they were paid to do; for Mr. Clarence they did fully what they were paid to do; and for Mr. Laurie they would gladly have done what they were paid to do and a great deal more.

"The poor lad!" they murmured one to another. "The poor little chap!"

Of course it followed that no one envied Mr. Laurie his wealth. How could they? One might perhaps envy Mr. Fernald, senior, or Mr. Clarence; but never Mr. Laurie even though the Fernald fortune and all the houses and gardens, with their miles of acreage, as well as the vast cotton mills would one day be his. Even Ted Turner, poor as he was, and having only the prospect of the factories ahead of him, never thought of wishing to exchange his lot in life for that of Mr. Laurie. He would rather toil for Fernald and Company to his dying day than be this weak, dependent creature who was compelled to be carried about by those stronger than himself.

Nevertheless, in spite of this, there were intervals when Ted did wish he might exchange houses with Mr. Laurie. Not that Ted Turner coveted the big colonial mansion, or its fountains, its pergolas, its wide lawns; but he did love gardens, flowers, trees, and sky, and of these he had very little. He was, to be sure, fortunate in living on the outskirts of the village where he had more green and blue than did most of the mill workers. Still, it was not like Vermont and the unfenced miles of country to which he had been accustomed. A small tenement in Freeman's Falls, even though it had steam heat and running water, was in his opinion a poor substitute for all that had been left behind.

But Ted's father liked the new home better, far better, and so did Ruth and Nancy, his sisters. Many a time the boy heard his father congratulating himself that he was clear of the farm and no longer had to get up in the cold of the early morning to feed and water the stock and do the milking. And Ruth and Nancy echoed these felicitations and rejoiced that now there was neither butter to churn nor hens to care for.

Even Ted was forced to confess that Freeman's Falls had its advantages. Certainly the school was better, and as his father had resolved to keep him in it at least a part of the high-school term, Ted felt himself to be a lucky boy. He liked to study. He did not like all studies, of course. For example, he detested Latin, French, and history; but he revelled in shop-work, mathematics, and the sciences. There was nothing more to his taste than putting things together, especially electrical things; and already he had tried at home several crude experiments with improvised telegraphs, telephones, and wireless contrivances. Doubtless he would have had many more such playthings had not materials cost so much, money been so scarce, and Ruth and Nancy so timid. They did not like mysterious sparks and buzzings in the pantry and about the kitchen and told him so in no uncertain terms.

"The next thing you know you'll be setting the house afire!" Ruth had asserted. "Besides, we've no room for wires and truck around here. You'll have to take your clutter somewhere else."

And so Ted had obediently bundled his precious possessions into the room where he slept with his father only to be as promptly ejected from that refuge also.

"You can't be spreadin' wires an' jars an' things round my room!" protested Mr. Turner with annoyance.

"You can't be spreadin' wires an' jars an' things round my room!" protested Mr. Turner.
Page 9.

It did not seem to occur to him that it was Ted's room as well,—the only room the boy had.

Altogether, his treasures found no welcome anywhere in the tiny apartment, and at length convinced of this, Ted took everything down and stowed it away in a box beneath the bed, henceforth confining his scientific adventures to the school laboratories where they might possibly have remained forever but for Mr. Wharton, the manager of the farms at Aldercliffe and Pine Lea.

CHAPTER II

TED RENEWS OLD TIMES

Mr. Wharton was about the last person on earth one would have connected with boxes of strings and wires hidden away beneath beds. He was a graduate of a Massachusetts agricultural college; a keen-eyed, quick, impatient creature toward whom people in general stood somewhat in awe. He had the reputation of being a top-notch farmer and those who knew him declared with zest that there was nothing he did not know about soils, fertilizers, and crops. There was no nonsense when Mr. Wharton appeared on the scene. The men who worked for him soon found that out. You didn't lean on your hoe, light your pipe, and hazard the guess that there would be rain to-morrow; you just hoed as hard as you could and did not stop to guess anything.

Now it happened that it was haying time both at Aldercliffe and Pine Lea and the rumor got abroad that the crop was an unusually heavy one; that Mr. Wharton was short of help and ready to hire at a good wage extra men from the adjoining village. Mr. Turner brought the tidings home from the mill one June night when he returned from work.

"Why don't you try for a job up at Aldercliffe, my lad?" concluded he, after stating the case. "Ever since you were knee-high to a grasshopper you had a knack for pitching hay. Besides, you'd make a fine bit of money and the work would be no heavier than handling freight down at the mills. You've got to work somewhere through your summer vacation."

He made the latter statement as a matter of course for a matter of course it had long since become. Ted always worked when he was not studying. Vacations, holidays, Saturdays, he was always busy earning money for if he had not been, there would have been no chance of his going to school the rest of the time. Sometimes he did errands for one of the dry-goods stores; sometimes, if there were a vacancy, he helped in Fernald and Company's shipping rooms; sometimes he worked at the town market or rode about on the grocer's wagon, delivering orders. By one means or another he had usually contrived, since he was quite a small boy, to pick up odd sums that went toward his clothes and "keep." As he grew older, these sums had increased until now they had become a recognized part of the family income. For it was understood that Ted would turn in toward the household expenses all that he earned. His father had never believed in a boy having money to spend and even if he had every cent which the Turners could scrape together was needed at home. Ted knew well how much sugar and butter cost and therefore without demur he cheerfully placed in the hands of his sister Ruth, who ran the house, every farthing that was given him.

From childhood this sense of responsibility had always been in his background. He had known what it was to go hungry that he might have shoes and go without shoes that he might have underwear. Money had been very scarce on the Vermont farm, and although there was now more of it than there ever had been in the past, nevertheless it was not plentiful. Therefore, as vacation was approaching and he must get a job anyway, he decided to present himself before Mr. Wharton and ask for a chance to help in harvesting the hay crops at Aldercliffe and Pine Lea.

"You are younger than the men I am hiring," Mr. Wharton said, after he had scanned the lad critically. "How old are you?"

"Fourteen."

"I thought as much. What I want is men."

"But I have farmed all my life," protested Ted with spirit.

"Indeed!" the manager exclaimed not unkindly. "Where?"

"In Vermont."

"You don't say so! I was born in the Green Mountains," was the quick retort. "Where did you live?"

"Newfane."

Instantly the man's face lighted.

"I know that place well. And you came from Newfane here? How did you