existence to chaps
like you."

Roger, face flushed, black hair rumpled, blue eyes glowing, rose to go.

"I can't exactly thank you," he mumbled. "Only," his voice
strengthening, "if I hadn't met you, I'd have gone back home discouraged
and almost as ignorant as I left. As it is, I feel in bully fighting
trim."

Old John McGinnis got to his feet. "God bless you, my lad. When I'm
twanging a harp, up above, I'll be having an interested eye on you."

Roger started back to Eagle's Wing that evening. Ernest and Dean Erskine
were both deeply interested in Roger's report, which he gave in the
Dean's library the night he reached home.

"Pshaw! I should have told you a lot of things that would have helped
you," exclaimed the Dean when Roger had finished. "But one forgets up
here in the classroom how the war rages out in the industrial world."

"Will patents cost a lot?" inquired Ernest. "You know I don't use all my
salary. Draw at will, old man."

"Thanks, old top," replied Roger. "Since I cut out girls and golf, I've
been saving a bit myself."

"The patents won't cost a great deal, if you do the work yourself,
Roger," said the Dean. "But it's going to take time to learn the patent
game."

"Well," said Roger, with a sigh, "if I've got to become a patent
attorney in order to patent my ideas, I suppose I can. But gee, I am
glad I don't want to get married. You were wise in not letting me give
up that instructorship, Dean, as I wanted to."

Dean Erskine smiled ruefully. "Seems to have been about the only sane
advice I've given you."

"Don't you think it, sir!" exclaimed Roger. "If I ever do get away with
this, yours will be the credit."

"And Ernest's," added the Dean.

"You bet, Ernest! And now, I'm going out to the University library and
read up on patents," said Roger, with the familiar squaring of the
shoulders.

He had need to square his shoulders: a greater need than either he or
his two devoted friends could dream. For as the months slipped into
years, it seemed more and more obvious that either Roger's ideas were
utterly impractical or else that he was actually several generations
ahead of his time. In his brilliant, yet thoroughgoing way, Roger
studied patent law and registered two years after his trip to Chicago
_as_ a patent attorney in Washington. He worked constantly on the
development of his plant, improving here, discarding there, until he had
reached the point, he felt, where he could do no more u