to the plant. Her love for Roger and
Roger's for her was an accepted thing now between the two households.
Only Charley could draw the child away from the abstracted, hard-driven
young engineer and Dick showed his innate generosity in that though he
adored the little girl he did not harbor a grudge because Felicia so
frankly declared her preference for Roger.

After the condenser was finished Felicia took a deep interest in helping
Roger to find leaks in the system. Roger taught her to squirt oil from
an oil can over the different points and to interpret bubbles rising
from the resulting oil flow as leaks. It was the quaintest sight in the
world to see the slender little figure in blue overalls, brown head
running over with short curls, crawling like a little lizard over the
greasy pipes while Roger followed with pipe wrench, cold chisel and peen
hammer. After Roger began work on the engine, Felicia became a sort of
plumber's assistant and a clever one, at that.

Sometimes Charley came late in the afternoon to take Felicia home. She
would perch on the edge of the work bench and talk to Roger about the
work in a voice and with an unself-conscious manner so like her small
sister's that Roger, his restless mind on the problems of his work,
often confused the two girls in his thoughts and answered or directed
them indiscriminately. And Charley would chuckle as she watched him.

The day in May that the men began a test for oil leaks in the absorber
dawned with a promise of ferocious heat. Felicia appeared as usual but
admitted that she had come over Charley's protest.

"We'll have to leave off work at eleven, and not begin again until three
as Dick suggested, if this heat keeps up," observed Ernest.

"Then we'll