"What's that you have?" said Frank, coming in one night after supper and finding the Codfish handling a kind of an instrument composed of bright polished brass set on a wooden base. Gleason was examining it closely.

"That, my inquisitive young sir, is nothing more nor less than a telegraph instrument."

"Where did you get it? Make it, buy it or pinch it?" inquired Frank.

"I bought it, kind sir. I was down at the Queen's station to-night getting off some of my important business by telegraph, and his nibbs down there, the telegraph operator, recognizing in me a man of excellent perceptions, invited me in."

"And you got away with some of the tools. Does he know it?"

"Oh, yes, sir, he knows it. I sat there and watched him tapping away. He told me it was New York on the other end of the wire, after he had called up. I didn't believe him, and he told me if I didn't believe, I could prove it for myself by simply touching two little posts that he pointed out."

"And you touched?"

"Yes, if you must know the details, I touched it, and incidentally I jumped about six feet in the air. It gave me a shock, you see."

"And then you realized that it really was New York on the other end of the wire?" queried Frank, who knew something about telegraphy because he had studied it in a series of articles in the Boys' Magazine.

"Sure, I realized at once that it was New York, for I've heard that New York is a shocking city. Now, then, will you be good?"

"Put him out! Put him out!" said David, looking up.

"Electrocute him, I should say," cried Jimmy. "He ought to be given two thousand volts in the neck for that."

"Well, if you will draw down these things on your heads, keep on interrupting my story. I asked the gent if it took much brains to learn it, and he had the nerve to tell me it didn't take much of any, and added that he thought I could just about accomplish it. If I had been a fighter like Redhead here, I'd have been insulted, but as it was I kept a dignified silence."

"Well, when did you make away with the instrument?"

"All in good time, kind friends. He showed me how easy it was to wiggle the little key, and I tried it myself. If I had stayed another half hour, I would have been an accomplished operator."

"And how about the instrument?"

"Well, finally, I got so much interested in the little clicker that he said he would sell me something that I could learn on, and he brought forth this attractive affair and agreed to sell it to me for twenty-five dollars."

"Oh, oh, and you bit, did you?"

"I said he agreed to sell it, note my words carefully. I made him a counter offer of three dollars and a half for it, and he said 'It's yours.' And, generous soul that he was, he gave me an instruction book which I also have, if I haven't lost it," and the Codfish began to search hastily through his pockets.

"There it is," he said, holding it up—"How to Learn Telegraphy—A Complete Analysis of the Entire System of the Morse Alphabet—With the Complete Code for all Letters, Figures and Punctuation Marks. There's a bargain at three-fifty. Eh, what?"

"Cheap at half the money," said Frank. "Hand it over."

He turned the pages over thoughtfully. "Say, this gives me an idea. Why wouldn't it be a good scheme to have a little telegraph line of our own?"

"Where to—New York? I insist it shall not be connected with New York. I had enough of New York to-night. It's too shocking."

"Quit your fooling. If you get off that New York joke again I'll punch your head. No, I really mean it. We could have a lot of fun with a telegraph line. We might have an instrument here and one in Jimmy's room. We might even connect up with Wee Willie Patterson who seems to have deserted us this fall."

"I say," said Jimmy, "it would be a great stunt. We could use it as a kind of alarm clock. When I sleep over, the Codfish can rattle a little on it and I'll be awake in a jiffy."

"Thank you," said the Codfish. "I vote against it, if I'm to be the alarming fellow."

"And," continued Frank, "we might run a wire down to Queen's station and get the night operator to send to us for practice."

"Yes, I imagine he'd love to do it," quoth the Codfish. "He seems so much like a generous fellow, particularly when you show him money."

"Well, let's show him money, if he won't do it without it."

David agreed with Frank that it would be a good scheme to have a telegraph line; and the long and the short of it was that the next night a descent was made on Murphy, the night operator at the station who, after much haggling about the price, agreed to run a private wire from the station to Queen's School and equip it with two sets—because only two sets were available. Murphy also agreed that for this sum he would furnish enough "juice" from the station batteries to make a sending current on the wire, and moreover he would "send" for fifteen minutes every night when the boys desired.

The boys went back to Queen's and scraped together enough money between them to pay ten dollars down, and Murphy, as good as his word, commenced stringing the wire the next day. As the line was to be kept a secret, it took a somewhat crooked path, dodging this way and that way to avoid conspicuous places. It cut across the river from the station, was bracketed on a tree, then took half a dozen leaps among the trees across the roof of an old house long unoccupied, and finally climbed the slope to Queen's School, well hidden among the trees.

Perhaps the most difficult part of the work was getting the wire on Honeywell Hall itself so as not to attract the attention of the caretakers, who would undoubtedly have made short work of it. The heavier wire was ended on a bracket on a great elm that swayed over the roof of Honeywell. From this bracket a very fine copper wire was stretched to the room of Jimmy and Lewis, which was fortunately on the rear of the Hall. From there it was an easy matter to bring it across and down a rain spout to the sill of Frank's window. When the whole job was completed, much of it under cover of darkness, so well had it been done that unless you had been looking for such a wire you might have looked over a hundred times and seen nothing unusual.

When the circuit was complete, Murphy attached the instruments and returned to the station. "I go on duty to-night at seven o'clock," he said, "and I'll cut the wire in and see how she works."

The boys were in high spirits about the successful completion of the job, and waited with eagerness to hear the signals Murphy was to send them.

"Wouldn't it be a joke," said the Codfish, as the hour for the opening of the great telegraph line came and went, "if it didn't work?"

"We'd be out ten dollars," remarked David. "But look at the fun we've had!"

"There speaks a true sporting proposition, gents," said the Codfish.

But the line was not to be a failure. Suddenly, while the boys were discussing their probable bad bargain, the little brass-armed sounder jumped into life and began to dance like mad.

"How well he talks!" said the Codfish, who couldn't read a letter. "I think it's about the most intelligent language I ever listened to. Don't sit there, Frank, pretending you know all about it," for Frank had his ear glued on the sounder and was trying hard to make out what was coming.

"No, I can't make it out, it's too fast for me; I can read a little if I haven't forgotten. I wish he'd send slower."

By degrees the sounder stopped its mad dancing and began to work slowly.

"Listen," said Frank, and he seized a pencil, "it's something he wants us to hear. I'll write it down."

Frank began scratching as the sounder clicked on. And this is what he got:

"Do ntfo rgett hat youow eme fi vedol lars."

"It's Choctaw!" cried the Codfish, who had been leaning over Frank's shoulder as the message came in. "Who can read Choctaw? David, don't speak up too quick. And Frank thinks he's an operator! Shades of my grandmother, what a message!"

Frank had been staring at the page. Finally he burst out laughing.

"Oh, it's a joke, is it? It looks funny enough to be a joke. Explain it, please."

"The only trouble is, that I didn't get the spaces right between the words. See, when you space it right the Choctaw becomes the following: 'Don't forget that you owe me five dollars'."

"What an insulting thing to send over our own wire first crack out of the box!" said the Codfish. "Of course we owe him five dollars, and if he were a gentleman he wouldn't remind us of it, particularly when we haven't got it in our clothes."

Frank's unexpected display of the ability to read the telegraph by sound, was a great incentive to the others of our quintet of boys, and they worked with might and main. Pasted in each room was a large white card ornamented in the Codfish's best style with the Morse alphabet and figures spread boldly thereon, and this is what they studied morning, noon and night, and sometimes in between:

"And Murphy says that's all a fellow needs to know, to do almost any kind of telegraphing. Sounds easy, doesn't it?" said Frank, one day. "And it is easy to remember the signals themselves, but when they come flying over the wire it's a different story."

"How are you getting on with the telegraph?" inquired David, one night of Lewis, who was listening to the measured ticking of the instrument.

"Great," said Lewis, "I guess I'll be able to take a job on the railroad pretty soon."

"Get out," said Jimmy scornfully. "Lewis makes a great fuss about it because he can tell such little things as e and i and h and things like that. I can do better than that myself. I have a speaking acquaintance with the big, forbidding fellows like q and x and all the high dignitaries."

For a time the lessons suffered by the introduction of this new toy, but by and by it began to take its natural place in the day or night. They picked up the reading wonderfully quickly and, as the days went on, Murphy was able to take a faster gait. Perhaps they didn't understand all of it, but it was a great joy to be able to pick out small words as the instrument rattled along. All of the boys were able to "send" pretty well, which as every one knows is the easy part of telegraphing. It is the receiving that is so difficult.

Often Frank and Jimmy held labored conversations over the wire when Murphy had cut out and left them to themselves, and it generally happened that they were obliged to stick their heads out of the window to confirm by voice what had been said and to fill in the gaps which were not clear.

The Codfish frequently used the wire to play tricks. One night Jimmy was awakened by a desperate clatter on the instrument. The call of Jimmy's room was JC, and they were both hard letters for our friend, the Codfish. He was rattling away at this JC, JC, JC, as fast as he could go. Jimmy sprang up and answered. "It's very cold down here," clicked the instrument; "come on down and put another blanket on me." Jimmy was furious. "I'll come down," he wired back, "and put a club on you."

"Ha, ha, ha, ha!" laughed the Codfish on the wire.

But they got a lot of fun out of it and some profit, for they were learning something which they might some day be able to turn to account. Little did any of them realize that it would, at no very distant date, play a prominent part in an important incident in their school life.