body, to a single idea--to the so far unsolved
problem of aerial navigation.

This idea had haunted him ever since he had been able to think
logically at all--first dimly at school, and then more clearly at
college, where he had carried everything before him in mathematics
and natural science, until it had at last become a ruling passion
that crowded everything else out of his life, and made him,
commercially speaking, that most useless of social units--a
one-idea'd man, whose idea could not be put into working form.

He was an orphan, with hardly a blood relation in the world. He had
started with plenty of friends, mostly made at college, who thought
he had a brilliant future before him, and therefore looked upon him
as a man whom it might be useful to know.

But as time went on, and no results came, these dropped off, and he
got to be looked upon as an amiable lunatic, who was wasting his
great talents and what money he had on impracticable fancies, when he
might have been earning a handsome income if he had stuck to the
beaten track, and gone in for practical work.

The distinctions that he had won at college, and the reputation he
had gained as a wonderfully clever chemist and mechanician, had led
to several offers of excellent positions in great engineering firms;
but to the surprise and disgust of his friends he had declined them
all. No one knew why, for he had kept his secret with the almost
passionate jealousy of the true enthusiast, and so his refusals were
put down to sheer foolishness, and he became numbered with the
geniuses who are failures because they are not practical.

When he came of age he had inherited a couple of thousand pounds,
which had been left in trust to him by his father. Had it not been
for that two thousand pounds he would have been forced to employ his
knowledge and his talents conventionally, and would probably have
made a fortune. But it was just enough to relieve him from the
necessity of earning his living for the time being, and to make it
possible for him to devote himself entirely to the realisation of his
life-dream--at any rate until the money was gone.

Of course he yielded to the temptation--nay, he never gave the other
course a moment's thought. Two thousand pounds would last him for
years; and no one could have persuaded him that with complete
leisure, freedom from all other concerns, and money for the necessary
experiments, he would not have succeeded long before hi