Allen Chapman

“ For the second time that evening the radio boys thought they must be dreaming.
Cassey! Cassey the swindler, whom they had compelled to make restitution to the victim he had wronged. Cassey the thug, whom they had captured in that wild chase after he had looted the safe and nearly killed the operator in the sending station. Cassey the convict, who, to their certain knowledge, had been sentenced to a long term in prison. ”

“ Mr. Fennington eventually consented to take the radio boys with him, and there ensued several days of bustle and excited packing. At length all was ready, and they found themselves, one bright spring morning, installed in a big seven-passenger touring car en route for Braxton Woods, as the strip of timberland was called.
“This is the life!” chortled Jimmy, as the miles rolled away behind. “Fresh air, bright sun, the song of birds, and—doughnuts!” ”

“ At length he shoved back his chair, rose to his feet, and, striding across the little shack, carefully placed the notebook under a board on a shelf. Luckily he was so absorbed in what he was doing that he did not even glance toward the window where the radio boys were observing his every motion.
But Bob now judged that they had seen enough, and he wished to run no unnecessary risk of detection. At a signal from him they made for the underbrush at the edge of the clearing, where they could command a view of the door, and waited to see if the mysterious stranger would emerge. ”

“ By the time those persons heard it, the man in the moon could have heard it too—that is,” he added, with a laugh, “supposing there really were a man in the moon and that he had a radio receiving set.”
“It surely sounds like fairyland,” murmured Joe.
“Radio is the fairyland of science,” replied Mr. Preston, with enthusiasm, “in the sense that it is full of wonder and romance. But there the similarity ceases. Fairyland is a creation of the 15 fancy or the imagination. Radio is based upon the solid rock of scientific truth. Its principles are as certain as those of mathematics. ”

“ The blind are many of them old, you know, and pretty poor.”
“You mean,” said Herb slowly, “that most of the blind folks who really need radio more than anybody else can’t afford it? Say, that doesn’t seem fair, does it?”
“It isn’t fair!” cried Bob, adding, eagerly: “I tell you what I thought we could do. There’s that old set of mine! It doesn’t seem much to us now, beside our big one, but I bet that McNulty would think it was a gold mine.”
“Hooray for Bob!” cried Herb irrepressibly. “Once in a while he really does get a good idea in his head. ”

“ But I tell you,” he added, with sudden enthusiasm, “I’m mighty glad to be living in this good old age. What we have already seen accomplished is nothing to what we are going to see. Why,” he added, “some scientists, Steinmetz, for instance, are even beginning to claim that ether isn’t the real medium for the propagation of radio waves.”
“What do you mean by that?” asked Bob, with interest. “Is it some sort of joke?”
“Joke, nothing!” replied Frank Brandon. “As a matter of fact, I fully believe that electro-magnetic waves can as easily be hurled through a void as through ether.” ”

“ There were a number of regular wire telephones scattered throughout the woods, to aid in fighting forest fires, so that anybody traveling along the path would have been unlikely to give this outfit more than a passing glance, if they noticed it at all. Had the radio boys not chanced to see the black-moustached man listening, with wireless headphones over his ears, the fact that the box contained a wireless receiving outfit might never have been discovered. ”

“ He had reached his corner by this time, and with a pleasant wave of his hand he left them.
“He sure is a thirty-third degree radio fan,” mused Joe, as they watched his retreating figure.
“Just as most all bright men are becoming,” declared Bob. “The time is coming when a man who doesn’t know about radio or isn’t interested in it will be looked on as a man without intelligence.”
“Look here!” exclaimed Jimmy suddenly. ”

“ The boys glowed with pride at the doctor’s praise, and then and there made the resolve that whenever they came across a blind person that person should immediately possess a radio set if it lay within their power to give it to him. ”

“ Fortunately nothing of the kind happened, and soon they reached the main road and started at high speed for camp.
“I wonder if we can’t take some sort of a short cut,” came from Joe as they raced along.
“That’s the talk,” puffed poor Jimmy, who had great difficulty in keeping up with his chums. “The shorter the better.”
“We won’t dare risk it,” returned Bob. “Why we might get lost.”
“Who’s afraid of getting lost?”
“We are, for we might lose too much time and all our plans would go to smash. No, we’ve got to stick to the main road.” ”

“ Herb was of a rather indolent disposition, but was jolly and good-natured and always full of jokes, some of them good, others poor, which he frequently sought to spring on his companions.
Jimmy was a trifle younger than his mates, fat and round and excessively fond of the good things of life. His liking for that special dainty had gained him the nickname of “Doughnuts,” and few of such nicknames were ever more fittingly bestowed.
Apart from the liking that drew them together, the boys had another link in their common interest in radio. ”

“ It was the first opportunity the boys had had to tell the doctor of the night when Bob found that he was a human aerial, and he listened to the many details of the experiment with absorbed interest.
“It’s something new to me,” he said. “You boys have reason to be gratified at having had a novel experience. That’s the beauty of radio. Something new is always cropping up. Many of the other sciences have been more or less fully explored, and while none of them will ever be 58 exhausted, their limits have been to some extent indicated. ”

“ Herb shrugged his shoulders in a helpless gesture.
“What can he do?” he asked. “Except what everybody else has done—inform the police and hope the rascals will be caught. And even if they are caught,” he added, still more gloomily, “it won’t do dad much good, except that he’ll get revenge. The crooks will probably have disposed of all their stolen property before they’re caught.”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Bob hopefully. “Those fellows are getting a little bit too daring for their own good. Some day they’ll go too far and get caught.” ”

“ Never was there a cleaner, brighter, more manly boy than Frank Allen, the hero of this series of boys’ tales, and never was there a better crowd of lads to associate with than the students of the School. All boys will read these stories with deep interest. The rivalry between the towns along the river was of the keenest, and plots and counterplots to win the champions, at baseball, at football, at boat racing, at track athletics, and at ice hockey, were without number. Any lad reading one volume of this series will surely want the others. ”

“ It’s always best to take the bull by the horns. And you can’t blame Mr. Larsen for feeling sore about it. Any one of us would probably have felt the same way.”
“Sure thing,” admitted Herb. “But think of that dirty trick of Buck Looker in putting stones in snowballs! It wasn’t only that one that went through the window. Every time I got hit it made me jump.”
“Same here,” said Jimmy. “I was thinking all the time that they were the hardest snowballs I ever felt, but it never came into my mind that there were stones in them.” ”

“ Every time you mention something new it makes me feel hungrier.”
“Hungrier!” exclaimed Mr. Brandon. “Why, it’s hardly half an hour since we finished breakfast!”
“What has breakfast got to do with it?” demanded the insatiable Jimmy. “That’s past and done with. It’s time to think of lunch, now.”
“You win,” laughed Brandon. “Your capacity will make you famous some day.”
“It’s made him famous already—at least, up here,” Bob informed the radio inspector. “Didn’t you know that he is the undisputed champion pie eater of the camp?” ”

“ The days passed by, the boys becoming more and more engrossed in the fascination of radio all the time. They continued to work on their sets, sometimes with the most gratifying results, at others seeming to make little headway. ”

“ Herb took him up. “Look at telephone and telegraph and electric lighting systems. There have been changes in them, of course, but beside the rapid-fire changes of radio, they seem to have been standing still.”
“There haven’t been any changes to speak of in the electric lighting systems for the last fifteen 96 years or more,” said Bob. “And the telephone has stayed just about the same, too.”
“There’s no doubt about it,” said Joe. “Radio has got ’em all beat as far as a field for experiment is concerned. Say,” he added fervently, “aren’t you glad you weren’t born a hundred years ago?” ”

“ But in radio we’re standing just on the threshold of a science whose infinite possibilities have not even been guessed. One discovery crowds so closely on the heels of another that we have all we can do to keep track of them.
“I’ve just got back from a little trip up in New York State,” he went on, as he settled himself more comfortably in his chair, “and I stopped off at Schenectady to look over the big radio station there. By great good luck, Marconi happened to be there on the same day——”
“Marconi!” breathed Bob. “The father of wireless!”
“Yes,” smiled Dr. Dale. ”

“ The others stared at Bob, and slowly his meaning sank home.
“I get you,” said Joe slowly. “And say, let me tell you, it’s a great idea, Bob. It wouldn’t be so bad to be blind if you could have the daily news read to you every day——”
“And listen to the latest on crops,” added Jimmy. 86
“To say nothing of the latest jazz,” finished Herb, with a grin.
“Well, why doesn’t this blind man get himself a set?” asked Jimmy practically. “I should think every blind person in the country would want to own one.”
“I suppose every one of them does,” said Bob. ”

“ One minute I was reaching forward to grab hold of Cassey and the next moment I found myself flying through space.”
“Humph,” grunted Joe. “It was lucky for Cassey that we all happened to be in a bunch,” he said. “He couldn’t have gotten rid of us so quickly if we’d been scattered about——”
“As we should have been,” added Bob. “Just the same,” he added, after a minute, “I don’t suppose it would have done any good if one of us had been left up there. It must have been the men who were with Cassey who sprang the trap on us; and if that’s so, the fight would have been three to one.” ”

“ Radio is an ideal boy’s hobby, but it is not limited to youth. Nevertheless it offers a wonderful scope for the unquenchable enthusiasm that always accompanies the application of youthful endeavor, and it is a fact that the majority of the wonderful inventions and improvements that have been made in radio have been produced by young men. ”

“ He spoke to his chums about it, but, though they were sympathetic, they did not see anything they could do.
“We can’t give him back his eyesight, you know,” said Joe absently, already deep in a new scheme of improvement for the set.
“No,” said Bob. “But we might give him something that would do nearly as well.”
“What do you mean?” they asked, puzzled.
“Radio,” said Bob, and laid his hand lovingly on the apparatus. “If it means a lot to us, just think how much more it would mean to some one who hasn’t a thing to do all day but sit and think. ”

“ Be yourself, can’t you?”
The others chimed in to the same effect, and their leader reluctantly abandoned his search and returned to the cabin. Had he gone another twenty feet he would inevitably have discovered 190 Bob, who had been on the point of springing to his feet and giving battle. It was a narrow escape, and the radio boys heaved sighs of relief as the door of the cabin closed on the formidable figure of the leader. They knew that these men were desperate criminals, heavily armed, who would not hesitate at murder to avoid capture. ”

“ A new series for boys giving full details of radio work, both in sending and receiving—telling how small and large amateur sets can be made and operated, and how some boys got a lot of fun and adventure out of what they did. Each volume from first to last is so thoroughly fascinating, so strictly up-to-date and accurate, we feel sure all lads will peruse them with great delight. ”

“ I bet he’ll be a riot when he gives them to us over the radio.”
“He sure will,” assented Herb. “He’s got the natural gift in the first place, and then he practices and practices until he’s got everything down to perfection.”
“He’s a natural entertainer,” affirmed Bob. “I tell you, fellows, we never did a better day’s work than when we got Larry that job at the sending station. Not only was it a good thing for Larry himself when he was down and out, but think of the pleasure he’s been able to give to hundreds of thousands of people. ”