teurs with a range of from two hundred to
three hundred meters can pick it up."

Jerry halted midway in the passage.

"Do you mean to say," inquired he, "that a person can sling a song off
the top of a wire into the air and tell it to stop when it's gone two
hundred meters?"

"Something like that," chuckled Walter, amused.

"I don't believe it!" declared Jerry bluntly.

"But it can be done; really it can."

"No doubt you think you are speaking the truth, youngster," returned
the skeptic mildly. "Somebody's stuffed you, though. Such a thing
couldn't be, any way in the world."

As if that were the end of the matter Jerry opened a door confronting
him and stepped into the great hall, the splendor of which instantly
blotted every other thought from Walter King's mind.

Not only was the interior spacious and imposing but it was
bewilderingly beautiful and contained marvel after marvel that the lad
longed to examine. The large tiger-skin rugs that covered the floor
piqued his interest, so did the chiming clock, and a fountain that
welled up and splashed into a marble pool filled with goldfish. Why,
he could have entertained himself for an hour with this latter wonder
alone!

There was, however, no leisure for loitering for on hearing the
cadence of the chimes Jerry ejaculated in consternation:

"Eleven o'clock already! Land alive! We'll have to get the fires
blazing lively. Why, the folks may be here any minute now. Here, hand
me one of those long sticks you've got, sonny; or rather--wait! You
know how to lay a fire, don't you?"

"I reckon I've done such a thing once or twice in my lifetime," was
the dry response.

"Then go ahead. You build this fire while I go upstairs and start the
others," said Jerry. "After you've got this one going you can make one
in the library, that red room through those curtains."

"All right."

"Step lively! Don't take all day about it."

With awkward gesture Jerry swooped up some of the logs with his long
arm and disappeared into the hall above.

As for Walter, he had built too many fires in his mother's kitchen
stove and started too many blazes of driftwood on the beach to be at a
loss as to how to proceed. Almost in a twinkling scarlet flames were
roaring up the wide-throated chimneys and he had placed fenders before
them to keep in captivity any straying sparks. While he looked about
for a spot in which to deposit the remaining birch sticks there was a
sound of horns, a cr