“She's all right,” was the answer. “And there's nothin' happened, except, night before last, a man tried to look into your lens-house.”
“How did he do that?” exclaimed Clewe, suddenly turning upon his companion. “I am amazed! Did he use a ladder?”
Old Samuel grinned. “He couldn't do that, you know, for the flexible fence would keep him off. No; he sailed over the place in one of those air-screw machines, with a fan workin' under the car to keep it up.”
“And so he soared up above my glass roof and looked down, I suppose?”
“That's what he did,” said Samuel; “but he had a good deal of trouble doin' it. It was moonlight, and I watched him.”
“Why didn't you fire at him?” asked Clewe. “Or at least let fly one of the ammonia squirts and bring him down?”
“I wanted to see what he would do,” said the old man. “The machine he had couldn't be steered, of course. He could go up well enough, but the wind took him where it wanted to. But I must give this feller the credit of sayin' that he managed his basket pretty well. He carried it a good way to the windward of the lens-house, and then sent it up, expectin' the wind to take it directly over the glass roof, but it shifted a little, and so he missed the roof and had to try it again. He made two or three bad jobs of it, but finally managed it by hitchin' a long cord to a tree, and then the wind held him there steady enough to let him look down for a good while.”
“You don't tell me that!” cried Clewe. “Did you stay there and let him look down into my lens-house?”
The old man laughed. “I let him look down,” said he, “but he didn't see nothin'. I was laughin' at him all the time he was at work. He had his instruments with him, and he was turnin' down his different kinds of lights, thinkin', of course, that he could see through any kind of coverin' that we put over our machines; but, bless you! he couldn't do nothin', and I could almost hear him swear as he rubbed his eyes after he had been lookin' down for a little while.”
Clewe laughed. “I see,” said he. “I suppose you turned on the photo-hose.”